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My niece is a smart, hardworking gal who recently received her master's in architecture and is having a hard time finding a job, like many Millennials. To make matters worse, she's facing more than $93,000 in student debt. And this isn't from her bachelor's degree, but her master's degree -- despite the fact that she received it from a state university and half of the two year program was free.
Brookings Institution researchers Beth Akers and Matt Chingos set the internet in a tizzy today with some “counterintuitive” research on student debt, with the takeaway for some being that student debt is not, in fact, the burden that the media (and policymakers) would have you believe. There are some pretty big caveats to their findings.
As the White House convenes its summit on the issues facing working families this week, it’s easy to feel discouraged. The proposals topping the agenda–paid leave, flexible work, childcare–are all great ideas. The problem is they’re the same great ideas advocates have been suggesting for years—decades, even.
Stymied by the partisan gridlock, President Obama’s recent directives to bar federal contractors from discriminating against gay employees and to cut carbon pollution are bold examples of how presidents have used their executive powers to address critical issues when Congress has failed to adopt much-needed legislation.
I know the $3,750 yearly tuition I paid the Catholic University of America at Alana’s age has gone the way of six-mile walks to school in the snow. But even after inflation, the $39,200 tuition-only cost of 2014-15 is more than three times what I paid. And CUA is — sorry — not three and a half times the school it was.
Now this becomes a tale of Mark Cuban, Howard Schultz and Barack Obama.
The White House is holding a summit Monday, June 23 on working families. The summit is intended to call attention to the fact that President Obama wants to raise wages and job opportunities for working Americans, especially for working women. This is a welcome initiative, though there is a great deal that the President could do by executive order without waiting for a deadlocked Congress to act.
Once upon a time, the term “government job” was not synonymous with boondoggles, corruption or the perennial “waste, fraud and abuse.” During the New Deal, the state proudly created jobs and spent public money as a vital intervention to check the excesses of market capitalism. Today, the public is disgusted with both fiscal policy and the free market.