Dartmouth College eliminates undergraduate student loans and ...

CNN —

Dartmouth College announced Tuesday it was eliminating student loans for undergraduates and replacing them with “expanded scholarship grants,” the university said in a news release.

The initiative is part of the Ivy League school’s “The Call to Lead” leadership campaign, and will begin starting June 23 for the summer 2022 term, the release said. The announcement also means Dartmouth’s class of 2022 will be the first class to enter the school and benefit from this program, the release said.

“Thanks to this extraordinary investment by our community, students can prepare for lives of impact with fewer constraints,” Dartmouth President Philip J. Hanlon said in a statement.

Dartmouth’s announcement comes amid the ongoing debate about student loan debt in the US, where 43 million people are waiting to find out if President Joe Biden will wipe away all or part of their federal student loan debt. In April, after facing months of pressure from other Democrats to cancel $50,000 per borrower, Biden said he was considering some broad student loan forgiveness, though a smaller amount.

Dartmouth previously eliminated the loan requirement for undergrads from families with an annual income of $125,000 or less. That will now be extended to families making more than $125,000 or less who receive need-based aid, the release said.

The transition to a “no loan financial policy” will benefit students from middle-income families, the release said. The initiative is “the culmination of a remarkable series of achievements that have transformed Dartmouth’s financial aid resources and policies over the past year, propelled by more than $120 million in scholarship gifts and pledges to the endowment since September 1,” the release said.

“More than 65 families supported the campaign goal to eliminate loan requirements from Dartmouth’s undergraduate financial aid awards, committing more than $80 million in gifts to the endowment,” the release said.

An anonymous donor committed $25 million to complete the campaign, which was “one of the largest scholarship endowments in Dartmouth history,” the release said.

“When I think of the exciting and transformational opportunities now available to these students without this financial barrier, I believe it’s one of the most meaningful achievements of the campaign,” Dartmouth alumna Ellie Loughlin said in a statement.

Dartmouth is not the only school to have modified its policy on student loans. Williams College in Massachusetts switched all financial aid to no-payback grants starting this fall.

In Georgia, Emory University announced in January it would be eliminating need-based loans as part of undergraduate financial aid packages, and replacing them with institutional grants and scholarships.

Ohio State University announced in November 2021 that it would use its endowment to eliminate student loans within the decade for its “debt-free degree” plan.

Amir Vera Melissa Alonso
Amir Vera
Melissa Alonso

These North Jersey community colleges used COVID relief funds to ...

North Jersey community colleges are using some of the millions from their share of federal pandemic relief funds to forgive unpaid college tuition incurred during the pandemic.

Bergen Community College in Paramus announced on Monday that it will use nearly $5 million in federal relief funds to erase outstanding balances that students owe the college. A few weeks earlier, Hudson County Community College in Jersey City announced that it had expunged more than $4.8 million in student balances.

Two thousand students will benefit from the Bergen initiative, and 4,800 students benefited from Hudson's, according to statements issued by the colleges. Students do not have to apply for this relief; balances are removed automatically from their accounts.

“This is our way of saying: Get back on track, move towards transfers and career success,” said Dr. Eric Friedman, president of Bergen Community College. He said the program will benefit students who had financial holds on their accounts due to past-due balances incurred last year. The Hudson County program expunged balances for all enrolled students, regardless of whether their accounts were frozen.

But while colleges are forgiving the balances that students owe to them, they are not forgiving federal loan debt.

“I think that this is something that colleges should be clarifying,” said Robert Kelchen, a professor at Seton Hall University and an expert on higher education and student aid. “I think it’s a wonderful thing they are doing for students, but they need to clarify that this is not all the money that they owe,” he said, referring to a press release issued by Bergen Community College that announced the debt relief measure.

Dr. Larry Hvalenka, executive director of public relations at Bergen, noted that by erasing balances, the college might still indirectly help students by freeing up funds so they can repay their federal loans.

Bergen County students appear to have accumulated nearly $15 million in federal student loans in the 2019-20 academic year, Kelchen noted in an email. The $5 million is a small portion of that, he said.

For students who have taken federal student loans, the debt relief they receive through initiatives like these could be a small portion of their total debt load, in relation to what is owed to the federal government, said Victoria Yuen, a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan policy institute.

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Still, the impact of this measure on thousands of students is enormous.

Elizabeth Schnur, a 23-year-old BCC student and Lyndhurst native, was shocked and excited to learn that she’ll be having a fresh start, with her balance essentially wiped clean. Schnur, who is aiming to become the first lawyer in her family, has a long educational journey ahead of her and is happy to know she can look at law school and potentially Ivy League schools in the future without worrying about the tuition costs from Bergen Community College.

“It definitely takes the pressure off,” Schnur said. “I’ve had the bill sitting around here for a while, but I just got a phone call [about the debt erasure]. It was such good news.”

Funding for these initiatives came from the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, which flows directly from the federal government to colleges and universities with no state involvement.

The fund is one-time money, paid for by relief measures enacted by the federal government in response to the pandemic — the CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) Act and the ARP (American Rescue Plan). Colleges are required to use half of the funding they receive to provide direct relief to students.

Colleges typically do not allow students to continue registering for classes if they owe money. "We wanted to break down barriers to degree completion so they could register and move forward," said Friedman.

Affordability is a priority at community colleges, and 46% of students at the Bergen school qualify for income-based Pell Grants, which are awarded by the federal government to low-income students.

The college also distributed $10 million in direct payments to students from CARES funding, regardless of whether they had an outstanding balance as pandemic relief, Friedman said. Hudson County Community College distributed $8.5 million in funds to help students with costs that arose during the pandemic, from tuition to housing, food, health and child care, according to a press release.

State and public universities are implementing similar measures, said spokespersons for Rutgers and Montclair State universities.

Montclair State said it has distributed more than $17.8 million in federal pandemic relief dollars to nearly 7,600 students to date. Students were given the choice of having money applied directly to their accounts or receiving cash grants to defray COVID-related educational expenses.

Staff Writer Stephanie Noda contributed to this story.

Mary Ann Koruth covers education for NorthJersey.com. To get unlimited access to the latest news about New Jersey's schools and how it affects your children, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: koruthm@northjersey.com

Twitter: @MaryAnnKoruth

Paterson student beats odds with Ivy League invite

Joe Malinconico

Paterson Press

PATERSON – First grade was a struggle for Jeferson Mendoza.

Even though he was born in New Jersey, the boy had not learned English. His mother, an immigrant from Peru, didn’t speak the language very well, either.

They spent hours together after school in their Paterson apartment, working on his homework, using a translation device to get through the strange words on the assignments. “She would sit with me all night,” recalled Jeferson, who is now 17.

Homework stopped being a struggle for Jeferson many years ago. The senior at John F. Kennedy High School’s Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Academy already has participated in advanced programs at six colleges, including a research project on protein cells in an effort to cure disease. The teenager also is on track to be valedictorian at his school’s graduation this spring.

Jeferson’s efforts culminated last week in his acceptance to Dartmouth College, making him the third student from Kennedy high school’s College Ready program to get into an Ivy League school in the past five years.

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“Everybody was rooting for him,” said another College Ready program student, Amran Alsaidi. “We were happy that somebody from Paterson made it like that.”

“When he got in, it was like an accomplishment for the whole team,” said Erik Castro, one of Jeferson’s best friends and a fellow member of the College Ready Robotics team. “Why would we be jealous? He’s one of us.”

In some school districts, Ivy League acceptances are somewhat of an annual ritual. But Paterson schools have some of the lowest student test scores in New Jersey. Faculty members say that’s why the recent successes of members of the College Ready program have meant so much to the district.

“I can’t wait until we reach the point where the newspapers stop doing stories because it’s considered normal for our kids to get accepted to the Ivy League,” said STEM Principal Nicholas Vancheri.

Passaic student has her pick of 5 Ivy League schools

Jeferson said his parents picked his name from a street sign in Paterson. He said he’s not sure why they left out the second “f.”

The student’s father, Arturo, drives a bus and follows world politics with a passion, the teenager said. His mother, Rocio, had wanted to be an obstetrician, but put aside her studies when she came to America. She now does temp work, like cleaning homes, he said.

Jeferson had applied to four Ivy League schools – Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard and Princeton. March 30 was the common date when the Ivies announced their acceptances, with the information becoming available online at 5 p.m.

Jeferson said he was busy that day, helping produce a virtual tour of the Great Falls national park for the Hamilton Partnership of Paterson nonprofit group. So he didn’t get around to checking the acceptances until about 5:10 p.m., he said.

The teenager clicked on Princeton first. The notice said he had been rejected. Jeferson moved on to Dartmouth.

“No way,” he recalled saying aloud after seeing that Dartmouth accepted him. At first his words were somewhat hushed. He was alone at home. Then he repeated those two words – “No way” – again and again with the volume rising each time. Soon, the teenager was in full-scale celebration mode.

“I was definitely not in my chair,” Jeferson said.

When his mother came home, Jeferson shared the monumental news with her and they hugged. His father would not get in from work until later. Then Jeferson called the man who launched Kennedy’s College Ready program, Gilman Choudhury.

“He was always there for me,” Jeferson said of Choudhury. “He helped me when I was not the person I am today.”

Many of Kennedy’s most committed and ambitious students participate in Choudhury’s College Ready sessions. While other teenagers rush out of the school at the 3:15 pm dismissal, College Ready students head upstairs to the third-floor classroom where the group convenes more than two hours a day, several days a week, including Fridays.

Choudhury has students in the program start doing SAT practice tests as freshmen. He takes them on college tours, enrolls them in weekend academic programs. At various times of the year, the College Ready students perform as the robotics team and do National History Day projects.

Choudhury also requires them to perform 100 hours of community service, efforts than include cleaning up parks, distributing food to the hungry, and collecting toys for needy children around the holidays.

For Jeferson, Choudhury’s help went beyond the basic parameters of the College Ready program.

“I used to stutter a lot,” the teenager said. “I was self-conscious about it. He used to make me speak at different things to get me out of my shell.”

On the evening that Jeferson got the good news about Dartmouth, Choudhury was with a group of six College Ready students involved in a special engineering program at Rutgers University. They had stopped to buy tacos at the student center when Choudhury’s phone rang.

Jeferson started the conversation by thanking his mentor for all the help he had provided. Choudhury said the teenager sounded out of breath and emotional.

“I asked him, ‘What’s wrong?’ ” the College Ready coordinator recalled.

Then the student announced his Ivy League acceptance. “I dropped my wallet,” Choudhury said.

It turned out that Columbia and Harvard had placed Jeferson on their wait lists. He had been accepted to nine other schools, including Georgia Tech, the University of California at Berkeley, and Rutgers.

Dartmouth’s financial aid package was by far the best and that made the decision an easy one, Jeferson said. “I’ll be able to graduate college debt-free,” he said, “and it won’t be hard on my parents.”

Jeferson plans to major in biology at Dartmouth. He said he wants to do research on stem cells, to find ways to prevent cancer from spreading.

After college, Jeferson said he will remain committed to Paterson. “I want to do something to make a difference in the city,” he said. “So many people have helped me here. I want to give back.”

Why free college is so elusive -- and how we can get closer to ...

(CNN) The idea of waiving college tuition falls in and out of vogue.

Last year, President Joe Biden's plan to make tuition free at community colleges was cut from the Build Back Better plan, once again placing the concept of a nationwide tuition-free college program just out of reach.

Before that effort, former President Barack Obama tried (and failed) to waive the first two years of community college nationwide. After that, former Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders both had platforms advocating for tuition-free college nationwide during their respective runs.

Efforts to waive college tuition have seen greater success at the state level.Most notably, lawmakers in New Mexico passed a bill earlier this year that would waive tuition for any student attending in-state public schools or tribal colleges -- joining a growing list of tuition-free state programs.

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed SB 140, which expanded free college tuition to most residents, at Western New Mexico University in Silver City on March 4.

As the country continues to grapple with the student debt crisis , here's why a free college system continues to be so elusive and how it may still be attainable.

Even at a local level, 'free college' is easier said than done

Though many states have made recent pushes to waive college tuition for certain groups, subsidizing college education isn't new.

The GI Bill, enacted in 1944, provided veterans returning from World War II with tuition, books and supplies, equipment, counseling services, and "subsistence" for those wishing to continue their education, according to the National Archives.

About 20 years later, in 1965, Pell Grants were first created -- and now represent the largest federal aid source for students pursuing post-secondary education.

There have been other pushes on the state level, like Georgia's Hope Scholarship , a merit-based award that launched in 1993 for students who sustain a 3.0 grade point average.

When city or state officials attempt to waive tuition in some way -- whether for public four-year universities or two-year community colleges -- they're thinking about avoiding brain drain, said Elizabeth Bell, an assistant professor at Florida State University who researches higher education policy.

The GI Bill of Rights funded books, notebooks, and tuition and other fees, up to a total of $500 for an ordinary school year, for veterans. Here, ex-soldier students receive supplies for the term.

she said. That's why programs, like The goal, ultimately, is to preserve educational attainment and therefore enhance the economy,she said. That's why programs, like New York's Excelsior Scholarship , require those who participate to stay in-state after graduating.

But actually creating these programs is easier said than done. The issue of college affordability and making college as accessible as possible is one that actually has bipartisan support, Bell said -- but the pushback comes in the details.

When it comes to universal programs -- that is, programs that unequivocally waive tuition and fees -- there can be pushback against giving money to families who could afford college without assistance, Bell said. Others worry that colleges could raise costs to capture more funding from the state, since most people wouldn't be paying the sticker price.

There are also arguments over whether to create first-dollar programs, where funding is given to students before any other aid or award-based funding, or to create last-dollar programs, which fill the gaps that aid and other financial awards don't cover. The issue with last-dollar programs is most of the money actually goes to higher-income families, who may not receive aid from other areas, Bell said.

Most first-dollar programs actually exist at the local level, she said, since they support fewer students, making those programs easier to finance. On the other hand, a lot of state programs are last-dollar.

An exception to this rule is the Oklahoma Promise , a first-dollar state program that takes a more targeted approach. The scholarship primarily awards aid to families making less than $60,000 a year, and students who apply must also pass certain merit requirements.

Politically, it's complicated. If you're putting forth a program proposal that's first-dollar, but only benefits a select number of students, you're limiting the political support you could receive by excluding many middle-income families, who still struggle with the cost of higher education, Bell said.

"Across these different programs, it's really a matter of balancing politics, finances and equity," Bell said. "And a lot of these programs have come under scrutiny because one of these things is out of balance."

Students walk on campus at the University of Oklahoma in March 2015.

There's also more to paying for college than just tuition -- such as housing, food, transportation and numerous other costs. The best programs, Bell said, are simple for students to understand and apply to, generous in what they cover, and include those wraparound services.

She used the Kalamazoo Promise in Michigan as an example -- a program that pays up to 100% of tuition and fees for four years for students who graduate from Kalamazoo Public Schools. Though the funds cannot be transferred to things like room and board, the program provides access to coaches at both the high school and college level to help students in their transition to college.

Not every program is created equal

Even in places where free tuition programs are enacted, the benefits aren't always impactful.

The Urban Institute found that New York's Excelsior Scholarship, announced in 2017, sent 68% of its funds to families with incomes at or above $70,000 -- meaning that the lowest income students didn't receive the funds. Meanwhile, lower-income students still face other financial barriers, like the costs of books, meals plans, transportation and other categories that fall outside of tuition.

That's not all: Only about half of the students who received the scholarship in fall of 2018 actually kept the scholarship going into the following year -- a trend the researchers attributed in part to the amount of paperwork the scholarship requires, as well as some of the enrollment and credit completion criteria.

The complexity inherent in the scholarship and financial aid process is actually a huge barrier to students applying to college and their families, said Stephanie Owen, an assistant professor at Colby College who studies the economics of education.

Then New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, left, announced his proposal for free tuition at state colleges on Jan. 3, 2017 to hundreds of thousands of low- and middle income residents. He was joined by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, center, and Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of The City University of New York William C. Thompson.

It can be difficult for some families to even find out what scholarships and aid programs they are actually eligible for, before even getting to the arduous application processes each may require. Though there's often a large distinction between the sticker price of the college and what families actually pay, Owen said colleges don't give out financial aid offers until after the student is accepted.

That means that students have no idea how much they'll actually be required to pay until much later in the process, after they've decided where to apply, said Owen. And if you don't know how much help you'll get, that initial sticker price can discourage applicants, especially low-income ones.

"That's kind of odd, right?" Owen said. "Most things we buy, we know what the price is before we commit to them."

Larger four-year universities often already have money set aside specifically for low-income students. Stanford University expanded its financial aid in 2021 -- guaranteeing that undergraduate students from families with annual incomes below $75,000 will not pay tuition, room or board. Ivy League schools like Harvard University and Cornell University have similar programs, as does the University of California

Other large public schools, like the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Michigan, also have similar programs -- but UNC-Chapel Hill's program isn't guaranteed , and branches of Michigan require students to maintain a high school GPA of 3.5 or higher for the "Go Blue Guarantee" program.

Even with access to college-specific financial aid, there are still hurdles. Navigating the FAFSA process or other paperwork hurdles isn't easy, and neither is getting into a top school with these kinds of financial resources.

Local, state and federal programs are all necessary for an equitable system

Smaller, local and state programs for waiving tuition exist -- but they can be imperfect or temporary, in place for a few years and then gone . Colleges have financial aid, but eliminating full costs of tuition isn't always possible, and not every college has the resources to waive tuition for large groups.

And a federal universal program, despite some efforts, seems elusive.

None of this means that equitable college access is completely out of our reach, though. There are intermediate steps being taken going in the right direction, Owen said.

She used the College Scorecard as an example, a tool through the US Department of Education that allows students to see how much people from different income levels pay on average, as well as other information like graduation rates and typical earnings after graduation.

Having that information in a clear and concise way is helpful, Owen said. But it does have its limits -- the average cost is not the exact cost, after all.

The University of Michigan's HAIL Scholarship is one path forward for colleges looking to provide affordable higher education.

There are other bright spots: The FAFSA Simplification Act, which passed Congress in 2020 , is expected to ease the FAFSA process for students. The HAIL Scholarship at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor provides full tuition and fees for certain low-income undergraduates, and lets students know of their scholarship acceptance before the admissions process, which limits financial uncertainty.

The expansion of the Pell Grant is another effort many are advocating for, particularly as moves for universal community college have failed at the federal level.

"It's not going to come from one program," Bell said, of creating a financially equitable universal college system. "It's going to come from the interaction of the federal and the state programs trying to make college more affordable for all kids. And right now we're still not there."

That doesn't mean things are stuck where they are now, she said. It just means we're still at the beginning.

Opinion: What the SAT's waning relevance really tells us - CNN

In this photo of 2016, a student looks at questions during a college test preparation class at a school in Bethesda, MD. The SAT exam will move from paper and pencil to a digital format, administrators announced Tuesday, saying the shift will boost its relevancy as more colleges make standardized tests optional for admission.

Editor’s Note: Nicole Hemmer is an associate research scholar at Columbia University with the Obama Presidency Oral History Project and the author of “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics.” She co-hosts the history podcasts “Past Present” and “This Day in Esoteric Political History” and is co-producer of the podcast “Welcome To Your Fantasy.” The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author. View more opinion on CNN.

CNN —

The SAT is going digital.

The end of the paper test, once a rite of passage for students clinging to freshly sharpened No. 2 pencils as they settled in for the three-hour exam, comes as the SAT itself is losing its place of prominence in college admissions. As the test came under fire in recent years for favoring skilled test-takers as well as White and wealthy students, more and more colleges moved to test-optional admissions. The pandemic accelerated that shift, with Ivy League colleges joining the move away from mandatory testing.

Nicole Hemmer Courtesy Nicole Hemmer

The College Board, which oversees the SAT, has said the test will not only be digital but shorter — two hours rather than three — with a wider range of questions. But in focusing on form rather than function, how the SAT is taken rather than what it reveals about the test-takers, the College Board has yet to solve the broader problem of the test’s shrinking relevance to college admissions.

That waning relevance is not just about the SAT, but the broader struggles that universities face as they attempt to admit and prepare a more diverse student body for a more precarious economy. It is a challenge that universities themselves have struggled with just as much as the College Board.

Some argue that now is the time to do away with the SAT completely. A seemingly neutral measure of college preparedness, the test has long been embedded with all sorts of biases based on class, race and culture. Part of that was tied to the history of the test itself. The SAT emerged from the new IQ tests developed for the military during World War I. Those tests, though implemented as an objective assessment of intelligence, were freighted with racial, cultural and nativist biases.

These intelligence tests migrated to the College Board and universities in the 1920s and 1930s as the Scholastic Aptitude Test, or SAT, and during World War II, became the sole test used by the College Board as a measure of college potential. They were seen at the time as a progressive initiative, to allow the Midwestern farm boy with raw natural intelligence to gain entry into the WASPish establishment of higher education. But the meritocratic idea was strongly influenced by race and sex: a young White native-born man. Even as the test was refined in the decades that followed, test developers repeatedly chose questions that performed well with White test-takers, reinscribing a set of racial and cultural norms into the exam.

Another kind of inequity in the SAT stemmed from the culture that had sprung up around SAT prep. Wealthy parents have poured thousands into test prep courses that many families never knew existed (much less had the funds to pay for). As a result, the purportedly meritocratic SAT continued to select for a particular kind of student, one that was on average Whiter and wealthier than the average high schooler.

Getting rid of it is a fine idea, but while bracketing (or eliminating) the SAT addresses one possible form of inequality, it is minor compared to the other ways access to higher education remains inaccessible for many Americans. First, the SAT-optional admissions process still relies on a number of subjective and manipulatable measures, including personal essays and extracurriculars. And college education itself comes with a number of burdens. Most significant among these is the high sticker price of a college degree, a price that is disproportionately borne by students of color, whose debt burden tends to be higher and longer-lasting than White students. While a number of universities have moved away from loans and embraced need-based grants, the average student loan debt remains $30,000, according to data from US News and World Report, with many students facing a much steeper burden.

But there is a bigger challenge facing universities as well: a college degree is no longer a guarantee of middle-class stability. College degrees matter; overall, students who attend college are better off than those who don’t. But college graduates now enter a workforce rife with precarity and low wages, which, when compounded by heavy debt, pushes many graduates into a state of economic instability, with meager paychecks going to service their punishing debt loads. (These are circumstances made worse by certain degree programs, for-profit colleges, and predatory lenders.)

The digital SAT is not an answer to these problems, any more than MOOCs were (the Massive Open Online Courses that were all the rage in the 2000s). What is needed for more equitable higher education goes far beyond the SAT.

Yes, universities need different assessment tools that help inform universities what support students will need to succeed. But they also need policy-based solutions for the challenges facing higher ed: more support for community colleges and state universities to drive down costs, less interference from conservative policymakers opposed to the liberal arts, more flexibility for admissions policies that result in a diverse student body, and – above all – a fairer economy in which all workers, even those without a college degree, can secure a living wage. That, more than any change to the SAT, will create the atmosphere for more equitable education across the United States.

At the moment, however, the prospect of such changes seems out of reach. Though some level of student debt relief has broad support among the public, and loan forgiveness can be achieved through executive action, the Biden administration so far has been reluctant to act. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has just announced it will consider a challenge to affirmative action programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. That leaves the conservative justices, who control two-thirds of the Court, in a position to make it even more difficult to achieve equity in higher education.

It is particularly disappointing that these two barriers would arise now, as so many universities have been seriously contemplating how to make access more equitable and diverse. It has been a long road to this moment: Universities in the United States were once places of deep formal inequality, with admissions often limited to White male students of means.

Cracking open the doors of higher ed took well over a century, as people of color, women and Jews fought for access and an end to quotas. Though a handful of colleges began to allow both men and women in the mid-19th century, it wasn’t until the late 1960s and 1970s that Ivy League schools allowed women. Racial integration likewise took more than a century, and in some schools required armed intervention to protect Black students trying to enroll.

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That long fight to win admissions into universities was not just about educational equality. By the 1960s and 1970s, higher education was increasingly the path to middle-class stability. If that stability was to be equally (or at least more broadly) shared, then higher education had to welcome a far more diverse student body. Yet even as that student body became less segregated, inequalities — in access, student loan debt burdens and job opportunities – all persisted.

The SAT both reflected and reinforced those inequalities. A change to its format now will not undo that bias toward wealthy students. Instead, it’s time to rethink the test’s function in relation to what America’s system of higher education should strive for: how it can provide useful information to universities about how best to help their students succeed, particularly at a moment when policymakers and the courts are arrayed against them, determined to limit what tools educators have to make higher education – and the economy – more fair.

Looking for the next crisis? Try student debt

Kelley Holland

CNBC

The numbers are staggering: more than $1.2 trillion in outstanding student loan debt, 40 million borrowers, an average balance of $29,000.

It's not hard to find indications that student debt is a large (and growing) problem. But unless you or someone you love holds student loans, it can be hard to feel the problem's immediacy.

That may not be the case for long. Mounting student loan debt is ricocheting through the United States, now affecting institutions and economic patterns that have been at the core of America's very might.

Men and women laboring under student debt "are postponing marriage, childbearing and home purchases, and...pretty evidently limiting the percentage of young people who start a business or try to do something entrepreneurial," said Mitch Daniels, president of Purdue University and the former Republican governor of Indiana. "Every citizen and taxpayer should be concerned about it."

The high levels of student debt are also serving to perpetuate and even worsen economic inequality, undercutting the opportunity and social mobility that higher education has long promised. Americans almost universally believe that a college degree is the key to success and getting ahead—and the data shows that, generally speaking, college graduates still fare far better financially than those with just a high school diploma.

But for those who are saddled with massive student debt, even getting by can be a challenge, much less getting ahead.

"You wind up disadvantaged just as you begin. It has reduced the ability of our educational system to be a force for upward mobility, and for an equitable chance at upward mobility," said Melinda Lewis, associate professor of the practice at the University of Kansas School of Social Welfare. "It is still true that you are better positioned if you go to college, but you are not as much better positioned if you have to go to college with debt."

Debt crisis builds

There are several causes for the rapid increase in levels of student debt.

For one, despite the growing costs, Americans believe deeply in the importance of higher education. A survey of parents released this month by Discover Student Loans found that 95% believe college is somewhat or very important to their child's future. They have reason: In 2012, full-time workers with bachelor's degrees earned 60% more than workers with just a high school diploma.

Policymakers also encourage college attendance. In a speech earlier this year, President Obama called higher education "one of the crown jewels of this country" and said it was "the single most important way to get ahead."

There is also the matter of "credentialism," the trend in many professions to screen for ever higher qualifications for jobs that may not require them. A 2014 study by Burning Glass, a labor analytics firm, found that 42% of management job holders had bachelor's degrees, but 68% of job postings required them. In computer and mathematical jobs, 39% of employees had bachelor's degrees, but 60% of job listings called for them.

"Many middle-skill career pathways are becoming closed off to those without a bachelor's degree," the report concluded.

The confluence of those trends has led to a nearly unbroken increase in college attendance for almost 30 years. At the same time, though, the cost of college has risen for decades, far outstripping inflation.

As a 2012 economic analysis by The Hamilton Project, a policy research group, concluded: "The cost of college is growing, but the benefits of college — and, by extension, the cost of not going to college — are growing even faster."

There is much debate over the reasons for the steep increase in college tuition. Purdue's Daniels has pointed to "inelastic demand" for higher education, which has given colleges room to raise prices, while others cite the decline in state funding for public education and the shrinking subsidies at private schools.

Whatever the reason, there's no denying the cost of both a private and a public college degree has skyrocketed. Average tuition, fees, and room and board at a private, non-profit, four-year college were $42,419 for 2014-2015, up from $30,664 in real dollars in 2000-01. At public, four-year schools, costs for the 2014-15 school year, at $18,943, were up sharply from the $11,635 price tag in 2000-01, according to the College Board.

The federal government has stepped up its lending accordingly, and so have private student lenders. The total of private student loans outstanding grew rapidly from $55.9 billion in 2005 to $140.2 billion in 2011, fueled in part, perhaps, by the growing market for asset-backed securities backed by student loans, known as SLABS.

While the expansion has provided more options for student borrowers — and the opportunity for those with high credit scores to refinance at lower rates — regulators have expressed concerns.

In a 2012 report, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that many student borrowers may not have understood the difference between private student loans and government loans, and default rates on private student loans "have spiked significantly since the financial crisis of 2008."

Lower birthrates, fewer small businesses

Rising student debt levels are changing how millions of people approach major milestones and core financial decisions, affecting longstanding social and economic patterns.

Consider homeownership. Owning a home used to be a key marker of adulthood and maturity. But homeownership has plummeted among Americans under age 35, from 43.3% in the first quarter of 2005 to 34.6% in first quarter of 2015, according to the Census Bureau.

Mortgage lenders "look at all debt obligations, and student debt would count toward that, which means the person...has to downgrade their housing expectations, and take out a loan lower than what they intended. Or in some cases, they say, 'Well, I'm going to hold back,'" said Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors.

The association found in a recent survey that 23% of first-time buyers said it was hard for them to save for a down payment, and within that group, 57% said student debt was impeding their saving, up from 54% a year earlier.

While a college education generally leads to higher income, "growing student loan burdens can have direct impacts in terms of lost sales due to higher debt levels for builders focusing on the entry level market space," said Robert Dietz, an economist with the National Association of Home Builders.

Twenty-somethings are also putting off starting a family. The median age for a first birth has been increasing for years, standing most recently at age 26. And the birth rate among women aged 20 to 29 is now at a record low, and has been declining since at least 2008, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control.

Students laboring under the burden of student debt are also following different career paths, with important social implications. The need to repay loans is steering some away from professions like social work and health care and toward higher-paying jobs in tech and financial services.

In a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, the writers examined the effect of a move by a selective college to replace loans with grants. "We find that debt causes graduates to choose substantially higher-salary jobs and reduces the probability that students choose relatively low-paying 'public interest' jobs," the researchers observed.

While choosing a higher-paying field may help them repay their loans faster, it could also result in fewer graduates moving into low-paying but critical jobs like early childhood education.

Research has also found that the burden of student debt hinders innovation and entrepreneurship, a core component of the economic prowess of the United States. Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania State studied the relationship between student debt and small business formation and found "a significant and economically meaningful" link: more student debt led to fewer small businesses being formed.

Student loan defaults are another burden on society. The three-yeardefault rate stands at roughly 13.7, and the average amount in default per borrower was just over $14,000 in the third quarter of 2014. Debt like that impedes the ability of borrowers to save for retirement at a time when millions of Americans are short on retirement savings. And it can have a ripple effect on the economy, in part because the federal government typically does not recoup the full amount in default (though it does get most, eventually).

"We're not going to see this create systemic risk," said Rohit Chopra, student loan ombudsman and assistant director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, since the government either guarantees or owns most of the student loans and has the power to sue and to garnish wages, tax refunds, and federal benefits like Social Security when borrowers default. "But it will create economic drag if it's unaddressed,"he added.

While some, like Mark Kantrowitz, a student financial aid policy expert and publisher of Edvisors.com, argue that student loans have not reached the level of "crisis," most policymakers and experts agree that the trends are worrisome at the least and more should be done to ease the burden on borrowers.

Kantrowitz advocates for more programs to improve the financial literacy and budgeting skills of students and their parents, as well as better disclosures for student loans. "We need to bring some sanity back to the system," he said.

Policymakers and academics are trying to develop solutions to the burgeoning student debt burden. Obama has proposed having the government cover the average cost of community college for students who maintain good grades, which could help ease the debt burden if it's adopted (though students would still be responsible for the cost of continuing their studies beyond community college).

The Obama administration has also expanded the Income-Based Repayment program, which enables students to make loan payments that are no more than a reasonable share of their discretionary income — generally 10% — over a longer period of time.

Qualifying borrowers who work full-time in public service jobs may also get some of the balance of their loans forgiven through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program.

Some states offer Children's Savings Accounts, which enable families and donors to put away money for children's college education. Research by Lewis and her colleague William Elliott, as well as other studies, indicate that these accounts encourage college attendance, particularly among lower-income Americans.

Several schools have been expanding student aid. Stanford university, for example, announced this spring that tuition will be free for students whose families earn less than $125,000 a year, and several Ivy League schools have similar programs in place. It's worth noting, though, thatuniversities with those kinds of plans in place have also typically increased their tuition for the last several years and have substantial endowments.

Some of the worst abuses in student lending have also been washed out of the system. Many student borrowers take out loans to attend for-profit colleges like the former Corinthian College, which abruptly ceased to exist in April, and the Department of Education in June announced it would forgive the debt of students who attended that school.

These efforts should certainly help to alleviate the burden on borrowers. But absent dramatic changes in the financing of higher education, student loan debt is expected to keep climbing, and that could have implications for us all.

© CNBC is a USA TODAY content partner offering financial news and commentary. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.

A crash course in student loan debt forgiveness - CNNPolitics

A version of this story appeared in CNN's What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here

(CNN) When the Department of Education announced massive loan forgiveness for former students of the for-profit Corinthian Colleges system on Wednesday, it was the largest single effort by the Biden administration to help Americans pay down their student debt.

The administration's actions so far have largely focused on students who were defrauded by now-shuttered schools, like Corinthian. But the moves have also sharpened a debate on whether the rising cost of higher education is an undue burden for young adults. Opponents say that simply forgiving student debt is a moral hazard and penalizes people who paid theirs off already.

I talked to CNN's Katie Lobosco , who covers the issue, about what happened on Wednesday and where it fits into the larger debate about student loans.

Our conversation, conducted by email, is below.

What's the news?

WHAT MATTERS: What's this latest move by the Biden administration, and how many people does it affect?

LOBOSCO: Wednesday's action is the Biden administration's biggest move to cancel student debt to date, totaling $5.8 billion for 560,000 borrowers.

It will affect all borrowers who attended a Corinthian College at any time during its existence, dating back to 1995, and still have outstanding federal student loan debt.

Some former Corinthian students previously qualified for student loan forgiveness, but the new action will ensure that all borrowers will receive debt relief automatically. They won't have to take action.

How is this possible?

WHAT MATTERS: How is the administration able to simply forgive this debt? Why didn't Congress need to weigh in?

LOBOSCO: The Department of Education has long had the power -- granted by Congress in the Higher Education Act -- to cancel federal student loan debt held by borrowers who were misled by their colleges or were enrolled at schools that engaged in other misconduct in violation of certain state laws.

But the department rarely used this power before 2015, when Corinthian Colleges and several other for-profit schools suddenly shut down in the face of federal and state investigations into their practices. Many schools were found to have misled prospective students with inflated job placement numbers and the transferability of their credits to other schools.

At that time, the Obama administration streamlined the process, known as borrower defense to repayment, making it easier for these borrowers to file forgiveness claims with the Department of Education. The agency was flooded with applications, and the Trump administration, which fought to change the policy, stopped processing the claims for more than a year. More than 100,000 applications were pending when Biden took office.

Since then, the Department of Education has been chipping away at the backlog, speeding up the process by granting forgiveness to groups of borrowers at a time.

What's a for-profit college?

WHAT MATTERS: What's the difference between a for-profit college and other colleges, which also cost a lot of money?

LOBOSCO: The big difference is that for-profit colleges aim to make money, unlike non-profit public and private colleges and universities.

Not all for-profit colleges are bad. They tend to confer certificates for trade-related professions that prepare students to quickly enter the workforce. In that respect, they attract a lot of nontraditional students -- like parents and military veterans who want to gain skills that make them marketable to new employers.

But many for-profit colleges have left thousands of students with degrees that did not help them get higher-paying jobs and that saddled them with student loan debt.

How have for-profit colleges changed?

WHAT MATTERS: What is the state of for-profit colleges right now? How has that industry changed in recent years?

LOBOSCO: Enrollment at for-profit colleges in 2020 was about half of what it was in 2010, when more than 2 million students were enrolled, according to the Enrollment at for-profit colleges in 2020wasabout half of what it was in 2010, when more than 2 million students were enrolled, according to the College Board

Corinthian Colleges -- which operated schools under the names of Everest, Heald College or WyoTech -- enrolled more than 110,000 students at 105 campuses at its peak in 2010. It sold most of its campuses in 2014 and shuttered the remaining ones in 2015.

A year later, another for-profit college, known as ITT Tech, also suddenly closed after facing state and federal probes into its recruitment tactics.

What's going on with debt forgiveness in general?

WHAT MATTERS: This is but one effort. What does the larger debt forgiveness effort look like? How much student debt has been forgiven and how much is out there?

LOBOSCO: Under the Biden administration, the Department of Education says it has approved the cancellation of $25 billion of student debt for 1.3 million borrowers as of this week.

Nearly $8 billion in forgiveness provides relief for 690,000 borrowers who were misled by their colleges. More than $8.5 billion has been canceled automatically for more than 400,000 borrowers who are permanently disabled who were previously eligible for debt relief but had not applied.

The administration has also temporarily expanded eligibility for what's known as the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program -- which cancels remaining federal student loan debt after a public-sector worker has made 10 years of qualifying payments. The expansion has led to the cancellation of $6.8 billion for more than 113,000 borrowers.

The Biden administration has also made changes to the income-driven repayment plans , bringing millions of borrowers close to forgiveness.

What about mass debt forgiveness?

WHAT MATTERS: Canceling debt for people who were defrauded is one thing. A lot of Democrats want to see debt forgiveness for people who got legitimate degrees too. Where does that effort stand?

LOBOSCO: Many Democrats and advocacy groups continue to call on Biden to broadly cancel up to $50,000 for each of the 43 million borrowers who have federal student loan debt.

To date, Biden has resisted that pressure and has instead taken a piecemeal approach to canceling student debt by expanding existing forgiveness programs.

In April, Biden said he is considering canceling student loan debt more broadly -- though he also doubled down on his resistance to canceling as much as $50,000 per borrower.

On the campaign trail, he proposed canceling a minimum of $10,000 in student debt per person as a response to the pandemic, as well as forgiving all undergraduate tuition-related federal student debt from two- and four-year public colleges and universities for those borrowers earning up to $125,000 a year.

ivy-league-clinches-top-3-spots-in-ranking-of-best-us-colleges

Patrick Foster

Corrections & clarifications: This story was updated to remove an accompanying video about college rankings.

Yale remains the top university in the United States, according to new data released Thursday by College Factual. The private school in New Haven, Conn. is followed by Harvard (which was No. 5 in last year's ranking) and the University of Pennsylvania (which dropped from the No. 2 spot).

Duke University, which ranked third last year, slid to the fourth spot, just ahead of Stanford University. Amherst College, Brown University, Cornell, Princeton and Notre Dame round out the top 10.

College Factual examines a unique set of factors when putting together their annual ranking, which feature appearances from the nation's service academies — Naval Academy (22), Air Force (33) and Military Academy (47).

"Many college rankings focus highly on inputs, such as student test scores, and often include subjective elements such as surveys. College Factual rankings are different as they focus highly on outputs, such as graduation rates and student loan default rates," says College Factual CEO Bill Phelan.

These rankings differ from other lists and, according to Phelan, it's for good reason. Instead of burying methodology in fine print at the bottom of the list, College Factual puts theirs up front. Freshman retention rates, the number of full-time teachers and student loan default rates are all key components in the final rankings.

"We also rank colleges on many different aspects of the education they provide, from overall quality, to best value, to best for a specific major. At the end of the day though we want students to go beyond just rankings to discover colleges that are a great match for them all-around."

Here's a closer look at the top 10:

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.

Yale Law School gives in to anti-religious bigotry in new policies

Samuel Adkisson

Opinion contributor

What happens at our nation’s elite law schools rarely stays there.

That is why recent events at Yale Law School are so disturbing. In an effort to appease campus protesters, Yale announced that it would begin discriminating against religious students. This should concern all who value intellectual diversity and religious freedom. But even more troubling is the fact that this anti-religious bigotry is unlikely to confine itself to the ivory tower for long.

In February, the Yale Federalist Society scheduled an event with Kristen Waggoner, an attorney at Alliance Defending Freedom, one of the nation’s premier religious liberty organizations. Waggoner recently argued Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission before the Supreme Court and won in a 7-2 vote. The case involved anti-religious discrimination against a Colorado baker.

As Justice Elena Kagan explained, the government acted unconstitutionally because it exhibited “hostility to religious views.”

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One might expect an event with a successful Supreme Court advocate to be welcomed at an elite law school. But before the event had even taken place, more than 20 student organizations publicly condemned the event and speaker.

The problem? Waggoner's orthodox Christian beliefs and a commitment to religious liberty. Parroting Southern Poverty Law Center talking points, protesters claimed she worked for a "homophobic, transphobic hate group." Never mind that Alliance Defending Freedom has won nine Supreme Court cases in the past seven years.

Protesters get administrative support

Par for the course at Ivy League institutions, a list of demands soon followed. The organizations called on Dean Heather Gerken to implement policies that would make it more difficult for students to work at “discriminatory” organizations, like those promoting religious liberty. They also asked her to consider denying admission to applicants who worked on certain religious liberty efforts before law school. Such lists are normally good for a laugh. And this one seemed no different.

But in late March, Yale Law School adopted a novel tactic: one-upping the protesters. It announced three major policy changes that went further than many of the protesters’ demands, all under the guise of an expanded nondiscrimination policy.

The new policies require all employers to swear that, when hiring students or graduates who benefit from certain Yale funding, they will not consider an applicant’s “religion,” “religious creed,” “gender identity” or “gender expression,” among other factors. The effect of this, for instance, is if a Yale Law student or graduate wishes to work for an organization that does consider religion in hiring — say a Catholic organization or Jewish advocacy group — Yale will cut them off from three important programs.

First, Yale will ban them from receiving the school’s “summer public interest funding.” This is more important than it sounds. Between students’ first and second years of law school, they typically volunteer at nonprofits or in government. (Most law firms, quite understandably, are not interested in hiring first-year students.) To help defray students’ living expenses during this first summer, Yale offers financial grants. Last summer, for example, Yale provided more than $1.9 million to more than 200 students.

Second, Yale will ban graduates from participating in the school’s loan assistance program. The basic idea is simple: If a student graduates, works full time, and makes below a certain income threshold, Yale will help with their loan payments. Sound too good to be true? Most top law schools have similar programs. Yale previously boasted that this program covered “all jobs in all sectors.” No longer.

Third, Yale will ban them from receiving one of the law school’s 30-plus post-graduate fellowships. These prestigious fellowships offer a year of funding for students to serve in a nonprofit or government position.

Standing up to overt religious discrimination

Under the guise of nondiscrimination, Yale Law School has announced it will blatantly discriminate. A student is barred from aid if she works at a synagogue that gives preference to Jewish applicants, but not if she works at an organization that peddles anti-Semitism yet hires all comers. A graduate is blocked from funding if she works for the Christian Legal Society, but not if she works for the Freedom from Religion Foundation. And a graduate is not eligible to receive loan assistance if she is a professor at Brigham Young University, but is eligible if she works for Berkeley.

Yale Law School, under the leadership of Dean Gerken, has adopted policies of overt religious discrimination. Those who value religious toleration and intellectual diversity must stand up and demand that these policies stop.

But these policies — and the ideas animating them — will not confine themselves to the ivory tower for long. What happens at law schools like Harvard, Yale and Stanford today foreshadows the broader cultural trends of tomorrow. I don't like what I see.

What can be done?

►The Senate Judiciary Committee should hold hearings on the state of legal education in the United States. It is biased, broken and getting worse.

►Prospective students should consider whether a university respects intellectual and religious pluralism when deciding whether to attend. It makes a difference.

►Donors should withhold funding from institutions that fail to respect religious and intellectual diversity. There are already too many.

In its Masterpiece Cakeshop decision, the Supreme Court ruled against religious discrimination. Yale Law School has taken the opposite path, institutionalizing anti-religious bigotry in its new policies. It is a decision that must not go unchallenged.

Samuel Adkisson is a 2018 graduate of Yale Law School and an attorney in Arlington, Virginia. He previously served as president of the Yale Federalist Society.

Protesters stop Harvard-Yale game at halftime by storming the field

Activists carrying banners in protest of "climate injustice" stormed the field before the start of the third quarter of Saturday's game between Harvard and Yale, causing a lengthy delay and leading police to handcuff and detain several protesters.

Groups of students from both universities marched toward midfield at the Yale Bowl after the band had finished performing and as players were warming up for the start of the second half. One long banner carried by several students said both Yale and Harvard "are complicit in climate injustice."

Protesters called for the two schools, longtime Ivy League rivals, to divest from fossil fuels and cancel their Puerto Rico debt holdings. Endowment holdings at Harvard and Yale are managed in part by fund managers and private equity firms invested in Puerto Rican debt.

The number of protesters grew into the hundreds, all within a stretch of space on either side of the large Yale logo at midfield.

"Hey hey, ho ho, fossil fuels have got to go," chanted protesters.

A public-address announcement asked protesters to leave the field "as a courtesy to the players," and that "as a courtesy to both teams, the game must resume.”

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After about an hour, police formed a line and moved forward, from the Yale sideline toward the Harvard sideline. A protest leader encouraged all “internationals” to leave. An agreement was reached to escort the remainders off, with one police officer to every two protesters.

Those who did not leave then – perhaps one or two dozen – were informed by Yale Police Chief Ronnell Higgins that they would be arrested.

Yale officials said in a statement handed to reporters in the press box during the fourth quarter that the school “stands firmly for the right to free expression.”

“It is regrettable,” a statement attributed to the Ivy League said, “that the orchestrated protest came during a time when fellow students were participating in a collegiate career-defining contest and an annual tradition when thousands gather from around the world to enjoy and celebrate the storied traditions of both football programs and universities.”

Harvard led 15-3 at halftime against the favored Bulldogs, which entered Saturday tied with Dartmouth atop the Ivy League standings and ranked No. 25 in the Football Championship Subdivision. The Crimson then led by 17 points in the fourth quarter before Yale rallied to force overtime. A touchdown in the second extra period gave the Bulldogs the win and a share of the conference title.

The two universities have met 136 times since 1875, with Yale holding a 68-60-8 lead in the series. Only two other rivalries have met more often in the history of college football.

Contributing: The Associated Press