Category: Education

Elizabeth Warren has a bill out to cut student interest rates. I am in favor of refinancing student loans, but Warren’s proposal is just downright strange, excepting its value as a public relations gimmick. The jumping off point for Warren’s policy is an observation that the Federal Reserve operates something called the discount window. Through… Continue reading Elizabeth Warren’s goofy student debt proposal

I enjoy the MOOC debates. It is one of the few topics that causes very smart people to make arguments that they would laugh away were someone to make them in other contexts. Being personally involved or affected by an issue will do that to you I guess. As I’ve written before, I don’t really… Continue reading Some MOOC points

There is a story out there that young people are facing escalating levels of debt. The student debt crowd is specifically fond of this story. But it isn’t so. The above graph comes from a recent Fed report that primarily set off a swarm of discussion about mortgages and car loans. More interesting to me… Continue reading Youth debt levels falling

I do not pretend to know what good teaching methods are. I am not a teacher, I have no training in teaching, and I do not follow teaching methods literature. I write about education quite a bit here only because so much of our discourse around class, inequality, poverty, and related economic issues are tied… Continue reading Arguing about education reform’s teaching methods

Mike Konczal is out with a post today about the macroeconomic effects of student debt, a post he briefly foreshadowed in our comment blood bath a couple of days ago about an unrelated matter. In the post, Konczal relies on a recent New York Fed report about the borrowing habits (specifically around car loans and… Continue reading Student debt and the macroeconomy