Student debt should be cancelled because borrowers haven’t realized the income gains that would enable them to pay it off, the burden of student debt weighs especially heavily on the historically marginalized, and a good deal if not a majority of outstanding student debt isn’t going to be repaid anyway. Why should the government grind pointless payments out of its borrowers for the next many decades? Let’s be done with this failed policy experiment for good.

Read full article [here].
by Marshall Steinbaum, The Appeal.

Posted: January 14th, 2021, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Newsom’s proposal provides a 3% increase in base funding for UC and Cal State, which would help the two public university systems recover from substantial financial losses and added expenses triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Both systems were hit with state budget cuts of about $300 million each, massive losses in revenue from housing and dining, added expenses for technology as campuses shifted to online learning, and additional outlays for coronavirus testing and tracing, cleaning and protective equipment. The proposed increase does not cover all of those losses or come close to reaching the level of funding that the systems had asked for. Moreover, Newsom said the increases were being proposed with the “expectation” that the UC and Cal State systems do not raise tuition or fees.

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by Teresa Watanabe and Nina Agrawal, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: January 8th, 2021, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

As she prepares to leave office, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos urged Congress not to enact President-elect Joe Biden’s proposals to eliminate tuition at public colleges or cancel student debt. “I hope you also reject misguided calls to make college ‘free’ and require the two-thirds of Americans who didn’t take on student debt or who responsibly paid off their student loans to pay for the loans of those who have not done the same,” DeVos wrote in a letter to congressional leaders, as well as to the members of the House and Senate appropriations committees on Monday.

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by Kery Murakami, Inside Higher Ed.

Posted: January 5th, 2021, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

At the height of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, California students led the nation in creating college ethnic studies programs that explored the histories and cultures of people overlooked by the dominant European-centric curriculum… But support for those programs has been uneven, prompting lawmakers and California’s Democratic governor to require that students at all 23 Cal State campuses take at least one ethnic studies course to graduate. CSUs should have their courses ready by fall of 2021.

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by Nick Roberts and Mikhail Zinshteyn, CalMatters.

Posted: December 30th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

Harnisch said the relief will certainly help colleges and universities at a time when they need it most, the amount won’t be enough for them to stabilize themselves from the financial blow caused by the pandemic. “It’s really unprecedented, the financial stress that institutions are under with losses in auxiliary revenues, increased student need, unanticipated expenses and state budget cuts,” he said. “And while it’s important that this bill passed, it doesn’t go far enough.” … The relief bill also doesn’t provide any money to states for education, which will strain those governments as they craft their budgets for next year, Harnisch said. “We’re looking at collectively $450 billion or more in state budget shortfalls, and higher education will be the most vulnerable items in state budgets in the months ahead,” he said.

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by Betsy Foresman, Ed Scoop.

Posted: December 29th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

After last month’s defeat of a California ballot measure to revive affirmative action in higher education admissions and hiring, other ways to increase diversity among faculty and students at the state’s colleges and universities are moving front and center… Here are ten of those ideas, culled from interviews and email exchanges. Each of the ten surely has political, financial and educational challenges and maybe even unexpected consequences. Some are as easy as a change in nomenclature; others, such as a vast expansion of financial aid, would be extraordinarily expensive. But in the New Year’s spirit of optimistic resolutions and turning the page to something different, we present them without judgment here more as discussion points than as fully weighed options.

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by Larry Gordon, Ed Source.

Posted: December 29th, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.

“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…

Read full article [here].
by Eric Kelderman, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Posted: December 21st, 2020, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.