Free Republic

In the face of staunchly high unemployment and the prospect of long term job scarcity, one of the most common solutions is to increase your skill set or pick up a new one; to go back to school. Throughout most of the last half of the last century, we've had it hammered into us and into our children that we need to attend higher education in order to achieve more profitable employment. According to the 2000 Census, people with a high school diploma averaged a little less than two thousand dollars a month while people with a bachelor's earned almost...

An unsigned opinion piece in The Oklahoman favors allowing illegal immigrants to attend college in Oklahoma at in-state tuition rates. The editorial refers to them five times as 'undocumented' but that is just a euphemism for illegal, which is what they are. The editorial takes the position that children "whose parents brought them into the United States illegally shouldn't bear the legal or financial burden of that decision." Also from the editorial: "Fewer than 500 undocumented students attend Oklahoma's public colleges and universities. Not surprisingly, the school with the highest number of these students is Oklahoma City Community College, with...

With Congress and the Obama administration focused on Monday’s deadline to prevent student loan interest rates from doubling, it is an apt time to examine the larger consequences of America’s staggering student loan debt load. Even as mortgage, credit card and other consumer debt levels have decreased, today’s students carry unprecedented — and growing — debt burdens. With outstanding student loan debt in the first quarter of 2013 totaling a record $986 billion, the impact on individuals is disturbing. But add to that the fact that this debt load threatens the nation’s very ability to compete in the global economy,...

The housing market has been dealt a further setback, as it is revealed that student debt is stifling the ability of graduates to get mortgages. As the country’s total college debt passed the $1 trillion mark and overtook the total credit-card debt for the first time, the repercussions are being felt in the housing market, as first-time homebuyers are limited in their options when it comes to taking out mortgages.Recent college graduates carry an average debt load of more than $25,000, limiting their ability to qualify for mortgages even if they’re able to land a job in a market...

Americans are still talking about the recently deflated housing bubble, but there’s a new bubble in town. It’s the student loan bubble and when this one pops, it might dwarf the wreckage we’ve witnessed in the real-estate markets. In the latest news, the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors warned that soaring student-loan debt has “parallels to the housing crisis,” according to a May report in Bloomberg. As with housing, free-flowing cash will lead to widespread default. Of course, it’s easier to repossess a tract house than to take back a potentially worthless degree. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke dismissed these...

By the time Ken Ilgunas was wrapping up his last year of undergraduate studies at the University of Buffalo in 2005, he had no idea what kind of debt hole he'd dug himself into. He had majored in the least marketable fields of study possible — English and History — and had zero job prospects after getting turned down for no fewer than 25 paid internships. "That was a wake-up call," he told Business Insider. "I had this huge $32,000 student debt and at the time I was pushing carts at Home Depot, making $8 an hour. I was just...

The student loan debate in Congress is bringing to the forefront the student loan crisis plaguing our nation, as well as the financial instability of academic institutions in the United States. Relative to the student loan crisis, the New York Federal Reserve concluded in its 2012 report that the obligations for student loans total approximately $1 trillion, or approximately $25,000 per graduate. The report notes that there are over 15 million borrowers under the age of 30, while the total number of borrowers is almost 39,000,000. The delinquency rates on the loans range between 10% to 20% for the various...

American colleges and universities are so flushed with cash that among the top ten schools in terms of the ratio between their endowment money and enrolled students are three schools most of us have never heard of. Colleges are businesses and will grab money from wherever they can. For decades they have worked hand in hand with Congress, (mostly Democrats) to raise tuition and fees knowing student loan money would keep coming from the US Treasury. College presidents have become experts in whining about not having enough money no matter how much they have. They NEVER lower tuitions and fees...

A year ago, I came across Aaron Clarey's "Worthless", a book that brings you down to earth about the value of a college degree in today's marketplace. I'd definitely recommend Aaron's book to parents & high school students. It will make you think about the huge investment that you are about to make by starting college. Young people today are finding a tough marketplace, i.e. the GDP is still weak. We can blame the slow economy for the tough jobs outlook. However, the changes are more profound and will continue until we finally can enjoy a recovery. As Thomas Friedman...

Congress has one month to reach an agreement before interest rates on new federally subsidized student loans double to 6.8 percent. For once, both Democrats and Republicans see the increase as a problem that needs to be solved. As expected, though, they have very different solutions, each with their own benefits and shortcomings. President Obama emphasizes the importance of college affordability, but a Fidelity Investments survey shows that new graduates are getting stuck with $32,000 in debt — a staggering sum even before interest costs are included. House Republicans want manageable interest rates, but they also want to trim the...

On Friday, President Obama will once more revive one of his ol’ campaign-favorite memes and remind college-age and younger voters of what it is exactly the Democrats can do for them — besides, you know, engendering a sluggish economy with a youth unemployment rate of sixteen percent, but I digress. On the campaign trail last summer, the president spoke to younger crowds about preventing the interest rate on federally subsidized Stafford loans from doubling to 6.8 percent as a way of boosting the economy, and Congress sent up a one-year extension of of the 3.4 percent rate for him to...

"If the Federal Reserve can float trillions of dollars to large financial institutions at low interest rates to grow the economy, surely they can float the Department of Education the money to fund our students, keep us competitive, and grow our middle class.” That is the logic behind the first piece of legislation from Harvard Law School professor-cum-Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, introduced in the Senate two weeks ago. The Bank on Students Loan Fairness Act seeks to extend to students the same loan interest rates allegedly offered to the country’s chief financial institutions. Among the problems with the bill? Said...

<p>Former Education Secretary William Bennett sums up a big part of the problem in a new book titled “Is College Worth It?” In it, he and his co-author note that since 1990 the cost of attending a four-year college has risen at four times the rate of inflation. Over that same period, federally supported student loans have skyrocketed, to the point where student-loan debt now exceeds credit-card debt.</p>

Private colleges are offering record financial assistance to keep classrooms full, according to the Wall Street Journal's Ruth Simon. Some schools are seeing just 20% of the students they accepted enrolling, versus the usual rate of 33%. These schools have raised tuition discount rate — the price after grants and scholarships — to an all-time high of 45%. Meanwhile, the median sticker price increased just 3.9% last fall, the smallest gains in 12 years. And at public schools, the sticker price climbed just 4.8%, also a 12-year low. For the Washington Examiner's Michael Barone, this makes it official: the college...

The new Holy Grail in American life appears to be a four-year college degree. Almost all high school students and their parents aspire to go to college, and high school graduates are enrolling in much higher numbers than in the past. The problem is that too few of them are graduating. Dropout rates from four-year schools are over 40 percent and from community colleges they are closer to 70 percent. The need for remedial courses to compensate for what kids are not learning in high school is distressingly high and not all that effective. For those who actually graduate, a...

Is getting a bachelor's degree still worth the cost? Payscale, a salary data provider, answered this question by comparing the average cost of education to predicted income over 30 years for graduates at 1,060 schools in the United States. It turns out that most schools are good investments — though Payscale economist Katie Bardaro warns that students should consider individually whether college is worth it for their intended career. At around 3% of the schools, however, the return on investment over 30 years is negative, due to some combination of high tuition and low graduate pay. We've highlighted the worst...

As college tuition keeps rising, so does student debt. Asked about ways to make higher education more affordable, 59 percent of Americans “strongly agreed” that colleges and universities should reduce tuition and fees, and 46 percent said companies should provide more assistance to their employees. Forty percent said the federal government should provide more assistance, 38 percent said state governments should provide more, and 38 percent said community-based scholarship organizations should provide more assistance. …

Graduation season is upon us. It used to be that in the years after hopeful 20-somethings bid farewell to campus life, they'd start borrowing to buy many things typically associated with adulthood – namely, a car and a home. Many had college loans to repay, but that's partly what made brainy go-getters so attractive to banks and lenders. They typically earn more over a lifetime, so they seemed like a safe bet. They may still be, but times have changed. College debt may have once been the good kind of debt, but the scale has grown so big that in...

Having a choice is generally a good thing, and being able to choose among several college acceptances should be a wonderful thing indeed. But let’s face it: the cost of a college education these days ranges from expensive to obscenely expensive. So the decision is likely to be tougher and more emotional than most parents and children imagined as they weigh offers from colleges that have given real financial aid against others that are offering just loans. While some students will be able to go to college only if they receive financial aid and others have the resources to go...

When I applied to law school in 1975, the nation was recovering from a severe and prolonged recession. Even so, I always assumed that I’d be able to make a comfortable living with a legal degree, although I didn’t think that practicing law would make me rich. Three and a half years later, I became a new associate at one of the nation’s largest law firms, Kirkland & Ellis. It had about 150 attorneys in two offices, Chicago and Washington, D.C. My annual salary was $25,000, which is $80,000 in 2012 dollars. There were rumors that some partners in large...