Free Republic

Sen. Chuck Schumer pressed President Biden on Friday to use executive action to wipe out up to $50,000 in federal student loan debt per borrower, centering veterans and service members in his latest push. Flanked by a group of local veterans at Hunter College on the Upper East Side, the Senate majority leader said that too many college graduates — including combat veterans who risked their lives overseas — are shackled with crushing debt that plays an outsized role in their life decisions.

Sens. Mitt Romney (R-UT) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) introduced a bill to forgive student debt. The Earn to Learn Act establishes a matched savings program for “low-income” college students. “The funds can be used to pay for tuition, books, and other education-related expenses that might otherwise prevent them from attending,” according to the Arizona Republic.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s (D) administration issued a coronavirus-related “code of conduct” for student athletes this week. The document, which requires a student’s signature, comes from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), the agency that took over issuing virus orders after Whitmer’s executive orders were ruled unconstitutional last October.

<p>In a sparkling silver dress, the homecoming queen at J.M. Tate High School in Cantonment, Fla., stood on the football field on a brisk evening in late October to accept her crown.</p><p>But among the students, whispers had already begun spreading about her victory. The homecoming queen had bragged for years about abusing the access her mother had to student records as an assistant principal in the same school system, witnesses later told investigators.</p>

Progressives denounced President Joe Biden's refusal to support an effort to cancel $50,000 in student loan debts for individuals on Wednesday. Biden said that he "will not make that happen" when confronted with a demand to back the effort during Tuesday's CNN town hall event, reasoning that he is in favor of some forgiveness for those who went to public schools but does not support eliminating debt for "people who have gone to Harvard and Yale." **SNIP** Schumer and Warren reintroduced a Senate resolution that urges Biden to back the plan to cancel $50,000 of debt on February 4, after...

The city’s homeless student population dipped slightly last year — but advocates warn that the numbers may be skewed due to the coronavirus and could soon skyrocket. According to Advocates for Children of New York, 111,000 children were identified as homeless during the 2019-2020 academic year — a dip of 2.2 percent from the prior term. Of those, about 32,700 lived in homeless shelters while roughly 73,000 were “doubled-up” in temporary housing situations with friends or family, according to ACNY.

The question of whether the government should cancel the $1.6 trillion in student debt held by 43 million American adults drifted out of the political debate after the strongest advocates for the idea, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, left the race for the presidential nomination. It's back. That's because President-elect Joe Biden has endorsed canceling at least $10,000 in federally held loans per borrower as a COVID-19 relief measure (Democrats in Congress want to raise the figure to $50,000). Biden also proposes easing payment terms for most borrowers and taking other steps to cut the financial burden for low-income...

Student loan debt continues to surge despite falling college enrollment. In Q3, student loan balances rose by $23 billion from the second quarter, according to the latest Federal Reserve data. Forty-five million Americans now owe $1.7 trillion in student loan debt. Total outstanding student loan balances have surged by $54 billion year-on-year. Enrollment in colleges and universities dropped by over 231,000 students to a total of 17.97 million between 2018 and 2019. The drop in enrollment between those two years continued a trend we’ve seen since university enrollment peaked in 2011. That year, 20.14 million students were enrolled in colleges...

Hunter Biden got a five-year gig starting in 2001 worth at least half a million dollars with credit card company MBNA Corporation when his-then U.S. senator father, Joe, was pushing for passage of bankruptcy legislation that ended up benefiting his son’s employer. After it became law in 2005, the year that Hunter’s work for MBNA ended, the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act made it difficult for Americans to get rid of credit card and student aid debt when declaring bankruptcy. The bill pushed by now Democrat presidential nominee Biden ultimately helped the MBNA Corporation, one of the largest...

A new book paints a sobering picture of the future for young fans of socialism. Socialism is all the rage among young Americans these days. Not the kind of socialism that has never worked anywhere in history. Not the kind that drove Venezuela from South America’s most prosperous economy into a failed state in a mere two decades. Not the kind that wreaked essentially the same havoc upon once-thriving Cuba. Not those real-world examples, but the new-and-improved, democratic socialism, which, as MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle recently assured viewers, is “a lot different” from those other forms of socialism. Those young Americans...

A Democrat bureaucrat finally said what we all have known to be the truth: the Wuhan virus limitations that Democrat politicians and bureaucrats have imposed on Americans will go away after the election because that was the plan all along. As 2019 ended, the Democrats knew that Trump was cruising to re-election. He'd kept his base because he kept his promises about the wall, trade deals, the military, abortion, and our Second Amendment rights. Best of all, he'd supercharged the economy with tax and regulation cuts. The surging economy enticed other Americans who had not voted for Trump in 2016...

So much has been said or written about whether or not school children should be returning to on-site classes during the fall. Many voices on the right say that children's propensity for contracting the virus and having any lingering ill-effects is rather small. Voices on the left, well, who can be sure what they're saying? Some have health concerns, but most seem to favor anything that will disrupt the nation and potentially cause harm to the Trump Administration.  Underexplored is the effect of children staying home, staring at screens, incurring a lack of physical activity, and becoming ensconced in confined...

Subject: Solution to Student Debt Problem. Dear Mr. President, Young Americans have been encouraged to "go to college" and "get a degree" so they can get a good job. Unfortunately for many universities have become debt traps. They entice students and their parents with resort level amenities and tales of high paying jobs for graduates but deliver miseducation steeped in Marxism, discourage independent thought and reasoning, and deliver years and years of debt. Universities continue to raise their fees as the quality of their programs diminish. I believe the massive overhead of student debt is an existential threat to our...

A tudent at Texas A&M University who reported that racist notes had been left on his car windshield is responsible for the act, police say. KBTX-TV reported that in June, Texas A&M senior Isaih Martin alerted the university police when he allegedly discovered handwritten messages reading “All lives matter” and “You don’t belong here,” along with a third listing the N-word, on his vehicle, which he had parked at an apartment complex on the school’s property. Martin posted a photo of the notes to a Twitter account that has since been made private. According to KBTX, the university responded to...

MANHATTAN, Kan. -- Some Kansas State athletes were among about 100 people who protested this weekend over an insensitive tweet by a student about the death of George Floyd. Those attending the rally in Manhattan, Kansas, on Saturday said the university administration's promise to launch initiatives to address racial injustice at the school did not go far enough, according to The Wichita Eagle. "We need to create better policies that punish students that think it's OK to say these kinds of things," soccer player Emily Crain said. "I think what [protest organizers] said today was really important. It doesn't stop...

A number of elite American universities are finding themselves in hot water for their miserly behavior in response to the coronavirus. Harvard University is taking well-deserved heat for laying off its food service workers while sitting on a $40 billion endowment. Yale University, too, has been twisting in the wind; when New Haven mayor Justin Elicker asked the university to provide temporary housing to the city’s firefighters and police officers, the university initially refused. Then, after taking a public relations and social media beating, Yale relented, grudgingly agreeing to allow city officials to stay in the university’s vacant dormitory housing....

**SNIP** It’s a dilemma more American retirees can relate to: While most borrowers are 18 to 39 years old, people over 60 are the fastest-growing segment of the population with student loan debt, according to a report by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In all, more than 2.8 million Americans over 60 are contending with student debt, a number that has quadrupled from 700,000 in 2005, according to the bureau. The cost is swelling, too: Between 2012 and 2017, for those age 60 and older, the average amount of student loan debt almost doubled, ballooning to $23,500 from $12,100. The...

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg launched his campaign for president by spending hundreds of millions of dollars on advertisements to boost his poll numbers. Yesterday, he released a policy proposal to address the cost of higher education. Unsurprisingly, Bloomberg would not cancel student debt or make all public colleges free (as Bernie Sanders proposes). Instead, he would place all student debtors in an income-driven repayment plan so that payments are taken directly from borrowers’ paychecks. This plan is a neoliberal technocrat’s wet dream. It would treat student debtors as isolated individuals who must make payments tailored to their specific situations and according...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) assured to MSNBC that her campaign is still viable following an abysmal performance in the New Hampshire Democratic primary on Tuesday. Warren came in at fourth place. While talking to MSNBC and later posting to her Twitter account, Warren said a "broke" college student told her she only had $6.00 left in her bank account and how she donated half to "keep you in this fight."Warren said, "I tell you, there are so many people who are in this fight for the right reasons. A young girl came up to me tonight and said, “I’m a...

If Joe Biden were a 12 year old child, I’d think he had oppositional defiant disorder, because he seems unable to react calmly to any question that confronts him or which he doesn’t like. Biden has had a succession of confrontations with voters or media where he’s been short or nasty with them. He was at it again over the weekend in New Hampshire when questioned by a 21 year old female student, Madison Moore. After a New Hampshire voter asks @JoeBiden why they should trust he can turn his campaign around, he asks if she’s ever been to a...