By Blair Emerson. Higher education advocates say a 2008 federal law made state loans less accessible. As Congress works to renew the Higher Education Act this year, student leaders in Minnesota are pushing legislators to make state student loans more accessible. The Minnesota Student Association, the Minnesota State University Student Association and national higher education advocates say the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 restricted how colleges inform students about non-federal loans, driving many students to options more costly than loans provided by the state. The law, enacted in 2010, required colleges to certify all non-federal loans through a lengthy process, said Tricia Grimes, a financial aid analyst at the Minnesota Office of Higher Education. More...

By Rob Carrick. Give parents an A-plus for talking up the importance of a post-secondary education for their kids, and a C-minus for backing it up with financial help.
There are student loans, bursaries, scholarships, tax deductions and part-time work to help students pay their tuition and living costs while attending college or university, but they’re not enough. Parents need to chip in as well to keep kids out of deep debt that can take 10 years to pay off. More...

By Andrew Moreau. Tax-filing season is coming to a close. At a personal level, it's a close-up look at the web of taxes and credits that are relevant to me and my family. More broadly, it's good time to reflect on tax policies, their purposes and their fairness. The cost of higher education is getting heavy scrutiny. More...

By Vincenzo Raimo. Unless student loans are made available for study overseas, studying a whole degree abroad will be limited to the very well-off or super bright. Study abroad is the thing of the moment: last year, we had the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) Industrial strategy for international education talking about the government's "ambition to increase the number of UK students gaining valuable experience through overseas mobility placements". More...

By Alexis Garcia. The idea that you have to go to college in order to be a respectable member of the middle class is "kind of weird" to Glenn Reynolds. The professor of law at the University of Tennessee and purveyor of the popular Instapundit blog, says students and parents are starting to rethink the benefits of higher education compared to the enormous costs associated with it. Reynolds sat down with Reason TV to discuss his latest work,  The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education From Itself.  The book examines the higher education bubble and suggests ways students, parents, and educators can remake the system. More...

By EvoLLLution NewsWire. On Friday, the Obama administration proposed a new set of gainful employment rules that will tighten federal oversight of for-profit colleges and universities if passed into law. The last set of regulations — which included loan-repayment expectations — were struck down by a federal judge in 2012. After that, the Department of Education went back to the drawing board to protect students from low-quality, high-debt programs while keeping access to career-focused programs open. More...