Free Republic

Bad news: Tax Day is just one month away. But the U.S. Department of Treasury just announced a rare gift for taxpayers: A dose of sanity on college loans. Today, the U.S. Department of Education and the Treasury Department signed an agreement that helps wind down the education agency, moves more responsibilities over college loans to Treasury, and simplifies the college lending process. This is the 10th interagency agreement between the Education Department and other federal agencies. These agreements follow the White House executive order issued one year ago this week, calling for the end of the Education Department. And...

ransomnote: Elon's DOGE decentralized and are now embedded throughout the gov. agencies. The DOGE referenced below is an agency established prior to Elon's DOGE.https://x.com/USDS/status/2036128942550110443 U.S. DOGE Service@USDSOver $1 BILLION in federal student aid fraud has been stopped since January 2025.This is what was uncovered: 🧵U.S. DOGE Service@USDS·43mNearly $90 million in fraudulent aid had already been disbursed.More than $30 million went to individuals who were deceased.More than $40 million went to bots posing as students.U.S. DOGE Service@USDS·43mFraudsters used AI-generated identities and stolen personal information to create applications that appeared legitimate.These were fake students enrolling to access real money.U.S. DOGE Service@USDS·43mUnder the...

Some college programs whose graduates earn less than workers with only a high school diploma could lose access to federal student loans under the Republicans' "big, beautiful bill" act, a change that could impact about 40,000 U.S. college students, according to a recent analysis. About 2% of U.S. associate and bachelor's degree-granting programs are at risk under the new provision, called "do no harm," which takes effect in July, according to research from the HEA Group, a higher-education research firm. The provision, part of the GOP tax and spending law's overhaul of student loans, requires programs to show that graduates...

One of my consistent themes is that in the post-Christian West, sexual pleasure and hedonism have been elevated to the highest human good. Human beings are driven to ask, "What is the meaning of life," and when God exits stage left, what usually replaces Him is "pleasure." That's natural, of course, since pleasure by its nature is self-reinforcing. "If it feels good, do it" is hardly revolutionary, despite what the hippies said. Without religion, human beings struggle to come up with reasons to deny our darkest desires without appealing to moral standards that are generally rooted in religion, or at...

The Trump administration is moving to dismantle the federal student loan repayment plan known as SAVE, the last remnant of the Biden-era effort to provide large-scale student debt relief. The U.S. Department of Education announced on Dec. 9 that it had reached a proposed settlement with Missouri and six other Republican-led states that sued to block the SAVE plan. The plan still needs approval from the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Missouri’s Eastern Division. The states argued that the Biden administration exceeded its authority when it created SAVE in 2023, a program that offered millions of borrowers...

For most Americans, a U.S. lawmaker with onerous student loan debt pushing for debt forgiveness would be viewed as a conflict of interest. For at least one U.S. representative, it’s apparently a non-issue — and the American Accountability Foundation is livid about it. According to the Daily Wire, Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar has been accused by the watchdog group over a number of issues. In a scathing letter sent to House Speaker Mike Johnson, American Accountability Foundation President Thomas Jones outed Omar’s dubious finances — and “bully” reputation. “We are writing today to share serious concerns about abuse of...

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) should garnish leftist Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) taxpayer-funded salary to keep her up to date on her student loan payments, a watchdog said Thursday. Omar has fallen behind on her student loan payments and has attempted to “bully” federal officials over her debts, the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) alleged in a Thursday letter to Johnson. In his letter, AAF President Tom Jones asked Johnson to impound Omar’s Congressional salary to pay her student loans.

The U.S. Department of Education recently announced a reorganization of its Federal Student Aid (FSA) ombudsman’s office into a broader “Office of Consumer Education and Ombudsman.” The aim is twofold: to provide clearer, more proactive information to prospective borrowers and their families before they sign promissory notes and to issue a new “common manual” for loan servicing and collections that standardizes practices across vendors. At first glance, the reform seems sensible. After all, with federal student-loan debt at $1.8 trillion and millions of borrowers delinquent or in default, something must change. Yet a closer look reveals that, while better information...

The Trump administration has agreed to cancel student debt under programs it had partially blocked, reopening a path to student loan forgiveness for millions of borrowers. The outcome is the result of an agreement reached on Friday between the U.S. Department of Education and the American Federation of Teachers, a union. In the agreement, the Trump administration said it will again process student loan forgiveness for eligible borrowers in two income-driven repayment plans — the original Income-Contingent Repayment plan and the Pay as You Earn plan — as long as those programs remain in effect. President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful...

The Los Angeles Film School is caught up in a scandal over its alleged efforts to trick students into believing that its graduates do extraordinarily well in the Hollywood job market. The accusation comes from two former executives of the school, wherein no doubt there is the plot outline for a noir-ish movie about double- and triple-crosses in the shadows of Sunset Boulevard. Happily the Los Angeles Film School sits at 6363 Sunset Boulevard, and it is a private, for-profit entity, just like a movie studio or a casino. I admit that the troubles on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams...

It is sadly humorous to me, but not surprising, that Elizabeth Guevara, writing for Investopedia, can only seem to offer one solution for young people considering college, now that there is a cap on available federal student loans. From a new article via Yahoo Finance: New Student Loan Limits May Force More Borrowers to Take Out Private LoansThe ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill’ will restrict the amount of federal student loans available to college students next year. Students may have to take out riskier private loans to cover the rest of their schooling. The average medical graduate student will not be...

When Dreams Become Debt: The Moral Failure of Our Student Loan SystemBy The Hermit At 18, you can’t legally rent a car. You can’t buy a drink. In some states, you can’t even rent an apartment without a co-signer. But you can sign your name to $100,000 or more in student loans—debt that you may spend the rest of your life trying to repay, and that can never be erased through bankruptcy. That is not just a legal loophole. It is a moral failure. Each year, thousands of young people graduate high school with dreams of changing the world, fueled...

Last month, a Republican Congress and President Trump achieved, if that is the word, a massive budget-reconciliation bill. As is more and more common, a Congress averse to accountability for particular votes crammed the measure full of many agenda items that the majority and the president wanted but chose to vote up or down on them as a package. Several provisions are relevant to American higher education. They involve the student-loan program, in which the federal government provides both subsidized and unsubsidized loans to both graduate and undergraduate students. Federal grants to needy students, e.g. Pell grants, are only modestly...

Less than half of student loan borrowers have been making their payments on $1.6 trillion of debt as they struggle to afford housing and groceries – and some are letting the bills pile up as a form of protest. Only 38% of the 42.7 million borrowers nationwide are in repayment and current following five years of leniency measures from the US government following the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Education said in April. While most borrowers have loans that are less than $40,000, about 3.6 million Americans owe more than $100,000 each in federal loans totaling $656.7 billion – or...

Australia's parliament on Thursday (July 31) passed a law to cut student loans by 20 per cent, wiping more than A$16 billion (S$13.37 billion) in debt for three million people, and fulfilling a key election promise to help mitigate the rising cost of living. The law is the first passed by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's centre-left Labour Party since being re-elected in May with one of the country's largest-ever majorities. "We promised cutting student debt would be the first thing we did back in parliament — and that's exactly what we've done," Albanese said in a statement. "Getting an education...

Millions of Americans rely on Social Security payments to make ends meet, and with June 2025 approaching, many are asking: When will checks arrive — and is anything changing? The good news is that the payment calendar remains consistent, but there are some new developments retirees and disability beneficiaries should be aware of this month.

Jason Collier, a special education teacher in Virginia, often needs to wait until payday to fill up the gas tank of his car — and in the meantime hopes he doesn’t run out. “Money is tight when you’re a teacher,” Collier, 46, said. Now he’s afraid that the U.S. Department of Education will soon garnish up to 15% of his wages because he’s behind on his student debt payments. Collier said he hasn’t been able to meet his monthly bill for years, while juggling the expenses of raising two children and medical expenses from a cancer diagnosis. If his paycheck...

Aubrey Bertram was starting to imagine her life without student debt. Bertram, a staff attorney at Wild Montana, a nonprofit that works on land conservation in the state, had just around two and a half years left of payments before her $247,804 federal student loan balance would be excused under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. Bertram took out her loans in law school knowing that she’d work in public service and pursue PSLF. “That was the only way taking on this debt made any sense,” Bertram said. Millions of other student loan holders are in the same frustrating limbo...

Last week we shared some charts on the utter failure and folly of federal intervention in education for K-12.An even bigger failure has been the $1.5 trillion student loan boondoggle. As even more federal dollars have flowed into higher education in grants and (largely forgivable) loans. This is the result:We got a lot of praise and criticism from readers for our call to impose an excise tax on university tax-free endowments above $1 billion. But what is clear is that almost none of these treasure chests of wealth are being used to make college more affordable. Shameful.

A Connecticut student who graduated with honors in June is now suing her former high school, claiming she can't read or write and is failing college as a result of her alma mater's poor curriculum. Aleysha Ortiz was born in Puerto Rico and moved with her family to Hartford, Connecticut, when she was 5 years old. She graduated through the school program despite reading at a kindergarten or first grade level as a sixth grader, according to reporting by CNN. During her last month at Hartford Public High School, after she disclosed she was attending the University of Connecticut in...