Free Republic

This might be an idea whose time has come: Nearly two-thirds of Americans are in favor of free college for everyone, and about three-quarters think at least some people should be eligible for free college, a new survey shows. As the labor market increasingly benefits the better educated, and as college education and earnings potential become more tightly linked, people are coming around to an idea that seemed radical until very recently. Vermont senator Bernie Sanders touted the idea as a central plank of his primary platform, and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton recently announced her own version, which includes a...

State and federal funding for Michigan’s public schools will reach record levels in the coming school year. The school budget adopted by the Legislature in June will be the first to appropriate more than $14 billion for K-12 education. Also, for the first time, the state’s share will exceed $12 billion, with the rest being federal money. Total state funding will go up from $11.96 billion in the just-completed school year to $12.34 billion in the coming year. Overall state and federal funding will increase from $13.73 billion in 2015-16 to $14.16 billion in 2016-17. The funding increases are happening...

Who knew that the Trump campaign would be getting involved in higher education policy this year? Sam Clovis, a tenured economics professor and Trump campaign co-chair, recently noted that their objectives include getting the government out of student lending, requiring colleges to share in student loan risk, and discouraging borrowing by liberal arts majors. Clovis told Inside Ed that the mere mention of these policy proposals has sent some Washington graybeards into a swivet, and "he expects some higher education leaders to react the same way when Trump outlines these ideas during the fall campaign." Some of the ideas under...

Burlington College announced today that it will close on May 27 after it found itself unable to recover from “the crushing weight of the debt” incurred under Jane O’Meara Sanders, the college’s former president and wife of Bernie Sanders. At the end of 2010, Ms. Sanders took out $10 million in loans on behalf of Burlington College to purchase a 32-acre swathe of land from the Roman Catholic diocese, which put the land up for sale to help cover the costs of a $17 million sexual-abuse settlement. MORE: Catholic Parishioners Want Jane Sanders Investigated for Federal Bank Fraud As Heat...

Currently, some schools in Illinois are able to spend as much as $30,000 per student, while others can only afford the $6,119 foundation level.

Jane Mayer is a writer for the New Yorker who knows her audience. It consists mostly of elitist progressives who like hearing that their enlightened transformation of America is imperiled by greedy conservative villains. She has written lots of articles and most recently a book entitled Dark Money on that theme. The February 26, 2016 issue of Chronicle Review (the companion publication to the Chronicle of Higher Education, but much more overtly political) contains an essay drawn from that book, “How Right-Wing Billionaires Infiltrated Higher Education.” To leftist readers, that’s certain to sound terrifying. Higher education, after all, is supposed...

The $15 minimum wage hike in California has sent financially troubled UC Berkeley into decision making mode, and "the people who clean buildings, who work in food services or health clinics,” says Todd Stenhouse, will be the ones without a job. Stenhouse, a spokesman for the American Federation of StateChancellor, also said “There’s a very clear need for those front-line services. But the question is whether there really is a need to hemorrhage resources on executives.” Nicholas Dirks sent a memo to employees Monday informing them of the job reductions and said they will amount to “a modest reduction of...

My student debt surrounds me like the construction on the University of Massachusetts campus; no matter how hard I try to avoid it, it shows up everywhere. It keeps me from getting to class on time, it ripped a hole in my backpack and it just puts me in a terrible mood. Like the construction, my student debt affects my every decision: what books I buy for classes versus which ones I can access for free, the amount of hours I work to pay my rent and if I can even continue my education at UMass. You can get rid...

So, after the whole mess surrounding the poop swastika; instances of harassment that were allegedly racially-motivated, though unverifiable since they occurred off campus; and a professor who was charged with assaulting a student reporter at protests over said events has a caused a budget shortfall at the University of Missouri. I know, totally shocking, right? (via Daily Caller): The University of Missouri (MU) is losing about 1500 students and is facing a huge $32 million budget shortfall four months after it attracted national attention as the site of massive race-based campus protests.“I am writing to you today to confirm...

Under state rules, the first two years of promise zones must be funded through philanthropy. Beginning in 2018, the Detroit Promise will be funded by increases in property tax revenue based on the 6 mills of the State Education Tax; the program will capture half of any increase in property tax revenue from the SET, officials said. Detroit Public Schools interim superintendent Alycia Meriweather told students gathered at a news conference that it’s now up to them to be prepared for college, by getting good grades. “You have an opportunity today that all the rest of us who grew up...

Can you name the most contentious issue in American politics? Here's a hint. It's being fought at the federal, state and local levels. And it doesn't go away. The struggle is persistent, ongoing, unending. Here is a second hint. The issue is not gay marriage, or gun control, or police brutality and or immigration. Those issues are either settled, largely settled, isolated or completely out of the control of local and state governments. Here is a third hint. The issue divides Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals. But it is especially divisive among Democrats and among people who call themselves...

Keely Mullen, an organizer for the Million Student March movement, joined Fox Business Network anchor Neil Cavuto on the air Thursday to discuss the movement’s demands for free public college, student debt cancelation and a $15-an-hour minimum wage for student workers. In the awkward 9-minute interview, Cavuto repeatedly cited facts and figures that seemed to fluster the student. When asked who would pick up the tab for the demands she listed, Mullen said, “The 1 percent of people who are hoarding the wealth and causing a catastrophe students are facing.” “If the 1 percent just had their taxes raised a...

WASHINGTON (CNS) — Wyoming Catholic College, a Catholic university founded in 2005 in Lander, announced in late February that it “shall not participate in federal student loan programs.”The decision came after months of analysis and deliberations by the college and its board of directors.“While the financial benefits are undeniable,” said a news release, “the increasingly burdensome regulatory requirements are clearly troubling for faith-based institutions.” The decision to forego federal student loan and grant programs was reached in a unanimous vote by the college’s board of directors.“While respecting that some of our peer institutions have reached a different conclusion on this...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) —More Americans are saving money for college using 529 accounts. They amount of money in the savings plans grew to a record $248 billion in 2014, about 9 percent more than the previous year.People are starting to save for their children earlier than ever. About 31 percent of the savings plans are opened by parents when their child is barely a year old, or before, according to the College Savings Plans Network.That's smart, given the skyrocketing cost of college tuition and fees in recent years."You really should be starting to save for college as soon as...

Could the time to end federal aid to higher education have long passed? “The federal government has no constitutional authority to do anything with regard to higher education (or any level, for that matter),” George Leef writes in Forbes. “But in 1965, Congress was swarming with ‘progressives’ who were sure that because college seemed to be a good thing for the rather small percentage of Americans who went, the nation would benefit if almost everyone went.” “So the federal policy began to make higher education more ‘accessible’ for students, most significantly through grants and easily available loans. The result was...

(CNSNews.com) - Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says government funded universal preschool is a “social movement” and compared it to civil rights and gay marriage during a speech in Los Angeles last month. “At the end of the day for me this is really a social movement,” Duncan said when discussing federally subsidized preschool at the LA Universal Preschool (LAUP) forum on Oct. 21. “If you look at social movements, we all celebrate what happened in the 1960’s. The civil rights movement was extraordinarily powerful, life transforming, earth shattering. But the question I have is, why didn’t the civil rights...

No Koch Bros wanted at B.C. Brooklyn College, part of the disastrous and dysfunctional City University of New York sinkhole, has a $60 million endowment. A drop in the bucket compared to CUNY’s horrifying $3 billion budget.46% of its wildly inflated budget comes from New York State. New York City taxpayers kick in another 10%.With so much taxpayer money, involuntarily extracted, they just aren’t in need of any dirty Koch Brothers cash. Brooklyn College’s liberal politics are keeping grants and progress from faculty and students, one frustrated CUNY professor told the Observer.The CUNY college has turned down a $10 million...

* The Facebook founder pledged $100million to Newark schools in 2010 to bring sweeping educational reforms * However, most of the money has been spent on labor contracts and consulting fees * The money has had little impact on student performance so far In his first major show of philanthropy, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg made a splash by announcing his plan to give $100 million to help turn around Newark, New Jersey's public schools in an appearance on Oprah in 2010. But nearly four years later, Zuckerberg's money has run out, having been spent mostly on labor contracts and consulting...

Make an emancipation declaration Get hitched (and marry down) Join the military Welcome the welfare state Crowd-fund your tuition Sell your genetic material Become homeless Reimagine the semester abroad

The Obama Administration’s former Homeland Security Chief has taken over the University of California. “Janet Napolitano had zero experience leading a college before she became president of the University of California last year,” Eric Kelderman wrote in The Chonicle of Higher Education on February 21, 2014. “Yet after just four months on the job, Ms. Napolitano, 56, has outlined major goals for the system, including a reconsideration of tuition policies, improving cooperation with the other two higher-education systems in the state, ensuring the prominent role of research and graduate education, and making the campuses carbon-neutral by 2025.” “She even has...