Free Republic

Yesterday afternoon, Joe Biden visited Wisconsin and announced a new student loan bailout program, “a proposal that would cancel at least some debt” for more than 30 million borrowers.Then, last night, Alexandria Ocasion-Cortez joined Stephen Colbert on the Late Show to discuss the move, applauding Biden’s gift of “hope” for college graduates who will now have the opportunity to… “travel abroad” on trips they would have been otherwise unable to afford if they were held to the original stipulations of the loan.By passing the debt onto people who didn’t incur it—er, I mean, by implementing loan “forgiveness,” Biden is buying...

A bill making its way through the California legislature could, if approved, pave the way for free college tuition for black students and other perceived marginalized communities.ACA-7 passed the state Assembly in September and sits before the Democrat-controlled Senate. If approved there, it would be put before voters this November.The bill would effectively allow the governor to circumvent the state’s longstanding ban on racial preferences first passed by a majority of voters in 1996 with Proposition 209 and reaffirmed in a 2020 referendum.The measure would allow the governor to use the state’s coffers to fund research-based or culturally specific programs...

The Biden administration's latest plan to "cancel" student loan debt extends to those struggling to repay loans due to financial "hardship." The proposal was devised under the Education Department’s existing rulemaking powers after the Supreme Court struck down Biden’s original student loan bailout plan. A number of factors are set forth in the new proposal to determine hardship, “such as a borrower’s total student loan balance and required payments relative to household income, and whether a borrower has high-cost burdens for essential expenses like healthcare or childcare,” the press release states.The current regulatory process builds on the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts...

For all his talk about wanting to get the border crisis under control, Joe Biden is still holding out fresh goody bags for the illegals. Sure, California is offering them free health care and New York is offering them free $1,000 debit cards handed out on the honor system that they'll only be used for food and baby supplies. But what better than for Joe Biden to top them by offering free college to illegals, too? That's what this looks like, with this measure preparing the groundwork for it: According to the New York Sun:The Department of Education could soon...

I graduated from college in the 1980s. I took my bachelor’s degree in 2.5 years by taking overloads—up to 22 credits--every semester, and full loads every summer and interim session, as well as a number of correspondence courses from another university when I had to have a class that wasn’t offered when I needed it. At that state college, my education cost a bit less than $10,000. I was an adult, paying my own freight, and needed to get back into the workforce as quickly as possible. I took out no student loans. Tuition then was a fraction of current...

The College Fix has done a series of articles recently estimating the number of administrators at various colleges compared to the number of students. The numbers are pretty surprising.The University of Virginia employs one full-time administrator for every three undergraduates at the school, according to an analysis conducted by The College Fix…During the 2013-14 school year, there were 291 full-time administrators and support staff employees per 1,000 undergrads, and in 2021-22, the most recent year for which data are available, there were 318 full-time administrators and support staff employees per 1,000 undergrads.Meanwhile, the number of full-time educators per 1,000 undergraduates...

For a long time now, the debate has raged as to whether it’s worth going to college anymore. The libertarian view on this question has typically been along the lines of… if people are foolish enough to waste money on worthless degrees, the world will soon enough teach them another lesson. While valid, that view ran aground on the Democrat vote-buying scheme to insulate those with useless degrees from the consequences of their poor choices and indebtedness, with our tax money. The cynical motives behind this ploy aside, I very much doubt many students enroll in college with the intention...

SACRAMENTO — Agustin Guzman spends hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic and crosses an international border just to get to his college classes. But it’s worth it. Though he’s a resident of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, he pays the same tuition as a student four miles away from Laredo, Texas, thanks to a long-standing state law. “At some point, I stopped believing I could go to college,” said Agustin, 24, a senior at Texas A&M International University. “But now, I tell people that I cross every day — that I do three hours on the bridge just to get a college education.” Soon,...

Ah, here we go. Just like we thought would happened. Almost like we wrote the script ourselves. And all the excuses the Biden administration put together for absolutely forgiving student loan debt coming to life in one irresponsible package. Of course, when you’ve already got a get-out-of-credit-report-jail-free card handed to you by Crusty Claus and his gang of thieving education elves, whut? You worry? Aw, hell to the nah. 🚩Red flag in student loan payments: 40% missed their payments in October this year, a stark jump from 26% in 2019. An overlooked warning of economic stress? pic.twitter.com/NqpofkJN0y— Michael Burry Stock...

Nearly 5.5 million federal student loan borrowers have enrolled in what the Biden administration calls "the most generous" repayment option ever offered, federal officials said on Wednesday.The repayment plan, dubbed the Saving on Valuable Education (SAVE) plan, went into effect in August as part of President Joe Biden's regulatory effort to dramatically reduce monthly obligations for student borrowers who aren't earning very much, with many borrowers seeing their bills shrink to practically nothing.According to the latest update from the U.S. Department of Education, about 2.9 million of the SAVE plan's current enrollees have incomes that are low enough that they...

Three days. After years of not having to pay a dime, the bill came due again for student loans as of this past Sunday. Federal student loan borrowers will need to start making payments again this month after a three-year-plus pause due to the pandemic.You should expect a bill that lays out how much you have to pay each month at least 21 days before your due date. It’s likely that most borrowers have received their bill already but if you have not, visit your loan servicer account. Interest started accruing again in September.Not three days later? The old grifter...

Research shows that quality early childcare offers a wide range of important benefits. A relationship with a “consistent, caring adult” promotes “better academic grades, healthier behaviors, more positive peer interactions and an increased ability to cope with stress,” according to Prevent Child Abuse America. But childcare costs are soaring.This presents a problem for parents, and it’s one that rivals another big cost at the other end of a child’s educational years: college. In fact, according to NetCredit’s research, childcare actually costs more than college in 28 out of 50 states.To determine this, we analyzed the cost of childcare compared to...

A group of Georgia Republicans, working with two Democrats, are looking to pass legislation that would give in-state college tuition to illegal aliens enrolled in former President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Georgia State Reps. Kasey Carpenter (R), Dale Washburn (R), Bill Werkheiser (R), and Penny Houston (R) are sponsoring HB 131 to open in-state college and university tuition rates to about 15,000 DACA illegal aliens.

Breaking from over a decade of traditionally not raising tuition for its students, Cal State leaders on Thursday released a proposal that would start annual increases in fall 2024. They say it’s the only way to make up a shortfall between operating costs and revenues.

The NAACP is “disappointed’ that the Biden Administration is ending the pause on student loan repayments. Isn’t that just too bad?“The resolution of the debt ceiling crisis is one we wholeheartedly welcomed and we appreciate all that went into debt ceiling negotiations. However, we are disappointed that the needs of Black communities have suffered from the negotiated agreement that will erode economic progress for Black Americans,” Wisdom Cole, the NAACP’s national director of youth and college, and Derrick Johnson, the group’s president, say in the letter.“It is disappointing that narrowing the racial wealth gap was not given a higher priority,”...

In the small print detailing the end of the debt ceiling melodrama which, as we explained, is a farce as it boosts inflation-adjusted spending contrary to Republican promises, there was some actual news: the great student loan boondoggle is about to come to a screeching halt, after a three year "emergency pause" which redirected tens of billions in dollars away from mandatory student loan repayment to other forms of discretionary spending.According to Goldman, the agreement announced on Saturday between uniparty leaders Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy titled hilariously the “Fiscal Responsibility Act”, prohibits the Biden Administration from extending the pause...

Governor DeSantis’ state continues to succeed in education The latest U.S. News & World Report concluded that Florida is the best state for higher education. The rankings look at “the share of citizens in each state holding college degrees, as well as college graduation rates, the cost of in-state tuition and fees, and the burden of debt that college graduates carry,” according to the publication. The publication also ranked Florida high in 2-year college graduation rate, 4-year college graduation rate and for its students graduating with minimal debt.

The Supreme Court just handed thousands of student loan borrowers a victory. The nation's highest court ruled on Thursday in favor of $6 billion in student debt relief for 200,000 borrowers — a result of a settlement from a years-long lawsuit now known as Sweet v. Cardona. The lawsuit was first filed in 2019 under former President Donald Trump on behalf of borrowers with stalled borrower-defense claims, or claims that borrowers can file if they believe they were defrauded by the school they attended. If approved, their debt would be wiped out.President Joe Biden's Education Department agreed to a settlement...

A majority of Americans now believe that the cost of a college degree is not justified, marking a shocking decline in support towards a traditional aspect of the American dream.According to a recent poll by the Wall Street Journal and NORC, a nonpartisan research organization at the University of Chicago, 56 percent of Americans consider pursuing a four-year college degree to be a risky investment, while 42 percent still believe in the value of such a qualification.Skepticism is highest among those aged 18 to 13, while those with college degrees have similarly experienced a significant decline in their confidence, indicating...

A recent study from the National Student Clearinghouse revealed that undergraduate college enrollment dropped 8% from 2019 to 2022, and this decline is even after the resumption of in-person classes.According to a study by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce college dropouts, earn 75 percent less compared with those who get bachelor’s degrees.Experts fear that fewer college graduates could worsen labor shortages in sectors such as health care and information technology.There are many possible reasons for this decline in college enrollments.According to the most recent quarterly tally by the Federal Reserve, student loan borrowers in the United States...