Women make up almost half of all workers in America and working mothers are the primary breadwinners in 40 percent of the nation’s families, so economic equality would make an immense difference for families and the economy as a whole.
Hillary Clinton just released a bold plan to return the United States to debt-free public college for future students and relieve the burden for existing borrowers.
Treating these issues as mutually exclusive obscures part of why student debt is a major issue for so many, and what debt-free college would hope to achieve.
Is it a problem when the Supreme Court is out of step with public opinion? While in many cases the answer is no, when it comes to the question of money and politics and the financing of campaigns and elections, its counter-majoritarianism is a threat to democracy.
Common retail practices perpetuate racial inequality, fostering occupational segregation, low pay, unstable schedules, and involuntary part-time work that disproportionately harm people of color in the retail workforce.
We’ve allowed the price of college and its attendant debt to rise well beyond the point where it is actually helpful in getting people through college.
The most important fact about higher education is that only a minority of people go to college. That fact would change if college was affordable for more people.
Credit checks are one of many barriers faced by Black job seekers; and the implicit biases of employers have proved hard to legislate. That's why New York City just joined other cities and states in banning credit checks.
Today, Demos President Heather McGhee joined Mayor De Blasio and other progressive leaders and activists in the unveiling of a new initiative to make income inequality a central issue of the 2016 election cycle.
In the case of for-profits, not only has the government been unable to properly force institutions to account for their behavior, but it has been unable to stop providing the majority of money that keeps these colleges standing in the first place.
Policies like this would incent states to return to an era when college could be funded through a summer job, part-time employment, and maybe modest savings when available, for the largest and most diverse generation of students in our history.
Today, President Obama announced a proposal to make two years of community college tuition-free. It’s a big deal. But it would be just as powerful a signal if we promised students a debt-free system of public higher education, one that could be financed entirely through part-time or summer work and modest savings.
While Corinthian and its campuses may downsize or disappear completely, we should be concerned the students who attended its campuses and are currently in no man’s land.