“I’m going to get in trouble for saying this, [but] it’s arguable that the president may have the executive power to forgive up to $50,000 in student debt,” Biden told the Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty. “Well, I think that’s pretty questionable. I’m unsure of that. I’d be unlikely to do that.” … With the status of Congress uncertain and the possibility that it will remain divided if Democrats fall short in the runoffs for Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats next month, student-debt cancellation has emerged as a policy approach that the incoming administration could use to provide some relief to borrowers without Congress.
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by Jillian Berman, Market Watch.
Posted: December 24th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
The implications for higher education of Cardona’s nomination are not immediately clear. His lack of an agenda or longtime experience in the academy will do nothing to ease the anticipation about the biggest question facing Biden on higher education in the short term: whether he will take action to unilaterally forgive tens of thousands of dollars in student-loan debt for millions of borrowers, as some progressive Democrats have urged. Wesley Whistle, senior adviser for policy and strategy at New America, said he would be glad to see someone at the Education Department who understands the “types of colleges that most people attend.”
Posted: December 22nd, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
The transfer report highlights two enrollment disparities that have repeatedly emerged in the various studies the Center has released this fall. First, is the disproportionate declines in the number of Black and Hispanics students, who not only are enrolling less often than other students overall, but who are also showing less mobility in their attendance patterns. In contrast, more Asian students are transferring into public and nonprofit four-year institutions than they were pre-pandemic. The second notable pattern is the substantial enrollment declines experienced at community colleges compared to their four-year counterparts.
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by Michael T. Nietzel, Forbes.
Posted: December 21st, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
While the latest legislation will provide more money than the March package did, the amount is just a fraction of the $120 billion that higher-education associations have sought in recent months. Since last spring, colleges have shed more than half a million jobs — the largest decline in the higher-education work force since the federal government began collecting such data… Another disappointment for some was the removal of a provision to extend the pause on student-loan repayment until April. The U.S. Department of Education has allowed borrowers to refrain from making such payments through the end of January, so the administration of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. will have to issue an order to extend that period. The result will be weeks of unnecessary chaos and uncertainty…
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by Eric Kelderman, The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Posted: December 21st, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Chancellors and senior leaders at five of the nine UC undergraduate campuses told The Times that the staggering financial hit to their operations triggered by the coronavirus crisis and a $300.8-million proposed state budget cut this year have underscored the pressing need to open talks about tuition rates — which regents have increased just once for California students since 2011. The financial squeeze has prompted campuses to slash budgets, dig into reserves, borrow funds, substantially halt hiring — and, at UC Riverside, propose axing its athletic program, drawing hundreds of protest letters, emails and calls.
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by Teresa Watanabe, The Los Angeles Times.
Posted: December 12th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Mr. Biden has endorsed canceling $10,000 in federal student debt per borrower through legislation, and insisted that chipping away at the $1.7 trillion in loan debt held by more than 43 million borrowers is integral to his economic plan. But Democratic leaders, backed by the party’s left flank, are pressing for up to $50,000 of debt relief per borrower, executed on Day 1 of his presidency… To truly break the debt cycle, though, forgiveness would need to be paired with policy changes addressing the underlying cause of America’s skyrocketing student debt: affordability, an issue Democrats have tried to address… Mr. Biden’s campaign platform proposed making public universities tuition-free for families making less than $125,000 a year.
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by Erica L. Green, Luke Broadwater and Stacy Cowley, The New York Times.
Posted: December 10th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
DeVos, who is related by marriage to the Amway multilevel marketing empire and sister of Erik Prince, founder of the mercenary military firm Blackwater, also condemned Biden’s proposal for tuition-free college as “a socialist takeover of higher education.” Of course that overlooks the tradition of free public university education that was once exemplified by the University of California, which was once guaranteed tuition-free by the state constitution. That tradition is relevant to the student debt debate, because one factor in the debt explosion is the withdrawal of government support for public higher education. “States withdrew funding for public higher ed, tuition went up, and the whole premise of higher education went from being a public good to a private good…” America is a land that never ceases to pay lip service to the value of education and almost never manages to back up its honeyed words with the resources necessary to make them true.
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by Michael Hiltzik, The Los Angeles Times.
Posted: December 2nd, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
President Trump or Education Secretary Betsy DeVos could try to bridge the gap between December 31, 2020 and January 20, 2021 by further extending the CARES Act’s moratorium on student loan payments and interest for another month or more. But will they? In August, President Trump strongly suggested that he would, and that we would know at around this time… This timeframe makes sense, as student loan servicers would need sufficient lead time prior to December 31 to stop payment and billing notices from being generated and sent to borrowers. Conversely, it would be much more difficult for student loan servicers to manage the whiplash of millions of borrowers entering repayment, then re-entering a payment suspension, all within a few weeks. But so far, President Trump has not given any indication that he intends to follow through with his promise that he made in August.
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by Adam S. Minsky, Esq., Forbes.
Posted: November 30th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
“Student loan debt is holding back a whole generation from buying homes, starting small businesses, and saving for retirement – all things we rely on to grow our economy,” said Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren earlier this week. Warren is a leading voice in the push to cancel student debt. And if Biden cannot succeed in passing student loan forgiveness legislation through Congress, activists and advocates are calling on him to pursue executive action, instead. “Executive action to cancel student debt would be a huge economic stimulus during and after this crisis,” Warren said.
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by Adam S. Minsky, Esq., Forbes.
Posted: November 19th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Joe Biden is calling on Congress to cancel $10,000 of student loans immediately… Why $10,000 of student loan forgiveness? Biden adopted the plan contained in the Heroes Act, which is the $3 trillion stimulus plan that House Democrats proposed… the Heroes Act (which is a legislative proposal and not law) does not provide student loan forgiveness for every borrower. Rather, only borrowers who have been struggling financially due to the Covid-19 pandemic would be eligible to “cancel student loans.” It’s unclear what the financial litmus test for student loan forgiveness would be, or if Congress would broaden the definition to include all student loan borrowers.
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by Zack Friedman, Forbes.
Posted: November 18th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
