Free Republic

Ancient Sparta turned its conquered neighbors into indentured serfs -- half free, half slave. The resulting Helot underclass produced the food of the Spartan state, freeing Sparta's elite males to train for war and the duties of citizenship. Over the last few decades, we've created our modern version of these Helots -- millions of indebted young Americans with little prospect of finding permanent well-paying work, servicing their enormous college debts or reaping commensurate financial returns on their costly educations. Student-loan debts now average about $25,000 per graduating senior. But the percentage of youths 16 to 24 who are working (about...

IF INSANITY is doing the same thing again and again but expecting a different outcome, then the federal government's strategy for keeping higher education affordable is crazier than Norman Bates. For decades, American politicians have waxed passionate on the need to put college within every family's reach. To ensure that anyone who wants to go to college will be able to foot the bill, Washington has showered hundreds of billions of dollars into student aid of all kinds -- grants and loans, subsidized work-study jobs, tax credits and deductions. Today, that shower has become a monsoon. As Neal McCluskey points...

Today Rush Limbaugh aired a brilliant clip of a clueless Occupy Wall Street protester who wants people to pay for his college tuition because “that’s what he wants.” Check out the video:

Like many wealthy universities, Harvard offers only "need-based" financial aid, which means that rich parents need to pay much more than poor ones. Using the calculator at the site listed above, you can estimate the marginal income tax rate Harvard imposes. Assuming zero student assets, Harvard expects parents to contribute 10% of income up to $150K, which is $15K for parents earning $150K. Above that level, the marginal income tax is much higher. Parents earning $235K are expected to pay $52K. The marginal tax rate for income rising to $150K to $235K is (52-15)/(235-150) = 43.5% . This is of...

Public universities across the U.S. are arguing for freedom to reap more revenue and create more efficiencies to offset dwindling state dollars. One way, they say, is to raise tuition. At California University of Pennsylvania, a 158-year-old state school serving 9,400 students, enrollment is rising for all but the poorest students, which, in part, has led to a novel idea: replace the "low tuition for all" policy with a market-rate policy. University officials say students from wealthier families could afford to pay more than the average $5,804 annual tuition at the state's 14 universities. Fresh revenue from the higher tuition,...

As their state financing dwindled, four-year public universities increased their published tuition and fees almost 8 percent this year, to an average of $7,605, according to the College Board’s annual reports. When room and board are included, the average in-state student at a public university now pays $16,140 a year. At private nonprofit colleges and universities, tuition rose 4.5 percent to an average of $27,293, or $36,993 with room and board. The good news in the 2010 “Trends in College Pricing” and “Trends in Student Aid” reports is that fast-rising tuition costs have been accompanied by a huge increase in...

Colorado lawmakers this week unveiled a major overhaul of the state's college tuition program that seeks to raise an additional $300 million by requiring parents and students to pay more. Lawmakers announced the move as a way to help the state cover a projected $1.7 billion budget shortfall next fall. If approved, the measure would go into effect this November. In exchange, colleges would have to meet strict goals for graduation and employment of students or they would have to roll back tuition increases. it's not unreasonable to ask students to work 10 hours a week during the semester and...

... Across the nation, college prepaid plans are operating in the red, putting their promises to investors like Ms. Lambert in jeopardy. For now, the states still are paying tuition as they agreed. But the fine print in some state contracts gives them some wiggle room to pay out less than the promised amounts. "There's an aura of guarantee around many of these programs," said Tim Ranzetta of Student Lending Analytics. "But when you dig into it, it's often a lot less than you'd expect." Prepaid plans—a type of 529 plan where qualified educational distributions are tax free—allow families to...

I have received a number of e-mails over the years from disgruntled parents griping about the left-wing indoctrination their kids are forced to undergo at colleges and universities all over America. One minute, it seems the kids are sane, or at least as sane as one can expect of 18-year-olds, and the next thing you know they’re parroting the likes of Ward Churchill, William Ayers and Noam Chomsky, bad-mouthing America and yodeling the praises of such left-wing troglodytes as Hugo Chavez, the Castro brothers and Barack Obama. I feel their frustration. Even if the little nincompoops can’t do long division...

The admissions team at Reed College, known for its free-spirited students, learned in March that the prospective freshman class it had so carefully composed after weeks of reviewing essays, scores and recommendations was unworkable. Money was the problem. Too many of the students needed financial aid, and the college did not have enough. So the director of financial aid gave the team another task: drop more than 100 needy students before sending out acceptances, and substitute those who could pay full freight. The whole idea of excluding a student simply because of money clashed with the college’s ideals, Leslie Limper,...

CAPITAL REGION — Private liberal arts colleges, including Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs and Union College in Schenectady, are seeing a decline in admission applications and increased requests for financial aid. “It’s no surprise, looking at the economic climate,” said Robert Shorb, associate dean and director of student aid and family finance at Skidmore. Some students’ parents have lost their jobs, he said. Some families’ college investments have declined dramatically with the stock market. At the same time, the small liberal arts colleges have also lost money on their endowment investments. Skidmore’s $223 million endowment, for example, is down 23...

Saving money for retirement is hard enough. Saving money on top of that to send children to college can seem downright impossible — especially if you look at the nation’s ever-climbing tuition rates. In actual dollars during the 1977-78 school year, the price of tuition, room and board averaged about $1,900 a year at public, degree-granting institutions, and nearly $4,200 at their private counterparts. Compare that with 2007-8: Rates were estimated to be about $11,600 for public institutions and about $29,900 at private ones, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Even adjusting for inflation (in 2006-7 dollars, below),...

I read that the University of Massachusetts is raising its tuition rates by 15 percent, while Dartmouth College is raising theirs by "only" five percent. This is in a year in which the Consumer Price Index rose by only 0.1 percent, the smallest increase in over a half a century. It is more of the same old thing. Raise real tuition fees a lot. If legislatures won't let universities do it, they do it anyhow through the back door --new fees and charges. Slim down staff a tad, give small or no salary increases. But do not try to make...

Though an immigration bill didn’t make it to the full Legislature this year, the issue was debated Wednesday as senators discussed a National Guard education-related bill. Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers used the time to correct the record. Omaha Sen. Brad Ashford used the time to point out the importance immigration will have in legislative races. And Lincoln Sen. DiAnna Schimek used the time to encourage Congress to work out a humane and compassionate solution for the immigrant issue. Twenty-eight students — illegal immigrants because their parents brought them illegally to the U.S. — attend University of Nebraska campuses and pay...

CINCINNATI (Map, News) - Two college students say the high cost of tuition led them to rob a bank. The men pleaded guilty to two charges of aggravated robbery and six charges of kidnapping. They face 20 years in prison when sentenced Dec. 27. Andrew Butler, 20, a student at the University of Toledo, told Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Steve Martin on Monday that tuition increases outpaced his scholarships and financial aid. Christopher Avery, 22, a student at the University of Cincinnati, said he couldn't pay for summer classes after an internship at a grocery store fell through. "I...

For today's lesson in bias by labeling, class, turn to today's "Annapolis Notebook" in the March 28 Washington Post. It's there that reporter Lisa Rein skewed her portrayal of a debate over tuition for illegal aliens in favor of the liberal Democrats in the Maryland General Assembly, with everything from watering down the label "illegal immigrant" to painting Republicans as angry partisans and Democrats as righteously angry protecters of the underprivileged. While the headline reads: "House Heats Up Over Bill to Give Illegal Immigrants In-State Tuition," Rein herself chooses the term "undocumented immigrants," even though, well, they apparently must have...

Democrats have long attacked President Bush for the historic tax cuts he ushered through Congress during his first term and have promised to reverse at least some of them. But among their top priorities when they take over Congress next month is passing a permanent tax cut of their own. Included in their "Six for '06" platform that they say helped them win majorities in the House and Senate, Democrats promised to: "Make college tuition deductible from taxes, permanently." Their tax cut promise is neither an election-year gimmick, Democrats say, nor a reversal in their long-standing opposition to Mr. Bush's...

After retrieving control of Congress for the first time in a dozen years, Democrats will set out to redefine the domestic agenda through policies they say would address the economic needs of middle- and working-class Americans. Striving for a few quick legislative victories in January and longer-term goals whose details -- and viability -- are not yet certain, Democratic lawmakers want to shift the dialogue on Capitol Hill to workers' pay, college tuition, health-care costs, retirees' income and other issues that touch ordinary families. Their success is not assured. Democrats will hold a tenuous 51 to 49 majority in the...

How many ways can you think of to make money off of students? Well, here's another. I read a report the other day where an independent college counselor in Oregon charged up to $36,000 per student to just help him get into college -- no guarantee! Holy cow! I am definitely in the wrong business. Well, I might be in the right business (education), but I am doing the wrong thing. No matter that the price of college tuition, not to mention room and board and flights back and forth for the holidays and dorm furnishings and cars and and...

The Great American College Tuition Rip-Off By Paul Streitz Mar 3, 2005, 17:56 “How am I going to pay for my kid’s education?” is a nerve-wracking concern to most middle-class parents. “Why do college tuitions keep going up?” they ask. College tuitions have risen above the rate of inflation for twenty-years, not because costs have gone up, but because higher education has found that parents will continually pay more for their children’s education. If you are charging a dollar a doughnut at your store, and you double the price, and the line does not go down, you keep raising the...