Free Republic

It seems odd that a tax bill purporting to boost economic growth would take resources away from the institutions most vital to promoting it. But that’s just what the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, which has passed the House and is heading to a vote in the Senate, does. The legislation takes the unprecedented step of taxing the income of certain private universities—specifically, it imposes a 1.4 percent tax on net endowment income for universities with endowments larger than $250,000 per full-time student. Some commenters have applauded the tax, as if it would rectify everything they consider amiss with higher...

Four floors above a dull cinder-block lobby in a nondescript building at the Ohio State University, the doors of a slow-moving elevator open on an unexpectedly futuristic 10,000-square-foot laboratory bristling with technology. It’s a reveal reminiscent of a James Bond movie. In fact, the researchers who run this year-old, $750,000 lab at OSU’s Spine Research Institute resort often to Hollywood comparisons. Thin beams of blue light shoot from 36 of the same kind of infrared motion cameras used to create lifelike characters for films like Avatar. In this case, the researchers are studying the movements of a volunteer fitted with...

Oberlin College is looking at a $5 million deficit heading into the 2017–18 academic year due to an unexpected drop in admissions. This not only strains budgets for the upcoming fiscal year, but also points toward a much larger budgetary issue that has been brewing under the surface for years. Newly-elected Chair of the Board of Trustees Chris Canavan, OC ’84, announced the news in an email to faculty and staff June 14. The email, leaked to the Review by anonymous sources, was sent just a few weeks before Canavan officially took office, replacing six-year board member Clyde McGregor, OC...

Matt McGrath, a spokesman for Mayor Rahm Emanuel, confirmed the city will take responsibility for the $279 million itself, even though it has its own gap of nearly $200 million, including the cost of hiring new police. "I'm sure we will" come up with those funds, he said. But "no details" are available today.

Twelve years after finishing Harvard’s graduate theater program, Katierose Donohue still pays almost as much in student loans each month — about $650 — as for her share of the rent in Los Angeles. She recently stopped hosting her monthly sketch comedy show, “Ma’am,” because she didn’t always break even on her $200 budget. She’s now working side jobs as a dog walker and a social media copywriter, after past gigs serving at Starbucks and handing out free cigarettes for Camel. She’s never missed a loan payment, but there’s no end in sight: She borrowed nearly $75,000 to attend the...

There is no such thing as free college tuition. While it may be free for the fortunate few who get a free college education, somebody pays for it, somebody always pays. And if you are wondering who that somebody is, all you have to do is look in the mirror. So, it would be refreshing if free-stuff politicians, like Republican Gov. Charlie Baker and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, a Democrat -- the mix-and-match couple of Massachusetts politics -- actually took the time to thank the people who make their free-stuff giveaways possible. W

The Manchester suicide bomber used taxpayer-funded student loans and benefits to bankroll the terror plot, police believe. Salman Abedi is understood to have received thousands of pounds in state funding in the run up to Monday’s atrocity even while he was overseas receiving bomb-making training. Police are investigating Abedi’s finances, including how he paid for frequent trips to Libya where he is thought to have been taught to make bombs at a jihadist training camp.

On Thursday’s broadcast of “The Laura Ingraham Show,” Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said, “I think that Congress, and the people who appropriate the money, we should think about whether or not we should be sending money to universities that only have one set of speech.” When asked if he thought the “federal government, Donald Trump” could “impound” funds that would go a place like UC-Berkeley, Rand answered, “I think if it were a liberal president, and they were shutting down speech, they could probably do it. I don’t think that — I don’t think impounding funds is probably going to...

Even “free” isn’t good enough for liberals. New York State’s newly passed 2018 budget included a provision that will pay for the tuition of residents who attend public colleges in the state, building on some of the ideas promoted by Sen. Bernie Sanders during the campaign. The liberal media praised the government handout and found progressives who still considered it insufficient. Slate senior business and economics correspondent Jordan Weissmann called the new program “pretty lame,” and immediately focused on the lefties “trashing” the plan. “In the eyes of free-college advocates, however, the program leaves a lot to be desired. Which...

“I used to tell my students that free speech is like an apple, and everybody wants to just take one bite out of it,” a first-term Democratic lawmaker said at a congressional hearing on campus free speech Tuesday. They would say things like “‘I’m okay with free speech except for sexist speech, except for racist speech,’” according to Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a former professor of constitutional law at American University.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., were set to introduce the College for All Act on Capitol Hill Monday afternoon, in an effort to make higher education a realistic and affordable opportunity for the entirety of U.S. citizens, regardless of income or demographic. The legislation includes a joint-bill in the House which would be introduced Wednesday by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., according to a statement provided to International Business Times.

President Trump’s budget "blueprint" for the U. S. Department of Education recommends a 13 percent decrease in spending for the agency, but provides few details on how he will reach that goal. Nevertheless, the details that the Trump Administration does provide have already drawn the ire of the education establishment. The blueprint promises to preserve and protect special education and historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Meanwhile, the blueprint claims the new administration "eliminates or reduces over 20 categorical programs that do not address national needs, duplicate other programs, or are more appropriately supported with State, local, or private funds,...

One of the good aspects of federalism is that it allows states to go their own way. As Justice Louis Brandeis put it, they can be “laboratories of democracy.” Unfortunately, that often means that interest groups will capture state legislatures and have their political allies push through foolish legislation that will harm most of the state’s residents while benefiting just a few – mainly their members. (That, incidentally, was true in the case that inspired Brandeis’ observation, New State Ice v. Liebmann. Fortunately, the majority ruled against Oklahoma’s scheme for cartelizing the ice business.) Two states, New York and Rhode...

One of the Obama administration’s signature efforts in education, which pumped billions of federal dollars into overhauling the nation’s worst schools, failed to produce meaningful results, according to a federal analysis. Test scores, graduation rates and college enrollment were no different in schools that received money through the School Improvement Grants program — the largest federal investment ever targeted to failing schools — than in schools that did not.

A university think tank just published a list of recommendations for paying for college. Perhaps not too surprisingly, they mostly involve increasing taxpayer-funded government subsidies of higher education. To its credit, the Miller Center at the University of Virginia acknowledges that the economy is worse than the U. S. government claims it is. "Total unemployed, people who want to work but are discouraged from looking, and people who are working part time because they cannot find a full-time job peaked in 2010 but remains at 9.8 percent," the executive summary of "Investing in the Future: Sharing Responsibility for Higher Education...

GOP lawmakers in Wisconsin are reportedly threatening to block additional state funding unless a new course at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, called “The Problem of Whiteness” is canceled. State Rep. Dave Murphy told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel he has told his staff to pore over university course offerings to make sure “they’re legit.” “We are adding to the polarization of the races in our state,” Murphy told the newspaper about the course. Murphy planned to push for more funding for the UW system in the next state budget, but said he would rethink that support if the university chose to...

We sat down across the table from each other and I saw the two pieces of paper: my college bills created by my father. Dad slid the first one across the table, calmly stating this would be the amount I’d owe if I went to College A. Then he slid the second paper across explaining and this is what I’d need to pay for College B. The first bill said $80,000. The second said $0. Sounds like a no-brainer – but keep in mind I was a 17-year-old who fantasized about a very specific type of college experience. I immediately...

This might be an idea whose time has come: Nearly two-thirds of Americans are in favor of free college for everyone, and about three-quarters think at least some people should be eligible for free college, a new survey shows. As the labor market increasingly benefits the better educated, and as college education and earnings potential become more tightly linked, people are coming around to an idea that seemed radical until very recently. Vermont senator Bernie Sanders touted the idea as a central plank of his primary platform, and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton recently announced her own version, which includes a...

State and federal funding for Michigan’s public schools will reach record levels in the coming school year. The school budget adopted by the Legislature in June will be the first to appropriate more than $14 billion for K-12 education. Also, for the first time, the state’s share will exceed $12 billion, with the rest being federal money. Total state funding will go up from $11.96 billion in the just-completed school year to $12.34 billion in the coming year. Overall state and federal funding will increase from $13.73 billion in 2015-16 to $14.16 billion in 2016-17. The funding increases are happening...

Who knew that the Trump campaign would be getting involved in higher education policy this year? Sam Clovis, a tenured economics professor and Trump campaign co-chair, recently noted that their objectives include getting the government out of student lending, requiring colleges to share in student loan risk, and discouraging borrowing by liberal arts majors. Clovis told Inside Ed that the mere mention of these policy proposals has sent some Washington graybeards into a swivet, and "he expects some higher education leaders to react the same way when Trump outlines these ideas during the fall campaign." Some of the ideas under...