Free Republic

The University of Saint Katherine, a small nonprofit in North San Diego County, recently announced it will close May 18, citing “financial pressure due to unprecedented inflation and rising state-mandated labor costs.” It’s not alone. Nationwide, universities face financial hardships that appear to be getting worse. More than 100 colleges and universities have closed or merged, or announced plans to, over the last eight years, according to a tracker updated this month by Higher Ed Dive. The list, which does not include for-profit colleges and also omits mergers among public institutions, totals 108 since 2016. The closures span the spectrum...

"Thursday August 25, 2022, saw Usurper in Thief Joe Biden’s latest risky scheme to 100% intentionally crash the U.S. economy revealed and if you guess forgiving college debt you won. Meanwhile, America lost as SOMEONE will pay that debt back and that someone will be ALL taxpayers. Plus the bonus is we don’t get to repossess those expensive educations. One person doing a victory lap and slapping down the logic of how evil the action is was Debbie Dingell (D is for Debacle) who derided “armchair economists” as if you need to be an economist or sitting in an armchair...

To the surprise of many students and parents, public colleges in every state except Louisiana use for-profit debt collection agencies to recover overdue tuition, library fees and even parking ticket fines. Many universities add late fees to students' bills, and when debt collectors add another 40 percent, students can end up owing thousands of dollars more than they did originally. In some states, the law requires public colleges to use collection agencies if debts go unpaid for too long. Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, sends overdue accounts to private debt collection companies after about six months, according to...

Regardless of whether Biden would find a loophole or merely attempt to cajole Congress, it remains concerning that there are many people who want him to force taxpayers to bail out the well off.Will a newly inaugurated President Joe Biden make taxpayers pay off $50,000 in student debt for everyone who has it? That’s what Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has called for, according to recent reporting.Although Biden does have a plan to make taxpayers pay $10,000 a year for each college debt-holder for up to five years of work for government or non-profit organizations, he dodged the question...

The left wing of the Democratic party is already openly pushing President-elect Joe Biden toward controversial progressive wish-list policy items rather than the pressing needs of the American people during an unprecedented public health and economic crisis. Elizabeth Warren tweeted last Thursday that upon taking office “Biden-Harris can cancel billions of dollars in student loan debt, giving tens of millions of Americans an immediate financial boost and helping to close the racial wealth gap. This is the single most effective executive action available for a massive economic stimulus.” Rather than reaching across the aisle to craft an equitable, bipartisan stimulus...

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) made an appearance on BET's new series "Young Gifted and Broke" to talk about the Democrats' plan to cancel all outstanding student loan debt. According to Omar, the system is stacked against immigrants and it's time for Wall Street to bail the American people out of debt. "My family, we didn't really recover. We went through the private loan system. I didn't really know anything about it. That's my fault. People talk about financial literacy but they also prey on people like me," fellow panelist and author Michael Arceneux said. "That's an important piece because a...

President Donald Trump will further ingratiate himself to America’s military veterans when he signs an executive order Wednesday wiping out all student loan debt for thousands who have been disabled in Iraq and Afghanistan. The action will be announced during a speech at the 75th annual American Veterans convention in Louisville, Ky., where he flew earlier today. The order directs the Department of Education to eliminate “every penny” of student loan debt for veterans who have been rated 100 percent disabled. Currently, The Washington Times reports, there are some 40,000 vets nationwide who qualify for student loan debt forgiveness under...

In the lead-up to the 2020 elections, we’ve heard several proposals offering free college tuition for all, and loan forgiveness for those still carrying debt. While proponents call these proposals “investments in our future,” the reality is they would be a suffocating financial burden on every taxpayer, but especially on middle- and lower-income citizens. There’s an inherent unfairness to forcing many working-class Americans who couldn’t afford to go to college themselves to pay off the loans of those who could. Requiring a family making $50,000 a year to pay off the college debts of doctors, lawyers, engineers, and even some...

ABC's Jonathan Karl recently interviewed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. Karl asked no question and did not call for a clarification when Ocasio-Cortez, presumably referring to the Mueller report, spoke about "the abundance of evidence, 10 counts of obstruction of justice, four with rock-solid evidence" against President Donald Trump. A "count" means a specific accusation of a crime. The Mueller report made no such accusation. Even worse, Karl, with not one follow-up question, allowed Ocasio-Cortez to rattle off her progressive agenda -- which includes free college tuition, government health care for all and a $15 minimum wage indexed to inflation. After...

Consider two food service workers who have been working at a local university for the past three decades. Neither has a high school diploma; each was born and raised a few miles from campus. They have three children currently enrolled in the university's science and mathematics programs. One is hoping to be a doctor, another a physicist and child number three a high school mathematics teacher. Literally, the American dream. One of the reasons they have remained employees at the university for twenty years is that universities have been able to provide qualified tax-free tuition reductions for their employees. This...

*Professorial types are excited by a plan, courtesy of Michael L. Hays of New Mexico, to solve the college debt crisis. The irony is, it would put the onus of responsibility for college loans on some of the most irresponsible institutions in the United States today—colleges and local and state governments. “We need to put college funding on a sensible basis,” Hayes, a PhD, writes. “The government should not lend money indiscriminately to anyone who wants it for college: serious students, students unsure of their purposes, students for whom college is a substitute for unemployment, students who want a two-...

Two million more young people could get the financial aid they need to go to college if the federal government makes it easier to fill out its financial aid forms, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said Wednesday. The Seattle-based foundation said revising the form would be relatively simple and would not change the accuracy of the process. Students must fill out the form known as the Free Application for Federal Student Aid or FAFSA before they can qualify for a federal grant, subsidized student loan or nearly any other form of college financial aid. The Gates Foundation has taken...

U.S. student debt has climbed to an all-time high, despite a decrease in consumer debt for all other major lending categories such as automotive debt, credit card and home equity loans. Behind mortgages, student loans are the second largest debt class. Now at $1.2 trillion, student debt has increased 84 percent since the 2008 Great Recession, based on a study by information services firm Experian. The national average balance of loans stand at $29,400 and 40 million consumers now have at least one student loan, originally reported by NewsOK. Mississippi, Oklahoma and Louisiana had the highest amount of late payments....

In his first address to Congress after being sworn in as President of the United States, President Obama laid out an aggressive progressive agenda for increasing the number of Americans with college degrees over the next ten years. "We will provide the support necessary for you to complete college and meet a new goal," he promised Americans, "by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world." President Obama's goal here completely misdiagnoses what ails our higher education system. A culture that encourages and a government that and subsidizes higher education has driven up...

The average college graduate holds at least $35,200 of debt and has spent four years out of the workforce, where he or she would be otherwise gaining experience. All this for a piece of paper that by no means guarantees a job. The question that potential and current college students need to ask is: Do the financial costs, opportunity costs, and other factors justify the cost of college? For a select few, the answer may be yes. For a surprising number of people, it will be no. Does the financial cost justify going to college? It depends on what you...

This is what I see when i think about higher education in this country today: Remember the housing meltdown? Tough to forget isn’t it. The formula for the housing boom and bust was simple. A lot of easy money being lent to buyers who couldn’t afford the money they were borrowing. That money was then spent on homes with the expectation that the price of the home would go up and it could easily be flipped or refinanced at a profit. Who cares if you couldn’t afford the loan. As long as prices kept on going up, everyone was happy....

“Nearly every sensible middle-aged person would give away all their money to be able to go back to age 22 and begin adulthood anew.” – New York Times [NYT] columnist David Brooks. To the graduating class of 2011: Mr. Brooks is an idiot. Trade places with you? I’d rather swap jobs with Anthony Weiner’s Twitter assistant. You — members of the “Hope and Change” generation — face a daunting double-whammy. Having spent the past 20 years being babied, you’re now being flung into a world of wolves. Today’s America would be a tough place for David Brooks’s generation. For yours?...