
America’s Middle Class is Now a Minority
America’s middle class has shrunk by almost 20 percent since the 1970s and now is a minority of the population of the United States.

America’s middle class has shrunk by almost 20 percent since the 1970s and now is a minority of the population of the United States.

A study finds that student loan default rates among students with supportive families who earn a four-year college degree are low compared to low-income borrowers who attend schools associated with low labor market outcomes.

Corinthian Colleges is officially shutting down all of its remaining 28 ground campuses, displacing about 16,000 students. The action comes less than two weeks after the U.S. Department of Education announced it had fined the for-profit institution $30 million for misrepresentation. According to the Colleges’ latest SEC filings, their schools generated $1.2 billion in government loans last year.

With University of California tuition more than doubling in the last decade, about two-thirds of Californians now rate affordability at America’s largest public college system as poor. Despite Federal Reserve warnings about default risks for student loans, the UC system intends to raise tuition by 5 percent next year and 21.5 percent over the next 5 years.

Debt, like fire, can be a dangerous instrument. A cynic might even think the point of getting government more deeply involved in student loans is to establish a dependency stranglehold over young people, whose votes could be purchased in one election after the next by promising to write off some of the insanely high debt they’ve incurred to pay absurdly inflated tuition rates for over-valued diplomas.