Free Republic

The new American way of life... For a guy and his girlfriend with two kids, all you have to do is follow these proven steps: 1. Don't marry her! 2. Always use your mom's address to get your mail. 3. The guy buys a house. 4. The guy rents out the house to his girlfriend with his two kids. 5. Section 8 will pay $900 a month for a 3 bedroom home. 6. Girlfriend signs up for Obamacare, so the guy doesn't have to pay for family insurance. 7. Girlfriend gets to go to college for free for being a...

Back in the summer, it seemed that the Republican/conservative vision for higher education reform was building momentum. A House GOP bill called the PROSPER Act was on the verge of moving toward passage and education secretary Betsy DeVos was implementing regulatory changes meant to undo some Obama-era policies such as the “Gainful Employment” rule and aggressive Title IX mandates. Then, the landscape of higher education policy was dramatically changed in the 2018 midterm elections with the House of Representatives going to the Democrats. Politicians with a completely different approach to higher ed will now have a loud voice. The Republican/conservative...

College affordability is a hot political topic these days, with President Obama pushing to make two-year community colleges free for all Americans. People want college to be affordable both to raise future productivity and to address inequality issues by equalizing access to higher education as much as possible. Yet as important as this issue it, it has also been one fraught with misguided policy and is a perfect example of the law of unintended consequences. New research by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows exactly how bad the flaws in our current government policies are. David...

Six democrats are seeking to grant Pell Grants to inmates in prison. They claim that it will make them desirable applicants to companies when they get out of prison. Hey liberals, believe it or not companies aren’t clamoring for graduates of Stu’s University online even if they haven’t knocked off a bank or raped small children. So, why would these cons be employable? Of course, if they were to take computer classes they might stop mugging senior citizens and join the growing identity theft industry. It’s also important to know that there is not an endless pool of money in...

Pell grants are a lifeline for many American students, costing billions of taxpayer dollars, but what do we have to show for it? A policy paper by the American Enterprise Institute’s Kevin James points out that Pell grants do not help students looking to transition to a career field. James noted that “almost one-third of Pell Grant dollars are going to students pursuing career education,” or in other words, students who are going into technical fields and blue-collar jobs. Overall, as a different study from the New America Foundation noted, 42% of Pell Grant recipients are seeking a two-year associate’s...

Academics tend to circle the wagons when you suggest that Pell grant increases lead to tuition hikes. “There has been research on this that shows that Pell grants have not led to higher tuition,” Judith Scott-Clayton, of Columbia alleged in a forum at the National Press Club Monday. Scott-Clayton is an assistant professor of economics and education at Teacher’s College at Columbia. She spoke at a forum sponsored by the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. On the same panel, Gail Mellow, president of LaGuardia Community College, claimed that, “One of the reasons tuition keeps going up has been a...

Sorry, college students. President Obama has cut your access to Pell Grants by 33%; he just forgot to mention it before Election Day. During the recent campaign, President Obama claimed credit for increasing funding to the Pell Grant program, which provides college funds, free from repayment, to millions of students. However, an email sent out Tuesday to some Dallas college students is revealing a detail the President forgot to mention: the time a student can receive a Pell Grant has been cut, by as much as three years. With Pell Grants for the fall semester now dispersed, colleges are informing...

Sorry, college students. President Obama has cut your access to Pell Grants by 33%; he just forgot to mention it before Election Day.

A mother of four who was laid off in 2008, Danielle Torno had planned on turning her life around next year with the help of a Cal State East Bay business degree. Instead, the 36-year-old San Jose resident will be searching for another solution because of a little-noticed congressional decision to reduce or eliminate Pell Grants for hundreds of thousands of the poorest college students. The changes take effect July 1, and students like Torno will bear the brunt of the reforms, which are expected to save $11 billion over 10 years. Among those who will lose Pell Grants in...

The White House says President Barack Obama plans to offer millions of student loan borrowers the ability to lower their payments and consolidate their loans. Obama on Wednesday will use his executive authority to accelerate a measure passed by Congress that reduces the repayment cap on student loans from 15 percent of discretionary income to 10 percent. The White House wants it to go into effect in 2012, instead of 2014. About 1.6 million borrowers could be affected. Also, the 5.8 million borrowers who have loans from both the Family Education Loan Program and a direct loan from the government...

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...

Apparently, the president is having such a hard time of it politically that he is even losing faith in part of his base—academia. In a recent campus appearance, his handlers evidently felt the need to salt the crowd with a few ringers. The event took place just a few blocks up the street from the White House, in the heart of Obama country. “George Washington University students were dismayed Tuesday that they never got to see the man they helped elect president in 2008,” Ben Giles reported in The Washington Examiner on October 13, 2010. “President Obama, whose election was...

How Does Obama's Health Care Bill Affect Your Student Aid?Federal loans and grants for college change when the bill becomes a law on Tuesday. By Alexandria Bradshaw Mar 30 2010 2:16 PM EDT President Obama signed the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act on Tuesday morning (March 30), after the bill passed in the House last Thursday. Setting aside the complicated health care reform the law tackles, the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA) included within it is intended to make paying for and completing college more feasible. According to the White House, SAFRA is expected to save taxpayers...

One fast-growing American industry has become a conspicuous beneficiary of the recession: for-profit colleges and trade schools. At institutions that train students for careers in areas like health care, computers and food service, enrollments are soaring as people anxious about weak job prospects borrow aggressively to pay tuition that can exceed $30,000 a year. But the profits have come at substantial taxpayer expense while often delivering dubious benefits to students, according to academics and advocates for greater oversight of financial aid. Critics say many schools exaggerate the value of their degree programs, selling young people on dreams of middle-class wages...

MADISON, Wis. - James Sturtz is not your ordinary college student struggling to pay tuition. The 48-year-old rapist is one of Iowa's most dangerous sex offenders, locked up in a state-run treatment center for fear he will attack again if released. Yet he has received thousands of dollars in federal aid to take college courses through the mail. Across the nation, dozens of sexual predators have been taking higher education classes at taxpayer expense while confined by the courts to treatment centers. Critics say they are exploiting a loophole to receive Pell Grants, the nation's premier financial aid program for...

WASHINGTON - President Bush, in his last State of the Union message Monday night, will call anew for patience on Iraq, propose a $300 million initiative for children trapped in struggling inner-city schools and suggest termination of scores of federal programs. Previewing some highlights of Bush's primetime speech to Congress, a high-ranking White House official also said the president will announce plans to have the United States host the next hemispheric summit in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans. The administration earlier Monday said that Bush was to use his nationally broadcast address to attack the so-called "earmarks," special projects lawmakers often insert...

On Friday, September 7, within hours of each other, the House and Senate passed the biggest infusion of money into the Pell Grant program ever. As part of H.R. 2669, the College Cost Reduction Act, Congress enacted roughly $20 billion in cuts to student loan lender subsidies - and turned them into Pell Grant increases, student loan interest rate cuts, a loan forgiveness program, a teacher grant, other student benefits, and a little bit of deficit reduction. (For details, see "Key Provisions in H.R. 2669," below.) The big winner in the bill is the Pell Grant program. The Pell Grant...

Anticipating Hurricane Rita (still in the Gulf of Mexico, but a Category 5 'cane with winds at 165 MPH), President Bush declared a state of emergency for Texas and Louisiana, mobilizing federal assistance. He spoke at the Republican Jewish Coalitions Anniversary Luncheon in Washington, and also met with R and D Senate leaders to discuss the upcoming O'Connor USSC vacancy (as he did before nominating Judge Roberts). Bush met with the speaker of Iraq's Transitional National Assembly, Hajim al-Hassani, in the Oval Office. Welcome to Sanity Island!

It really matters where the jobs that Americans lose go. That's what CAFTA is about. It's not about destroying textile jobs in the Carolinas. They're history, anyway--if not this year, then in five years. CAFTA is about keeping work in our hemisphere that would otherwise go to China. The Central American Free Trade Agreement would cut tariffs on commerce among the United States, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. The Dominican Republic, which is in the Caribbean, also wants to join. Though President Bush is battling hard for the accord, some observers declare it all but dead. The...