Andrew Gillen is a Research Fellow at the Cato Institute.
The Biden administration plans to release new gainful employment regulations. The regulations would terminate federal financial aid for some programs where graduates do not earn more than high school graduates or where the students take on excessive debt, as determined by two debt-to-income tests. My previous list of pros and cons still holds, but having […]
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Choosing whether and where to attend college is the most important financial decision of a young person’s life. Yet, in general, we withhold the information that would allow students to make informed decisions. The most blatant example is hiding the cost of college. In 2018, Stephen Burd, Rachel Fishman, Laura Keane, Julie Habbert, Ben Barrett, […]
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Vocational programs have long been required to help their students secure gainful employment, but until the early 2010s, gainful employment had never been defined. The Biden administration has just released a draft of the latest Gainful Employment regulations, and, like the previous iterations, it would terminate financial aid eligibility (Pell grants, students loans, etc.) for […]
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Student loans operate very strangely in this country. A student borrows money from the federal government to pay for higher education expenses—thus, there are three parties involved (the student, the government, and the college or university). But only two of them face any risk from the loan. The student faces severe financial consequences if he […]
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While student loans are a widely acknowledged problem, one program sticks out as particularly troublesome: the Grad PLUS program. After graduate students max out their traditional student loans, which include an annual and an aggregate borrowing limit, there is no limit to how much they can borrow through the Grad PLUS program. Unsurprisingly, this has […]
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Over at the Chronicle of Higher Education, Jarrod Kelly chides the Right for pushing back on accreditation. While the headline is a bit aggressive (“The Right-Wing War on Accreditation”), authors generally don’t get to choose their headlines, and the piece itself is quite measured. While the ostensible focus of our disagreement is accreditation, I think […]
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The higher education accountability movement has seen very little progress over the years. The main success was the establishment of Cohort Default Rates, which revoked financial aid eligibility for colleges where too many students defaulted on their student loans. But this was both obscenely forgiving (a college could only lose eligibility if 30% or more […]
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Accountability is getting more and more attention in higher education. Democrats will soon release new gainful employment regulations, while Republicans are considering a range of accountability approaches, including risk-sharing that would put colleges on the hook when students can’t repay their student loans. With so many new ideas for accountability systems in the air, it […]
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Historically, I’ve been a late adopter of technology. I was one of the last people I know to get a cell phone. And I continued to pay for gas inside the gas station for years after everyone else started paying at the pump with a credit card. But recognizing my own Luddite tendencies, I try […]
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The Biden administration has released its plans to introduce a new income-driven repayment program for student loans. The proposed regulations are as bad as the early indications hinted they would be. For those just getting up to speed, a standard loan uses a fixed monthly payment and a predetermined number of payments (e.g., a car […]
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While we may have to wait until 2024 to see a Biden vs. DeSantis battle royale, we might have a preview in the skirmish over accreditation in Florida. To recap developments to date (see here for more), accreditors are private entities that have been entrusted with determining which colleges and universities are eligible for federal […]
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While it’s understandable to get riled up about the latest outrage on campus, there is some potential good news that we shouldn’t fail to notice: After decades of continuously increasing, college tuition now appears to be trending down. While the level of tuition may still be too high (decades of sustained increases will do that), […]
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President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan is currently being evaluated by the courts. While we wait on them to rule on whether Biden’s actions are legal, we should make sure not to forget about the top five underappreciated scandals that accompanied the announcement: No. 1: Even liberals object to Biden’s abuse of emergency powers Biden […]
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While President Biden’s proposed student loan forgiveness plan is justifiably getting most of the attention in the higher education policy world, he also proposed a new student loan repayment program that fundamentally undermines a definitional aspect of loans—repayment. Under this new plan, the median bachelor’s degree recipient will only owe $68 a month, regardless of […]
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The notion that states have been cutting funding for higher education, commonly referred to as state disinvestment, is widespread within academia and the media. These cuts are alleged to be responsible for much of what ails higher education, especially the rise in tuition. Consider, for example, some recent statements from education leaders: • James Kvaal, […]
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The Biden administration just announced its long-anticipated student loan forgiveness plan. The plan would forgive $10,000 for borrowers making less than $125,000 per year ($250,000 if married) and $20,000 for Pell grant recipients. On the bright side, the Biden plan could have been worse, such as wiping out all debt with no income restrictions. But […]
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In a recent interview, Richard Hanania and Gail Heriot note how the legal concept of disparate impact—that any difference in group outcomes is evidence of discrimination—essentially makes everything illegal. This, in turn, gives the government the authority to do whatever it wants by selectively choosing which cases to bring: Literally any practice you can think […]
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For years progressives have been trying to close an imaginary loophole regarding the 90-10 rule and the GI Bill. Colleges are subject to the 90-10 rule, which requires that no more than 90% of their revenue can come from federal financial aid. Meanwhile, Congress has consistently passed GI Bills, which provide funding for servicemembers and […]
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Among the debates over federal student loans, two of the most important are: 1) should student loans be used to subsidize college? and 2) are student loans subsidizing college? Should Student Loans be Used to Subsidize College? Regarding the first debate, scholars have long pointed out that there is a role for government facilitation of […]
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If you’re not familiar with higher education accreditation, you may want to get up to speed. Accreditation is rapidly shaping up to be one of the most important front lines in the never-ending battle between reformers and the establishment. The latest confrontation concerns the Biden administration’s effort to subvert recent reforms in Florida. But first, […]
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As student loan debt has grown (currently more than $1.6 trillion in federal loans), it has gotten more attention from the public and Washington. Progressives are pushing for free college and loan forgiveness. While conservatives have rightly criticized the Biden administration’s proposals, they haven’t put forward many alternatives. Unfortunately, one of the few ideas that […]
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President Joe Biden is considering a student loan forgiveness plan which would forgive $10,000 per borrower for individuals making less than $150,000 per year ($300,000 for a family). Without the income cap, this would cost $380.2 billion. It would wipe out the entire debt of those with a balance of $10,000 or less (15.2 million […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from The Problems with Student Loan Forgiveness, a new report from the Texas Public Policy Foundation that argues against universal and complete student loan forgiveness. This is the sixth in a series of six excerpts from the report. Part 6: Legal Problems With Student Loan Forgiveness The Executive […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from The Problems with Student Loan Forgiveness, a new report from the Texas Public Policy Foundation that argues against universal and complete student loan forgiveness. This is the fifth in a series of six excerpts from the report. Part 5: Political Problems With Student Loan Forgiveness There are […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from The Problems with Student Loan Forgiveness, a new report from the Texas Public Policy Foundation that argues against universal and complete student loan forgiveness. This is the fourth in a series of six excerpts from the report. Part 4: Moral Problems With Student Loan Forgiveness Student loan […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from The Problems with Student Loan Forgiveness, a new report from the Texas Public Policy Foundation that argues against universal and complete student loan forgiveness. This is the third in a series of six excerpts from the report. Part 3: Economic Problems With Student Loan Forgiveness Student loan […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from The Problems with Student Loan Forgiveness, a new report from the Texas Public Policy Foundation that argues against universal and complete student loan forgiveness. This is the second in a series of six excerpts from the report. Part 2: Educational Problems With Student Loan Forgiveness The next […]
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Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from The Problems with Student Loan Forgiveness, a new report from the Texas Public Policy Foundation that argues against universal and complete student loan forgiveness. This is the first in a series of six excerpts from the report. Part 1: Logical and Rhetorical Problems With Student Loan Forgiveness […]
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Accreditors serve as key gatekeepers in higher education. Without accreditation, a college’s students are not eligible to receive federal financial aid such as Pell grants and federal student loans. This gives accreditors a fairly unique role in allocating federal spending—these private entities decide whether taxpayer dollars will flow to a college. Given that the public […]
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The Department of Education is going to forgive an additional $6.2 billion in student loans for 100,000 students through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. This adds to the $1 billion in previously forgiven loans for 11,000 students. This shows one of the reasons why student loan forgiveness is such a bad idea. Under the […]
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