Free Republic

In early April, my son Dan arrived home from the University of Wisconsin’s Admitted Students Day holding a Wisconsin windshield sticker—and immediately affixed it to our car above his older brother’s University of North Carolina sticker, with a smile I can only describe as vengeful younger-brother joy. He, too, was going away to a prestigious public university in a storied college town and with a cult-like alumni following. A couple days earlier I’d photographed him, lanky and beaming, at Bascom Hill, and posted to Facebook: “On Wisconsin! Dan’s a Badger.” Congratulations poured in: 58 “Likes” and 17 comments. He performed...

Monday, May 02, 2016 Taxpayer-funded financial aid for immigrant college tuition heads to IL House SPRINGFIELD - Two Republican state senators - Christine Radogno and Chris Nybo - crossed the aisle last week to support the Democrats' effort to provide taxpayer-funded financial assistance for undocumented immigrant students. The measure would add Illinois to the five states that grant immigrant students financial aid for college education regardless of their legal status. Already, Illinois is one of 18 states that allows any status immigrants to qualify for lower in-state tuition and set up private college funds. SB 2196 easily passed the Illinois...

Total U.S. student debt now topples credit card debt, surpassing the $1 trillion threshold in 2012. Each year a new class of students graduates from college; however, many of those graduates do not find jobs that can adequately allow them to pay back the hefty loans. (For related reading, see: Student Debt Passes $1 Trillion: Is College Worth the Investment?) A new report by the Education Department highlights the student debt epidemic. Not only is more than $200 billion in student debt owed to the federal government, several borrowers are woefully behind on making payments. The recent statement from the...

The Fight over Financial Aid to Illegal Alien Students Continues Congress Supports Judicial Watch Taxpayer Lawsuit against DC Government What Does the FBI Have on the Obama Gang? The Fight over Financial Aid to Illegal Alien Students Continues Too often, politicians at every level will ignore the clear language of a law if it doesn’t let them do as they wish. This is evident on two fronts this week: in California and here in the District of Columbia. First California. You will recall that we filed a taxpayer lawsuit in August 2014 challenging a decision by the University of...

Over 40 percent of those in student loan programs have stopped making payments. Many borrowers have never made any payments.The department of education (a useless body that I would eliminate in one second if given the chance), cannot figure out why this is happening.“We obviously have not cracked that nut but we want to keep working on it,” said Ted Mitchell, the Education Department’s under secretary.The Wall Street Journal reports More Than 40% of Student Borrowers Aren’t Making Payments. More than 40% of Americans who borrowed from the government’s main student-loan program aren’t making payments or are behind on...

Following SCOTUS' decision not to hear a case making it easier to get rid of student debt, and The White House's push to ease student loan 'burdens', WSJ reports a federal judge ruled law-school graduates who file for bankruptcy protection can cancel the debt they racked up while studying for the bar exam. In an opinion filed Thursday, Judge Carla Craig of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Brooklyn, N.Y., said bar-exam loan debt is “a product of an arm’s-length agreement on commercial terms” and doesn’t fall into the category of student loans that stick with a borrower who files...

Hillary and Bernie want to pay for Donald's children's college education??

Everything you need to know about college financial woes Students must know how their tuition dollars are being spent by Neida Mbuia Joao, Online Op/Ed Editor It’s no secret that colleges have been having financial problems since the 2008 recession, which led to cuts in college funding. The cost of college is skyrocketing--the average cost of attendance at a four-year public university has quadrupled over the past 35 years--and more and more students are paying for school out of pocket. Today’s prospective students have been spooked with discussion of the possibly mythical, but in some ways very real “college loan...

The public is steadily losing confidence in undergraduate education, given that we hear constantly about how poorly educated are today's graduates and how few well-paying jobs await them. The cost of college is a national scandal. Collective student loan debt in America is about $1.2 trillion. Campus political correctness is now daily news. How could higher education be held accountable and thereby be reformed? Just as expensive new roofs are not supposed to leak, $100,000 educations should not leave students unprepared for the real world upon graduation. Rain and snow calibrate the effectiveness of a roofer's work, but how does...

Most student loans in the United States are guaranteed by the federal government. The main difference between private loans and the guaranteed loans is that the former usually come with a higher interest rate: Students generally don't seek these out until they cannot access guaranteed loans any longer. However, neither type can normally be discharged via bankruptcy. The problem with government-backed loans is that the guarantee creates a moral hazard of the same sort that bedeviled mortgage markets before and during the Great Recession. A college can treat a guaranteed student loan as a sure thing with no attendant obligations:...

Bernie Sanders is running for president of the United States proclaiming that under his presidency, all Americans will have the opportunity to attend public college for free. There's only one fly in the ointment of this free college proposal: today in Illinois, half of the public college and university tuition goes not toward education, but toward pensions for college professors who no longer work. So in order for Sanders to make college free, someone, other than students, has to pick up the huge cost of the retired professors' pensions. He has said nothing about eliminating this cost by forcing public...

Young voters should be very cautious in accepting Bernie Sanders' idea that college should be free. Anybody who thinks this socialist-spun fantasy is a responsible plan should look at the rising student loan debt. It is now at $1.3 trillion and is stifling the finances of young people who want to get married, buy a house, buy a car, or pursue any other financial goals. Socialism is a millstone around the necks of America's middle class and poor. Anyone who disagrees with this should look at how the cost of a college education has risen much faster than wages. This...

U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson announced Thursday he had filed a bill to make tuition free and restructure student loans for students at public colleges and universities. Grayson, an Orlando Democrat running for Florida's U.S. Senate seat, modeled his House Resolution 4385, introduced last week, after a bill introduced in the U.S. Senate last year by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is running for president. The would have the U.S. Department of Education award grants to states to allow them to eliminate tuition and other required fees at state colleges and universities. The bill was referred to the House Committee on...

Collegians everywhere are asking tough questions: Why is our tuition so high? Where are our jobs? Can't you see your words hurt me, you dumb piece of sh*t? Approximately 2 minutes. Written and performed by Remy. Video and graphics by Austin Bragg. Music tracks by Ben Karlstrom. Go to https://reason.com/reasontv/2015/12/2... for downloadable versions and subscribe to ReasonTV's YouTube Channel to receive notifications when new material goes live. LYRICS: We're the students united and nothing can tamp us! we're taking our message to all parts of campus! The administration's who we're trying to find we want to know why our tuition's...

A new study from the prestigious and scrupulously non-political National Bureau of Economic Research (which designates the beginning and end of recessions) blames student loan subsidies for nearly all of the tuition increases that have caused college education to become so expensive as to financially cripple families and indebted students.  Professor Alex Tabarrock explains the highly technical paper at the Foundation for Economic Education: Grey Gordon and Aaron Hedlund create a sophisticated model of the college market and find that a large fraction of the increase in tuition can be explained by increases in subsidies. (snip) Remarkably, so much...

Because no one is able to co-sign her student loans, Ashley Fleming, a 24-year-old college senior with one more semester left, may not be able to graduate. With close to $100,000 in student loans, and no longer allowed to take another leave of absence to work, Fleming has resorted to crowdfunding her tuition and set up a GoFundMe page to ask for help.

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...