Free Republic

Universities in Germany are now free of tuition fees for all including international students. Lower Saxony became the last of seven German states to abolish their tuition fees, which were already extremely low. German universities had been charging for tuition since 2006. The measure proved unpopular, and German states began dropping them one by one. It is now all gone throughout the country, even for foreigners. This means that now, both domestic and international undergraduate students at public universities in Germany are able to study in Germany for free, with just a small fee to cover administration -- usually between...

Arizona State University ranked number one on the US News & World Report's 2015 Most Innovative Schools list, besting second-place Stanford for that award. It seems the university is putting that innovation into action with a recent announcement that it will be the first school to offer its full-time MBA program completely free of charge, as first reported by Poets & Quants. Though it would come at a financial loss — more than $20 million annually — the school believes it is an important and necessary investment that will grow an entrepreneurial community of graduates who otherwise wouldn't be able...

The left plans to pitch to middle-class families and young adults who want a college degree to make college free. Conservatives have a great chance to counterpunch on this issue. Academia, like all other institutions under the totalitarian thumb of the left, is ridiculously expensive and filled with all sorts of pet bureaucracies. The approach of the left is not to cut the costs of college and to make it as easy and cheap as possible, but rather to subsidize whatever academicians' bray that they need without any serious questioning. Higher education is, of course, heavily dependent upon government appropriation,...

One program at Arizona State University’s business school has a brand-new price tag: $0. Starting next fall, the W. P. Carey School of Business plans to offer full scholarships to all incoming full-time M.B.A. students. The goal is to attract students with nontraditional backgrounds and career aims, and kick off a new business curriculum, leaders say. At the heart of the decision to eliminate tuition was school leaders’ desire to change the complexion of its M.B.A. class, said Carey’s dean, Amy Hillman. Carey’s full-time M.B.A. student body is “a fairly traditional M.B.A. class,” in Ms. Hillman’s words, with the bulk...

As a purely economic matter, the principle of diminishing returns applies to education. Little Moonbeam almost certainly will be financially better off in life with her B.A. in women’s studies (the fact that one has an undergraduate degree matters more than what subject the degree is in), but the M.F.A. in creative writing on top of that probably will not pay comparable dividends, and the inevitable doctorate in social work is likely to prove a zero-return investment. We’re talking purely financial concerns here: Of course an intellectually curious man who makes a fine living as a specialist welder would be...

Americans are divided on whether or not to use tax money to pay tuition at public schools, but the sentiment behind Hillary's college plan is popular  One of the major points of debate in the Democratic primary has been the growing cost of college tuition, even at state schools. The average in-state tuition was just over $9,000 in 2015, a 225% increase since 1985. Hillary Clinton announced a $350bn plan to increased federal funding for grants, states and colleges to make sure no student or family has to borrow money to pay for in-state tuition. Her main opponent, Bernie Sanders,...

Billionaire businessman Mark Cuban says Hillary Clinton's plan to curb growing student-loan debt will actually make attending college more expensive. “[Hillary’s plan] stands a better chance of increasing the amount of money students owe than decreasing it,” Cuban said on his Cyber Dust app on Friday. “Just as easy money led to the real estate bubble a few years ago, the easier it is to borrow money for college the easier it is for colleges to raise tuition. Tuition keeps going up because no matter how high they raise it, students can still borrow more to pay for it,” Cuban...

He could probably also offer her some pointers on tech jargon as well. Or, the proper cloth for wiping data. But on this subject, Cuban essentially says, It’s the bubble, stupid. “[Hillary’s plan] stands a better chance of increasing the amount of money students owe than decreasing it,” Cuban said on his Cyber Dust app on Friday.“Just as easy money led to the real estate bubble a few years ago, the easier it is to borrow money for college the easier it is for colleges to raise tuition. Tuition keeps going up because no matter how high they raise...

Millennials. Some think weÂ’re lazy, others think our unorthodox career paths are how we game the system. Among our biggest pet peeves are a lack of upward mobility and a rigid, one-size-fits-all prescription for finding success. The worst? When established keepers of the status quo try to force the future they think is best, with little opportunity to escape the allegedly good intentions of an overzealous government. Just what has our expansive government done for young Americans, and what will it do to us as we get older? Forty million of us pursued higher education and are on the hook...

Our health care system and our system of higher education have a lot more in common than you might think. As I explained in a previous column at Forbes, in both systems a third-party payer pays a good portion of the bill, leaving consumers and producers with perverse incentives to take advantage of it. The financing of both systems is dysfunctional. There is much waste and inefficiency. And low-income families are the least well served. Here is what I wrote two years ago: We spend about twice as much as other developed countries as a fraction of national output. Yet...

On Monday, we got some color on Hillary Clinton’s $350 billion plan to make college more affordable. Students and former students across the country owe more than $1.2 trillion in college loans, and as Bill Ackman so eloquently put it earlier this year, "there’s no way they’re going to pay it back." The fact that America’s student loan bubble is the focus of what may well end up being one of Clinton’s most expensive policy proposals speaks volumes about the urgency of the problem. Of course there are some other folks who understand how quickly the situation is deteriorating. Chief...

Perhaps Hillary Clinton has a different definition of “affordable” than most of us. A plan that spends $350 billion can be defined as many things, but affordable is not on that list. Still, Hillary’s plan raises the stakes among a demographic that Democrats cannot afford to lose: Hillary Rodham Clinton will announce a $350 billion plan Monday to make college affordable and relieve the burden of student debt for millions of Americans, drawing on popular tenets of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. …At the heart of the plan, dubbed the New College Compact, is an incentive program...

At an event in Oakland, Calif., on Monday, where he accepted the endorsement of the National Nurses United, Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, said he would fight as president to enact legislation making all public colleges and university in the country free.

Student-loan debt is a big problem. The latest Federal Reserve data shows there is nearly $1.3 trillion in outstanding student-loan debt in the US. In late 2009 and early 2010, student-loan debt passed auto loans, credit cards, and home-equity lines of credit as the biggest debt burden Americans face. According to Debt.org, "The latest studies say that 70% of college graduates leave school with student-loan debt that in 2014 averaged $33,000." Realizing graduates were struggling to repay their heavy debt burdens, the government announced a few plans that would allow student debt to be forgiven over time. The loan-forgiveness repayment...

Presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (D) of Vermont is planning to unveil a bill that, if passed, will make tuition at four-year public colleges and universities free. In addition to eliminating college tuition at public colleges, Mr. Sanders' bill would expand work-study programs, and seeks to lower student debt and student loan rates – a system modeled after those of European countries such as Germany, Sweden, and Denmark. Earlier this year, Sanders called for free tuition for college freshman and sophomores, and recently other liberal politicians have also taken up the cause of making college more affordable for American students...

Hillary Clinton on Monday rolled out a sweeping higher education plan — a $350 billion proposal that would help millions pay for college and reduce interest rates for people with student loans. The plan, which would change the way a large swath of Americans pay for college, borrows ideas from the left and the right and even expands a program enacted by her husband. It includes ideas already being discussed in Congress and for which groundwork has been laid by the Obama administration. The proposal, dubbed the New College Compact, is unlikely to win over many in the GOP because...

Quickly on the heels of the release “Love Gov” -- the Independent Institute’s satirical videos series on meddlesome government -- a new study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York concludes that federal aid to college students raises the cost of higher education. Duh! Many observers have been puzzled by the relentless increase in tuitions charged by private and public schools alike -- at a growth rate greater than that of any component of the consumer price index, including health care. Some blame the price increases on the greed of campus administrators. But that assessment is an unfair...

Standardized tests such as the ACT and SAT are no longer required by George Washington University. In its weekly e-mail newsletter, the school proudly announced this shift in its admissions process. The move is effective August 1st, 2015, meaning that “those applying to GW for the 2016-17 school year will have the option to include” the test scores in their application or not to. What is the reasoning behind this? The school claimed the following: “High school coursework and grades will continue to be the most important factors in GW’s holistic review process, along with a student’s writing skills, recommendations,...

College affordability is a hot political topic these days, with President Obama pushing to make two-year community colleges free for all Americans. People want college to be affordable both to raise future productivity and to address inequality issues by equalizing access to higher education as much as possible. Yet as important as this issue it, it has also been one fraught with misguided policy and is a perfect example of the law of unintended consequences. New research by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows exactly how bad the flaws in our current government policies are. David...

A Man behind bars in San Fransico facing murder charges by many are wondering how he was still in the U-S after he'd already been deported five times, but never left the country. San Francisco is a 'Sanctuary City', meaning local law enforcement is not obligated to report illegal immigrants to federal authorities. Immigration Attorney Nera Shefer says Miami is also a sanctuary city, and something like this could possibly happen in our back yard.