Blessed with a sudden and unanticipated increase in revenue, the centrepiece of Treasurer Scott Morrison’s third Budget was the Government’s personal income tax plan which will cost the Budget $13.4 billion over the four-year forward estimates. The proposed tax cuts however will result in a very significant reduction in government revenue of some $140 billion over a ten year period, as the more expensive tax cuts, which are targeted predominantly at people on higher incomes, kick in from 2024–25 onwards. More...
Changes to HELP repayment thresholds delayed in the Senate
The legislation would have resulted in the income threshold at which students must start repaying their HELP loans dropping from about $56,000 to $45,000 from 1 July this year. More...
Why is the government halting loan payments to vulnerable students?
A fraud investigation has left students estranged from their families in extreme poverty. We need an understanding system. More...
Student Loans Company 'spied on vulnerable students' social media'
The Student Loans Company (SLC) has been accused of spying on the social media accounts of vulnerable students as part of an anti-fraud drive that resulted in some losing funding and dropping out of university despite no finding of guilt against them. More...
DeVos Rule Would Cut Billions in Student Loan Relief
By Andrew Kreighbaum. Education Department proposes regulatory overhaul that would make loan forgiveness less likely for defrauded borrowers. Majority of outstanding loan claims were filed by former for-profit college students. More...
Why we should all stop claiming the current student loan system will cost more than the old one
There is a huge appetite to know more about this: my own piece on the subject has been more widely read than anything else I have ever written. One point that particularly resonated with people (securing 1,400 retweets) was a point about the limited access civil servants and politicians have to academic output in peer-reviewed journals. More...
Why are colleges closing and what can we do?
The recent closure of Mt. Ida College in Newton, Mass., and the purchase of its assets (debt) by the UMass Amherst has dominated the higher education attention of the Boston press. More...
Feds move to make it harder for defrauded college students to erase debt
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos moved Wednesday to make it harder for students who say they were defrauded by colleges to erase their debts, rolling back Obama-era regulations that for-profit colleges saw as threatening their survival. More...
Colleges ask for a share of future salary in lieu of loans
As more students balk at the debt loads they face after graduation, some colleges are offering an alternative: We’ll pay your tuition if you offer us a percentage of your future salary. More...
Congress seeks to fix our higher education system
Today, college students are saddled with more student loan debt than ever before in American history. The average student loan debt for 2017 graduates was over $39,000, which is a six percent uptick from 2016. More...