Free Republic

The most striking fact about American colleges and universities over the last fifty years is how rapidly the cost of attending has risen. A good perspective on the college cost explosion is found in a November, 2017 study prepared for the Joint Economic Committee of Congress. It states, “A student working full-time over the summer of 1971 would only need to earn $2.70 per hour, at a time when the minimum wage was $1.60 an hour, to earn enough to pay for a year at a public, four-year college. Today, that student would need to earn $38.63 an hour. If...

The road to justice can sometimes be long, winding, and tedious, but we can take comfort knowing that sometimes bad things do happen deservedly to bad people. Think of the hanging of outlaws in the Old West or hot wax being poured on Dr. Phibes. Sometimes, big, dirtbag corporations run by corrupt ethical crooks get their comeuppance, or at the very least a judge rules that said corporation has to face said comeuppance in a court of law. One such trial (hopefully soon to be trials) I’m looking forward to with relish is the reckoning faced by the unbelievably slimy...

TANSTAAFL. There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. That’s the pithy way that economists convey the idea that there are always costs associated with the goods and services we consume. Some resources, if only our time, had to be expended so we could enjoy them. Despite foolish talk from politicians about giving us “free” college, higher education cannot escape costs. People must pay for all of the inputs that go into the college experience. But just how much are we paying? And what are we paying for? Those are the main questions addressed in a new study published...

The Povolos -- Victoria, Masha, Ashley, Michael and Marcus -- were awarded all tuition and fees for four years to attend Montclair State University. The Povolo quintuplets have decided they will all attend Montclair State University this fall. The university earlier this month offered the siblings -- Victoria, Masha, Ashley, Michael and Marcus -- full scholarships that cover tuition and fees. “We’re absolutely thrilled,” said Jeff Gant, director of undergraduate admissions at Montclair.The scholarship is worth about $250,000 collectively. Because of the good grades they earned at Passaic Valley High School, the quintuplets are also being admitted as Presidential...

At TEL Library we’ve taken a major step toward reducing the cost of college with the launch of our Courses-on-Demand program. Through this program, students anywhere in the U.S. can take college courses that are entirely self-paced and allow students to start anytime they desire. The all-inclusive cost of these courses is $44 per credit hour, which includes all fees and course materials. For those waxing nostalgic about the good old days when college was affordable, this is better than the good old days. Inflation-adjusted to 1970 dollars, our pricing translated to $6.68 a credit hour, and that’s without a...

Democratic contenders for the presidential nomination are talking a lot about higher education — or at least certain aspects of it: free tuition, student debt bailouts, more Pell Grants, special funding for historically black colleges and universities. In other words, “free” everything except free speech. The National Association of Scholars (NAS) just released a new tool to help track what presidential candidates are saying about higher education. We chart the top five Democratic candidates on 10 different issues, ranging from free college to affirmative action. We picked the issues that generated proposals from the most candidates. Over time, we’ll add...

ABC's Jonathan Karl recently interviewed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. Karl asked no question and did not call for a clarification when Ocasio-Cortez, presumably referring to the Mueller report, spoke about "the abundance of evidence, 10 counts of obstruction of justice, four with rock-solid evidence" against President Donald Trump. A "count" means a specific accusation of a crime. The Mueller report made no such accusation. Even worse, Karl, with not one follow-up question, allowed Ocasio-Cortez to rattle off her progressive agenda -- which includes free college tuition, government health care for all and a $15 minimum wage indexed to inflation. After...

New York state lawmakers approved a measure that aims to dole out millions in taxpayer-funded aid to “Dreamers”—who entered the country illegally—attending college. The now Democratic-controlled New York state Legislature on Wednesday passed the Dream Act, legislation that would make thousands of “Dreamers” eligible for financial aid to attend public colleges in the state. The bill, which has attracted praise from Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, would cost $27 million. The measure is “a slap in the face for all the hardworking taxpayers who play the rules and struggle for the costs of a college education,” Republican state Sen....

A Texas lawmaker filed a bill to repeal a law that allows college students, who came to the U.S. illegally, to pay in-state tuition. Right now, students are eligible for in-state tuition under the Texas DREAM Act if they’ve lived in Texas for three years, are seeking legal status and if they graduated from high school or received a GED. State Rep. Kyle Biedermann (R-Fredericksburg) says he filed the bill because taxpayers are paying for students that are not Texas residents. “We’re giving taxpayer funding to those people that came here illegally, that broke the law,” said Biedermann. “That’s just...

Democrats may be hoping to gain a midterm wave. They may be hoping even more to boot Donald J. Trump from the White House in 2020. The president’s response to the Charlottesville violence, the rolling back of the Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals, Russian collusion hysteria, the slow pace of enacting his agenda—all of these things have Democrats grinning, expect that they shouldn’t. The party’s own operatives and data crunchers have run through the numbers based on focus groups, and Democrats are still heading for the electoral ditch. They still have yet to mount an effective attack against the...

. The current outstanding student loan debt in the United States is roughly $1.3 trillion, and getting bigger by the second. The good news (for those not concerned about economic realities), Obama has just set the precedent that loans will be forgiven, the bad news, parents are now telling their kids to take out more student loans if they intend on going to college. But there is a twist. According to Bloomberg, a new survey by Discover Financial Services found that 48% of parents think their child should pay a portion (if not all) of the cost of attending college,...

Typical leftists–they want free stuff, but they don’t want to pay for it. In a poll conducted by Vox and Morning Consult during the first week in April, they found that supporters for Sen. Bernie Sanders unsurprisingly have strong support for things like free college tuition and universal health care. They register at 70+ percent in favor for both initiatives. Then, the question turns to how much are they willing to pay for Sanders' agenda. This is where support dips dramatically, especially when two in three Bernie-ites don’t want to pay more than $1,000 for a single-payer health care system....

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...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Calling for a “new college compact,” Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday will unveil a $350 billion plan aimed at making college more affordable and reducing the crushing burden of student debt. At a town hall meeting in New Hampshire, the state with the highest average student debt in the country, Clinton will propose steps to reduce the cost of four-year public schools, make two-year community colleges tuition-free and cut student loan interest rates, according to campaign aides.

Hillary Clinton, Marty O’Malley, Liz Warren, and other 2016 Democrat candidates for the presidency are apparently trying to differentiate themselves from the real-world economics of Republicans by returning to the tried-and-true method of promising to rob Peter to pay Paul, while giving the impression that YOU don’t have to worry, because, dear voter, YOU’LL never be Peter. The latest method is in capitalizing on the headlines about crippling college debt by setting "debt free college" as their goal. Now, as far as that goes, it’s a perfectly worthy goal. “Pay as you go” living has always been the responsible advice...

ONCE upon a time in America, baby boomers paid for college with the money they made from their summer jobs. Then, over the course of the next few decades, public funding for higher education was slashed. These radical cuts forced universities to raise tuition year after year, which in turn forced the millennial generation to take on crushing educational debt loads, and everyone lived unhappily ever after... In fact, public investment in higher education in America is vastly larger today, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than it was during the supposed golden age of public funding in the 1960s. Such spending has...

As I write this, the No. 1 “most read” story on the Washington Post’s website is its investigation into the college years of Scott Walker, headlined: “As Scott Walker mulls White House bid, questions linger over college exit.” Most of the time, you don’t need to read such a story to know what it’s about: for Republicans, every silly comment or stunt in their teenage years is in the public interest, and for Democrats the same investigative practice is racist, racist, racist. (Though in 2016 it will be sexist, sexist, sexist.) But there is one aspect of this story that...

If you think college tuition is expensive now, wait until it is free If you think college tuition is expensive now, wait until it is free. Two years of “free” community college sounds wonderful, even though some students who just graduated felt cheated that they did not get it “free” and, in the name of fairness and justice, retroactive reimbursement was immediately demanded. The President announced that two years of junior college will be free if “you are willing to work hard.” Was he referring to working hard to keep up stellar grades or doing community service in exchange for...

Here's a typical college scenario: Your daughter's dream job is to be an elementary school teacher and reading specialist. Yet she'll need to dive deep into debt to pursue her undergraduate degree, and borrow more if continuing to grad school. She's worried -- rightfully -- about her financial future, and she's looking for answers. How much debt might she be saddled with? How much will her college degree translate into salary once she lands a job? And what budget-squeezing sacrifices might be necessary to repay the swath of loans? Those types of questions are on the minds of countless college...

Remember when the federal government took over student loans? That power grab was part of the Democrats’ push to make college ‘affordable.’ It didn’t work because it was never really designed to work, just to make people think they were ‘doing something’ to address the issue. But failure has never stopped our liberal/progressive friends from striving ‘forward.’ When it comes to soaring college costs, as President Reagan famously said, "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Since the government isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, cost savings in higher education have to be found elsewhere....