Free Republic

I am vehemently opposed to Joe Biden’s illegal assumption of the power to force taxpayers to assume the burden of student loan repayments on college tuition obligations voluntarily entered into. It’s wrong constitutionally, and it’s wrong morally to force other people to pay for services to others that only a minority receive. Besides, higher education has devolved into a brainwashing arm of the hard left and has lost all claim to be a general public benefit. The education cartel has abused the public with tuition escalating at three times the rate of general inflation for about half a century now,...

Syracuse University, a private institution in New York, is raising student tuition nearly 5 percent as it kicks off a new diversity and inclusion plan estimated to cost more than $50 million. The university will raise its full-time undergraduate tuition 4.5 percent to $58,440 for the 2022-23 academic year, according to an April 19 news release. However, the tuition hike also coincides with the launch of Syracuse’s new Diversity Equity and Inclusion plan, slated for 2021 through 2026. The plan, under its “Faculty Diversity and DEIA Curriculum Innovation” section, allocates a $50 million investment for faculty retention and diversification in...

Is it always financially worthwhile to obtain a four-year college degree? Answer: no. It depends on the return on investment (ROI). The ROI is calculated by estimating the future earnings from the undergraduate degree less the costs of obtaining that degree, including the income lost while attending college or university to get the degree. The future earnings from the degree will depend on the economic value of the degree. Some degrees have much more economic value than others.An Austin think-tank, the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP), has performed the herculean task of creating a database of the ROI...

Today marks the start of week four of the 2023 legislative session. Perhaps it is just because I am paying closer attention this year, but it really seems like the system is moving at a snail’s pace. Perhaps it is also because other states are leaving us in the dust when it comes to education reform. Governors Kim Reynolds of Iowa and Spencer Cox of Utah signed legislation last week to make money follow students instead of systems. Meanwhile, our conservative legislators are struggling to get our own school choice bill heard before a committee. What’s the holdup? Why is...

Arizona voters have approved a Republican-led law that will give in-state tuition to illegal aliens, reversing a ban first imposed in 2006. Last year, as Breitbart News reported, the Republican-majority Arizona state legislature passed a plan to put Proposition 308 on last week’s ballot for voters to decide whether they wanted to throw out the state’s ban on in-state tuition for illegal aliens. As of the last count on Monday evening, Arizona voters favored Proposition 308 by a more than 60,000 vote margin — indicating that the initiative will in fact pass and illegal aliens will now be eligible for...

It costs a jaw-dropping $85,536 a year to attend the University of Chicago as an undergraduate and live on campus, but it’s worth every penny. For that money your son, daughter, or offspring of indeterminate gender can tackle some of the real problems that are bedeviling our society today. They can take a course entitled “The Problem of Whiteness,” which is part of the university’s rollicking “Critical Race and Ethnic Studies” curriculum. Yes, $85,536 for this crude racist indoctrination.As you might expect, the whole thing is couched in gobs of pseudo-intellectual verbiage loaded with the favored campus buzzwords of the...

When it comes to President Biden’s sweeping plan to forgive thousands of dollars in federal student loans, a majority of New Yorkers support the move, according to a fresh Siena College poll. The poll found that by 56 to 33 percent, New Yorkers supported the plan, which would forgive up to $20,000 in debt for those who received Pell Grants with loans held by the Department of Education.Non-Pell Grant recipients would have $10,000 in student debt canceled.Among those polled, 29 percent think Biden’s plan goes too far, while 21 percent said it doesn’t go far enough. Thirty-nine percent said the...

As Leah Barkoukis reported this morning, President Joe Biden's declaration the COVID-19 "pandemic is over" during an interview with 60 Minutes on Sunday is causing all kinds of headaches for his administration. Joe Biden during an interview on 60Minutes says he believes the CoVid pandemic is Over. pic.twitter.com/B8CxdAJV1e— Real Mac Report (@RealMacReport) September 19, 2022But most recently President Biden used the pandemic as an excuse and justification to illegally reallocate student loan debt belonging to wealthy degree holders (and voluntarily taken out) onto the working class. "We responded aggressively to the pandemic to minimize the economic impact of the harm...

A new national poll from Convention of States Action and Trafalgar Group shows that President Joe Biden’s unconstitutional student loan forgiveness may hurt midterm candidates who support it. Nearly two-thirds of Independent likely voters join the 88.5% of Republicans who say they are less likely to vote for a candidate who supports President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. Overall, less than one-third of likely voters say support for student loan forgiveness makes them much more likely to vote for a candidate who supports it. So much for Biden’s attempt to buy votes.“We’re seeing this reflected not just in the polling...

Much has been said about President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive $10,000 to $20,000 of student loan debt. The income cap (individuals making over $125,000 per year will not be included in the plan) does little to limit the massive spending the government will incur in wiping out this debt. This is an irresponsible policy; it doesn’t accomplish anything long-term. If colleges will continue to charge exorbitant tuition rates and the federal government will continue to loan young people exorbitant amounts of money to pay those tuition rates, we will inevitably end up in the same place later.To really fix...

We’ve seen Joe Biden and the Democrats throwing a lot of desperate things out there trying to move the needle to help them in the midterms. One of those was the despicable tactic of demonizing millions of MAGA Americans. Biden did it hoping to jazz up the leftist Trump-hating base, hoping that would get them out to vote because of the “threat to democracy.” But, as I reported, that effort to juice the vote may have backfired. A new Trafalgar poll done in partnership with the Convention of States shows what a huge blunder it was. The majority of Americans...

Colleges and universities have been selling potential students a bill of goods for decades, assuring them that a college education was the ticket to economic success, and the more you paid for higher education, the bigger the payoff in increased earnings down the road. That may have been true 40 or 50 years ago. But for most students today, college has become a luxury for upper-middle class and rich families who can afford the cost of a four-year degree. It’s either paid for by daddy — who doesn’t really mind his kid majoring in journalism or environmental justice — or...

If young adults can make permanent, major changes to their bodies, they can repay the money they borrowed to go to college.On Wednesday, President Joe Biden announced plans to “forgive” $10,000-$20,000 of student loans, circumventing Congress while simultaneously violating the U.S. Constitution and federal law. Not only is this plan illegal, as the president doesn’t have the authority to spend unappropriated money, but it is downright offensive to those of us who paid off our student loans. It is even more offensive that the same people who insist that young people shouldn’t be burdened by their outstanding loan balances tend...

All honest people understand that the Democrats’ plan to pay off $10,000 in student loan debt for those earning less than $125,000 is incredibly corrupt. However, aside from the obvious vote buying, one reader, who wishes to remain anonymous, suggested to me that there’s a more nefarious purpose to all this. I thought he had a point, so I’m sharing it with you. The obvious problem with the plan is that facial corruption: Democrats are taking taxpayer money to buy votes. There are other problems I’m sure you’ve seen discussed elsewhere: This is a tax and Biden lacks constitutional authority...

President Joe Biden could announce a decision on wide-scale student loan forgiveness as soon as Wednesday, CNN is reporting. The president is reportedly leaning towards a plan to dismiss $10,000 in federal student loans for borrowers earning less than $125,000. Eligible borrowers would include those with federal Direct Loans, FFELP Loans, Perkins Loans, Parent PLUS Loans and Grad PLUS Loans. Borrowers with private loans would be excluded. The plan has not been finalized and it subject to last-minute revisions, according to the report. It is similar to earlier White House proposals, though Biden had previously backed an income cap of...

Nearly 9 out of 10 recent student debt borrowers say Joe Biden's campaign pledge to cancel at least $10,000 of college debt affected their decision-making. And a big majority think he'll do more than that. The survey results come as Biden is reportedly considering $10,000 cancellations for federal college borrowers earning under $150,000 a year.At the same time, Biden faces a decision over whether to allow student debt repayments to resume after several pandemic-era pauses, but at a time when surging inflation gives postponement advocates more ammo. Absent signing off on his fifth extension, borrowers would resume payments after August...

“Well, I guess the Communists know that the old people living in America today are not going to make the revolution. They are not the people who count. They count on the young people, and those who control the youth are the people who control the future of this country.”—Former Communist Bella V. Dodd, before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 19531/In 2010, President Obama nationalized student tuition loans by making the government the “sole provider” of government-backed college tuition loans. By doing so, Obama effectively eliminated banks as the conduit of choice for government-backed tuition-loan financing. Similarly, when Obama...

Growing disillusionment over the value of a four-year college degree has has many high school graduates and their parents rethinking whether it's the right financial decision.In a recent Gallup poll, 46% of parents said they would prefer their child pursue an alternate to a bachelor's degree - with more than one-third citing finances as an obstacle. And according to a Federal Reserve study, just 56% of adults under age 30 who have degrees say the benefits outweigh the costs, Bloomberg reports.In general, the older one is, the more value they see in the value of college - which is supported...

Five years ago, the Excelsior Scholarship became the first in the nation to cover four years of tuition without being tethered to academic performance. Still, many students who could qualify don't apply. Even though college enrollment has slid since the start of the Covid pandemic, many students still want to get a degree, and for some, free tuition programs are the only way to make higher education a reality. In 2017, the state of New York's Excelsior Scholarship made headlines when it became the first in the nation to cover four years of tuition without being tethered to academic performance....

Joe Biden is desperately casting about for a way to cancel student loan debt in order to boost his standing with younger voters and stave off a Democratic disaster at the polls. The current scuttlebutt is a plan that would forgive $10,000 in debt for borrowers who earn less than $125,000 a year.But Biden’s radical allies won’t be satisfied with only partial forgiveness of the debt. They have been insisting that Biden has the power to cancel all $1.6 trillion worth of college debt currently on the books. About five million borrowers owing $110 billion are in default, up from...