Free Republic

Texas legislators are debating whether to repeal the Texas Dream Act. Signed by then-Governor Rick Perry in 2001, the law allows certain undocumented students to pay in-state tuition. A recent Texas Tribune analysis revealed that the majority of undocumented students who pay in-state tuition rates don't attend four-year universities – they’re in community colleges. And most are in school here in North Texas. Like many immigrants, Alejandra Miranda and her parents left their native El Salvador for a “better life.” That was 12 years ago. She’s 23 now and enrolled at North Lake College in Irving. As she sat in...

NASHVILLE, TN (WSMV) - A bill that would offer in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants in Tennessee failed to pass the legislature on Wednesday. View from the Hill State lawmakers argued for more than two hours on the bill that has been four years in the making. The issue had bipartisan support, but many teetered on if this was an education issue or about immigration reform. Ultimately, the bill failed by a single vote. Several students dressed in graduation caps and gowns came to the state House to support the bill. They carried signs to represent the jobs they hope to...

I am on the phone with a humanities professor at a small, nationally revered liberal-arts college, and she is telling me about the seltzer situation in the faculty lounge. "You know, the dean said we need to get the beverages out of there." "And that's, like, a hygiene thing?" "No, it's because they're worried we're spending too much on Diet Coke and those aluminum cans of seltzer." "Oh." "And the president just replaced his hood ornament with a Fabergé egg. Our Manhattan consulting firm said it was the only way to upstage Dartmouth." OK, I made up the egg thing,...

University tuition continues to rise, but the tendency of some critics to blame the trend on overpaid professors might not be an accurate one. When university administrators in the UNC system and nationwide decide to increase tuition, they often cite the need for funds to retain faculty as a reason for the hike. Still, according to an annual report about myths of professor pay from the American Association of University Professors, faculty salaries are not the primary cause of higher student costs — cuts to state support and declining university endowments are to blame. But Jenna Robinson, president of the...

IOWA CITY, Iowa - Sen. Rand Paul called Friday for college tuition to be a tax writeoff in his first direct pitch to young voters of his presidential campaign. Paul used the power of the pocketbook, along with calls for electronic privacy and reforming the criminal justice system, to appeal to what he called the "Instagram generation," a constituency he sees as vital to his nascent presidential campaign. Paul blasted President Obama's plan for free community college, telling the crowd of a few hundred people, mostly students, that it won't work because someone has to pay for professors and facilities....

On Wednesday, National Public Radio had a spot about how some states are reviewing laws on their books that let them yank driver's or professional licenses from those who default on their student loans. To set the story up, the NPR reporter focused on the plight of Clementine Lindley, who recalls how after graduating she had to "decide whether to pay rent, buy food or make her student loan payments" because her debt was so massive. How did Lindley rack up so much debt? NPR doesn't say, but a little sleuthing shows that Lindley got her Bachelor's degree in "Liberal...

IÂ’ve written many times about the shortcomings of government schools at the K-12 level. We spend more on our kids than any other nation, yet our test scores are comparatively dismal. And one of my points, based on this very sobering chart from one of my Cato colleagues, is that AmericaÂ’s educational performance took a turn in the wrong direction when the federal government became more involved starting about 40-50 years ago. Well, the same unhappy story exists in the higher-education sector. Simply stated, thereÂ’s been an explosion of spending, much of it from Washington, yet the rate of return...

Remember those 15 people who refused to repay their federal student loans? Their “debt strike” has picked up 85 more disgruntled borrowers willing to jeopardize their financial future to pressure the government into forgiving their student loans. And the government is starting to listen. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has invited the group to Washington on Tuesday to discuss their demand for debt cancellation. Although the CFPB doesn’t have the power to grant that request, the agency’s overture shows that the strike is being taken seriously. It’s been a month since 15 former students of the failing for-profit giant Corinthian...

With all of that job creation being claimed by the Obama administration and disseminated by mainstream media outlets as signs of a sustained recovery youÂ’d think most college graduates would have no trouble keeping up with their bills. But new data released by the Department of Education tell a different story. According to the report as many as 33% of American college grads with student loan debt are now in delinquent status on their repayments. About one-third of borrowers with federal student loans owned by the U.S. Department of Education are late on their payments, according to new federal data.The...

According to the Washington Post, New York University is charging $66,000 a year in tuition.  This includes room and board but is still a fantastically expensive figure.  Columbia University is charging $63,000 a year, and even less well-known schools like Sarah Lawrence College and Harvey Mudd College are charging about $65,000 a year. Now, to be fair, these figures include room and board.  But even with room and board, these are fantastically expensive rates.  Many schools like NYU play a game, where they say that their asking tuition is $66,000, but after scholarships and grants, the average tuition is...

The headline on this op-ed piece in the Washington Post says it all: College applicant: I got in! But I can’t afford it. Was all my hard work for nothing? The author of the piece is a high-school senior in Lousiana who just got admitted to Tulane, so let’s cut her some slack here. But what does it say about the success of President Obama’s constant yammering about how college should be “free” (incrementally, of course, beginning with community college, but we’ve all seen this leftist movie before and know where it’s going)? A lot, is what: I am...

After 114 years, Sweet Briar College revealed last week that it would close after the spring 2015 semester, an abrupt announcement that shocked many in the world of academia. "This is just the beginning of the college implosion," Mark Cuban tweeted last week, after the news about Sweet Briar, an all-women's college in Virginia. Cuban, the well-known entrepreneur and billionaire investor, was not surprised by the news. For years, Cuban has warned of a "student loan bubble" created by skyrocketing tuition fueled by an endless supply of student loans. "At some point, it's going to pop," Cuban told Business Insider...

While the closing of Sweet Briar College last week caught many people in higher education by surprise, some saw it as an early sign of an inevitable college implosion. For years, entrepreneur and billionaire investor Mark Cuban has warned of a "student loan bubble" created by skyrocketing tuition and fueled by an endless supply of student loans. A radical solution to the student loan problem would be to forgive all student debt, as a viral essay by Robert Applebaum proposed six years ago. However, Cuban thinks massive student loan forgiveness would just make the bubble keep expanding. "Forgiving the debt...

City University of New York is returning thousands of dollars to about 150 immigrant students who live illegally in the U.S. and overpaid for their tuition. A student group called CUNY Dreamers told school officials late last year that many immigrant students from New York paid higher, out-of-state tuition even though they were eligible for in-state rates, a difference of about $4,000 per semester. A CUNY spokesman said administrators conducted a review of enrollments on CUNY’s 24 campuses and began the process of returning excess payments. New York is among 19 states that allow in-state tuition for immigrant students. Its...

I would like to share with you a new model of higher education—a model that, once expanded, can enhance the collective intelligence of millions of creative and motivated individuals who otherwise would be left behind. Look at the world. Pick a place and focus on it. You will find people chasing higher education. Let's meet some of them. Meet Patrick. Patrick was born in Liberia to a family with twenty children. During the civil war, he and his family were forced to flee to Nigeria. There, in spite of his situation, he graduated from high school with nearly perfect grades....

In the federal budget, just how big a hole would $22 billion be? As Michael Grunwald points out at Politico, that’s “larger than the annual budget for NASA, or that of the Interior Department and EPA combined[.]” And the shortfall is entirely due to the changes Barack Obama has made to student-loan programs — and could grow to ten times that amount over the next decade: In obscure data tables buried deep in its 2016 budget proposal, the Obama administration revealed this week that its student loan program had a $21.8 billion shortfall last year, apparently the largest ever...

Time and time again, California proves itself to be a what-not-to-do handbook for states looking to responsibly balance their budgets. This reputation was clearly on display by the University of California Board of Regents’ decision to increase the cost of tuition by 25 percent over the next five years. The increased tuition won’t be going to make improvements for students but rather will almost certainly go directly into funding for UC’s underfunded and mismanaged pension system. The University of California Retirement Plan (UCRP) is facing a major shortfall. In making sure that it is funded adequately enough to pay current...

I gather from Obama's "free" community college proposal that his plan for dealing with the Republican Congress over the next two years is to throw out ridiculously expensive ideas no one has ever heard of before, and then denounce Republicans for being naysayers. Community college is already incredibly inexpensive. The only thing that will jack up the price is making it "free." How about a big federal program to provide every American with free toilet paper? Coincidentally, that's about all most college degrees are good for these days. Obama's moronic proposal has presented the GOP with a fantastic opportunity. Since...

The short answer is “yes”. Megan McArdle makes the point : Higher education is becoming the ginseng of the policy world: a sort of all-purpose snake oil for solving any problem you’d care to name, as long as we consume enough of it. Education is a very good thing, but it is not the only good thing. An indiscriminate focus on pushing more people into the system is no cure for society’s ills–and indeed, often functions as a substitute for helping the people who are struggling in the current system. In fact (beside the fact we can’t afford “ObamaCare...

The logic behind the “free” community-college program President Obama announced last week is understandable. A high-school education once put many well-paying jobs within reach of Americans. Today, post-high-school work is increasingly necessary. So President Obama has proposed that two years of community college be free for students in most programs, accompanied by more oversight and accountability from Washington. The problems begin where they did with efforts to improve elementary and secondary education from Washington: Why is a locally provided good the concern of the federal government? And since when was America’s K–12 educational system, let alone the federal government’s attempts...