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Why Hillary Clinton’s college-tuition reform plan won’t help students

Clinton has been rolling out her sweeping higher education plan, which aims to help millions pay for college and reduce interest rates for people with student loans.

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Hillary Clinton introduced an ambitious plan this week to make college more affordable for Americans.

Political opposition from Republicans in Congress is a virtual guarantee, however.

For future students: Clinton’s plan would give federal grants to states that pledge to lower costs so that no student will have to take out loans to cover tuition. To get these grants, according to Vox.com, colleges must ensure students can afford their tuitions without loans.

Bush, a fan of online classes as economical alternatives, may have ideas about lowering college costs, but he said nothing Monday about lowering families’ college debt burdens, which are eye-popping considering the current employment picture, flat-lined wages, and rising costs for essentials including housing and food.

The $350 billion Clinton proposes to invest would be spread out over 10 years. One that Clinton has said she favors is to tax so-called carried interest as ordinary income. Along with money from personal savings and borrowing, the estimated family contribution would include student earnings from 10 hours of work a week.

Colleges don’t necessarily use money from higher tuition costs to hire more professors but rather more federal money in education, often in the form of backing for loans, seems to be quite a boon for bureaucrats.

“The program that Hillary Clinton is proposing is well-intentioned”, she said, “but it’s not addressing the fundamental problems in higher education”.

A fact sheet points to a proposal co-sponsored by New Hampshire’s Democratic senator, Jeanne Shaheen, that would change the formula for determining eligibility for certain federal funds based on the proportion of students who are paying back loans, and require “risk-sharing” payments to the Department of Education for loans not being repaid. “That to me is the Democratic way where they just absolutely feel gimme, gimme, gimme”.

What government can do is offer large tax reductions to corporations which build in economically depressed areas, and which donate to HBCUs to support endowment expansion, programmatic development and better social positioning.

Clinton’s campaign also released a video highlighting a number of students who have been saddled with up to $200,000 in student debt.

“This proposal will likely increase the numbers of students enrolled in public institutions substantially – people consume more of pretty much anything when the price to them is reduced”, said Monica Herk, vice president of education research at the Committee for Economic Development, a Washington-based think tank. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

There are more than 40 million students and graduates in the United States with education debt amounting to a collective $1.2 trillion, exceeding debt from credit cards, auto loans or home equity lines of credit.

Walker is Clinton’s latest target.

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“Really I admire you, greatly, for that”, Clinton said during a town hall at the River Valley Community College in Claremont, New Hampshire. (Currently, four in 10 students don’t graduate within six years.).

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