Kevin Carey

Debt Forgiveness Is a Political Minefield

Last month, the Biden administration announced plans to forgive the first $10,000 of most outstanding federal student loans, and up to $20,000 for students who received Pell grants. As a means of providing immediate relief to people caught in the…

Introduction: A Different Kind of College Ranking

A year ago, the nation was tantalizingly close to making college tuition-free for millions of students. The Biden administration’s ambitious domestic policy agenda included a free community college plan that bore a more-than-passing resemblance to…

Biden’s big new student loan forgiveness plan, explained

Skip to main content President Joe Biden announced his administration’s long-awaited student loan forgiveness plan Wednesday, saying it will forgive $10,000 in student loans for borrowers who earned less than $125,000 during the pandemic. People who…

Biden is expected to make an announcement about student loans soon. Nobody’s going to be happy.

Twenty-nine months ago, the Education Department’s enormous student loan collection machine shuddered to a stop. It has stayed that way through the ups and downs of the pandemic, a presidential election, an inflation crisis and more. Officially, the…

Why Is America Fractured? Blame College, a New Book Argues.

AFTER THE IVORY TOWER FALLS: How College Broke the American Dream and Blew Up Our Politics — and How to Fix It, by Will Bunch Americans owe $1.7 trillion in student loans, an amount so gargantuan that it has lodged in the public consciousness, like…

The Single Most Important Thing to Know About Financial Aid: It’s a Sham

In early March, a 17-year-old high school senior I’ll call Ethan got a text message from Ursinus College, a small, private liberal arts school located about 45 minutes outside of Philadelphia. It said, “Great news, [Ethan]! Ursinus College has…

In defense of pre-K

In January, a team of researchers at Vanderbilt University released a study that seemed to be a serious setback to the push for nationwide, universal pre-K programs. The study found that children who enrolled in a Tennessee pre-kindergarten program…

Restarting student loan payments could be a chaotic disaster

In February, the Department of Education plans to turn on the nation’s student debt collection machinery for the first time in nearly two years. There’s a real danger it will not go well. Many student debtors were rocked by unemployment, dislocation,…

The Corruption at the Heart of College Sports

Early in the morning of April 6, 1993, I found myself standing among several thousand people in the middle of Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. We were all very drunk, incredibly happy, and extremely cold. The party had started on…

Learning While Black

In 2019, the state of Mississippi provided the University of Mississippi, affectionately known as “Ole Miss,” about $245 million to support the education of 22,500 students. Divide those numbers, and you get roughly $10,900 per student, to which Ole…

The College Degree Is in Shambles

College degrees are assets. Or at least they are sufficiently asset-like that many people are willing to borrow large amounts of money to obtain them. Degrees unlock valuable parts of the labor market and yield returns in the form of additional…

Men Fall Behind in College Enrollment. Women Still Play Catch-Up at Work.

The coronavirus upended the lives of millions of college students. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that men have been hit particularly hard — accounting for roughly three-fourths of pandemic-driven dropouts — and depicted an accelerating…

Why Conservatives Hate College

There was a room in my high school where they kept the chopped-up carcass of an old car. You could take the engine apart and put it back together, or slice pieces off the door with a saw that made orange sparks fly. It was a dirty, greasy place in a…

The Great Master’s-Degree Swindle

In 2013 I wrote a Chronicle column about the University of Pennsylvania’s Master of Applied Positive Psychology program. I chose the MAPP program because it sent me some goofy unsolicited marketing emails, so, fair game! And it represented trends I…

Master’s Degrees Are the Second Biggest Scam in Higher Education

Last week, the Wall Street Journal published a troubling exposé on the crushing debt burdens that students accumulate while pursuing master’s degrees at elite universities in fields like drama and film, where the job prospects are limited and the…

Rich Schools, Poor Schools and a Biden Plan

Can President Biden fix America’s inequitable public school funding? The administration’s latest budget proposal suggests he’s going to try. The plan includes a $20 billion program for high-poverty school districts. States would get additional…

The Biden Plan for Free Community College Has a Big Challenge

Coming up with a national policy for a college system that is decentralized is a lot tougher than it seems. As part of the $1.8 trillion American Families Plan, the Biden administration plans to fund free community college, even as the administration…

Do Not Be Alarmed by Wild Predictions of Robots Taking Everyone’s Jobs

In February, McKinsey Global Institute predicted that 45 million Americans—one-quarter of the workforce—would lose their jobs to automation by 2030. That was up from its 2017 estimate that 39 million would be automated out of work, due to the…

Las ventajas de tener un secretario de Educación bilingüe

Cuando Miguel Cardona tenía 5 años, comenzó el jardín de niños en una escuela pública. Sus padres se habían mudado de Puerto Rico a Meriden, Connecticut, donde nació Miguel. Su padre trabajaba como policía en la ciudad y su familia residía en una…

The Potential Plus of Having a Former ‘English Learner’ as Education Secretary

When Miguel Cardona was 5, he started kindergarten in public school. His parents had moved from Puerto Rico to Meriden, Conn., where he was born. His father worked as a city police officer, and his family lived in public housing. They spoke Spanish…