In the years since the Clinton administration first championed the Hope and Lifetime Learning Tax Credits, every successive Democratic presidential nominee has pushed his own tuition tax cut plan on the campaign – each more generous than the last.

What accounts for the Democrats’ love affair with tuition tax breaks? Is it because they believe that this is best possible public policy? ThaContinue Reading »

In his State of the Union address in January, President Obama called on Congress to make the American Opportunity Tax Credit (AOTC) permanent, saying that his proposal would save “millions of middle-class families thousands of dollars” off of the cost of sending their kids to college. What he didn’t say was that the primary beneficiaries of his tuition tax credit program are actually much farthContinue Reading »

This Wednesday, Education Sector will be hosting an event on the future of Pell Grants, the cornerstone of federal financial aid for low-income students. In preparation, we thought we’d highlight the following five things we think you should know about the program:

On Tuesday, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) held a hearing before a Senate Judiciary Committee subpanel promoting legislation that would allow financially distressed borrowers to discharge their private student loans in bankruptcy. If Durbin has any hope of getting traction on this important bill, he’s going to need the help of another powerful Illinois politician: President Obama, who has so far avoidContinue Reading »

Did the lobbyists at the American Council on Education (ACE) sleep through the hearings that Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa have held on the for-profit higher education industry over the past two years? Were they too busy snoozing to notice all of the scandals embroiling the sector that have exposed the wholesale failure of federal and state regulators and accreditors to safeguard the federal student Continue Reading »

President Obama proposed today to permanently extend the American Opportunity Tax Credit, a partially refundable $2,500 tax credit that families with incomes up to $180,000 can claim to help offset the costs of higher education. But as I wrote in the “Student Aid Perspectives” column that ran this morning on the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrator’s website, providing fiContinue Reading »

As I wrote last week, President Obama is facing a major uphill battle in persuading Congress to overhaul the inequitable funding formula that the government uses to allocate funds through the federal campus based student aid programs. Lobbyists representing the country’s wealthiest and most prestigious colleges and universities have successfully beaten back all prior efforts to do so, and are gContinue Reading »

With his call to revamp campus-based student aid, President Obama has joined what has been an on-again, off-again 30-year battle over the programs’ funding structure. He is the third president in a row (and at least the fourth overall) to call for overhauling the highly-inequitable funding formula that the government uses to allocate the campus-based aid programs. Lobbyists representing the couContinue Reading »

The higher education plan that President Obama unveiled last week should be applauded not only because it would hold colleges accountable for their “affordability and value” but also because it would overhaul the highly-inequitable funding formula that the government uses to allocate campus-based student aid funds.

The campus-based programs – Federal Work Study, Perkins Loans, and SuppleContinue Reading »

In his State of the Union Speech last night, President Obama proposed reducing the interest rate on federally subsidized student loans in the 2013 fiscal year, expanding the Federal Work Study program, making the American Opportunity Tax Credit permanent, and pressuring colleges to curb tuition growth.

But he made no mention of Pell Grants.

In pointing out this omission, we’re notContinue Reading »