Free Republic

... Student loans are a growing fact of American life, topping $1.6 trillion in outstanding balances this year. Loans can be valuable — if students are able to pay them back. But every year, one million people default on their student loans for the first time. Often, it’s because they didn’t graduate, and so lacked the diploma needed to get a well-paying job. Last year, 231 four-year colleges graduated less than 25 percent of their first-time-in-college, full-time students within eight years of enrollment. An additional 615 colleges reported rates below 50 percent. ... The proposed new version of the Higher...

Provision tells schools to grade students on subjects, not ideology Measure aims to shield campus conservatives By Kaitlin Bell, Globe Correspondent | August 8, 2005 WASHINGTON -- Congress is taking the first steps toward pressuring colleges to maintain ideological balance in the classroom, a move that supporters insist is needed to protect conservative students from being graded down by liberal professors. Alerts A resolution attached to the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which has passed the House Education and the Workforce Committee and is expected to be taken up by the full House in September, tells colleges to grade...

Congress is back to business in Washington. That business includes H.R.3077, the International Studies in Higher Education Act, which the House of Representatives passed unanimously last autumn. Now the bill is in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), chaired by Senator Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican. The bill, it will be recalled, would establish an International Advisory Board for the Title VI program, which subsidizes foreign area studies in U.S. universities. The board would advise the Department of Education and the Congress on how Title VI might best meet national needs. I've written a great...

<p>Americans, it seems, have never been better educated. Between 1970 and 2000, students in institutions of higher learning increased from about 8.5 million to 15.3 million.</p> <p>Likewise, from 1971 to 2001, the percentage of 25- to 29-year olds in the United States holding at least a bachelor's degree rose 71 percent. So why, as Congress prepares to reauthorize the federal law governing higher education, are policymakers so unhappy?</p>

Last Thursday, June 19, I testified at a contentious hearing of the House Subcommittee on Select Education. The hearing was convened to examine charges of bias leveled against programs of international education funded under Title VI of the Higher Education Act. Title VI-funded programs support the academic study of the Middle East, and other areas of the world. (You can read my testimony here and you can view the hearings on video by going here. Note that the first two of the five witnesses were not involved in the controversy. You can safely skip their testimony, if desired.) Having laid...

Congress Weighs Anti-U.S. Biases At Key Colleges: Columbia, NYU Cited in Testimony New York Sun, June 20-22, 2003 (Front page) By Timothy Starks - Staff Reporter of the Sun WASHINGTON -A House subcommittee yesterday held a public hearing to investigate whether anti-American views pervade federally funded international-studies programs on college campuses -- including Columbia and New York University -- and to get ideas for what, if anything, should be done about it. . The hearing came as Congress moves to renew the Higher Education Act, and as a key group of Senate Republicans considers whether Congress should intervene in an...

CNSNews.com) - Do America's colleges and universities need congressional oversight to produce well-educated adults? Some in Congress think so. The upshot could be standardized tests and reporting requirements. The Higher Education Act, an omnibus bill that funnels $80 billion a year to institutions of higher learning, is due for reauthorization this year - a time in which state governments have been forced to scale back or make cuts. The federal bill has sparked a Tuesday hearing by the House Education and Workforce Committee on what to do about perceived shortcomings related to "accountability and quality." "The horror stories you're hearing...