A number of states have laws demanding citizens produce documentary evidence of citizenship to register to vote. These laws have far-reaching implications for voter participation in our democracy.
There's little debate that college costs have risen over the past decade and that the increase has hit the wallets of families hard — especially those in the greatest need.
Reformers in Washington are looking for a few good scandals.
Watergate led to the biggest overhaul of campaign finance law in the past century. Outrage over donors sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom and Enron influence peddling helped spur the 2002 McCain-Feingold overhaul. And the Jack Abramoff affair got Congress to act quickly on lobbying and ethics reform.
Sticker price matters because sticker price inflation dictates how much the federal government spends. High sticker price is one of the main reasons the feds dole out almost $170 billion in grants, student loans, tax incentives, and work study money each year.
Once upon a time, America invested in its young people so that they could enter the world without debt. College was meant to provide opportunity and strengthen the overall economy by creating a better- educated workforce. Looking at the numbers today, I can only think that our current system has failed this generation.
"The steady erosion of state investment in public higher education over the last few decades reflects a stunning abdication of responsibility on the part of states to preserve college affordability."
Nate Silver has already dubbed the 2014 election as "the least important in years." But this year's midterms are still breaking records for at least one thing: Secret political spending.
Nestled in Part H (section 499!) in the Democrats’ laundry list of ideas is an idea that has by far the most potential to solve one of the most vexing problems in higher ed: the rising cost of college.
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.
In the wake of the Supreme Court's recent decisions in Citizens United v. FEC and McCutcheon v. FEC, this amendment is a necessary counterbalance to the deluge of money that wealthy individuals, corporations and special interests have flooded into our elections.
This week, President Obama ordered changes to the federal student loan program that could help millions of borrowers make their payments more affordable starting in December 2015.
President Obama is expected to announce an Executive Order that would extend the protections of Income-Based Repayment (or more specifically, Pay As You Earn) to student borrowers who took out loans before 2007 or stopped borrowing by 2011.
President Obama signed an executive order Monday that could extend student debt relief to an additional 5 million people — a move aimed in part at better educating young borrowers of their rights while jumpstarting a moribund debate on the issue in Congress.
As the nation’s trillion-dollar student debt continues to rise, a new analysis of public higher education’s funding finds dwindling state support is the key factor driving rising tuition costs and deepening student debt.
The media shouldn't be scaring students away from going to college, because the alternative of not going is worse. Unfortunately, our move to a debt-for-diploma system is doing a good enough job of that itself.
Put simply, how do we square that “college is worth it” from the increasing body of evidence that student debt is not necessarily good debt? The unsatisfying answer, of course, is that it depends.