U.S. News & World Report

[Mortimer B. Zuckerman] is right that our nation needs to "equip Americans with the skills to make them mobile and give them greater economic security." Helping Americans learn better job skills will increase salaries, mobility, and prosperity. Job training is the sleeper issue of the 2008 presidential campaign. While candidates from both parties are talking about middle-class anxiety and inequality, neither party is addressing job skills. The party that begins to focus on job training and provides real solutions will… more

Universal healthcare means never having to say, "I'm sorry-you're not covered."The three Democratic candidates for the 2008 presidential nomination who have offered proposals to reform the nation's healthcare system-former Sen. John Edwards, Sen. Hillary Clinton, and, last week, Sen. Barack Obama-are all to varying degrees promising Americans, 45 million of whom currently have no insurance, that they won't have to fear hearing those words again...

On the question of getting and keeping insurance, all three candidates propose some version… more

In response to scandals rocking the student loan industry, the House has quickly passed reform legislation to require more disclosure from lenders as well as university codes of conduct, and Senate action is expected. But the larger issues of rising college costs and students' increasing dependence on private loans have, for the moment at least, taken a back seat. Yet that doesn't mean they've gone away. College costs have risen far faster than inflation and also outpaced the… more

For Joe Rothfarb, 24, getting coverage for healthcare has been a real pain in the neck. Years of playing the drums in a rock band have damaged the nerves that run up his left arm into his shoulder and neck, causing numbness and tingling and a sharp pain in his hand. The high-deductible policy he bought after college didn't kick in to help with his search for a diagnosis. His next plan did cover the doctor visits and tests-but when… more

Students with loans typically receive a barrage of solicitations for loan consolidations and other services in their mailboxes, and they often wonder how the advertisers got their names and addresses. Recent reports suggest they may have come from the U.S. Education Department itself.As first reported in the Washington Post, lenders have been improperly using the department's National Student Loan Data System to gain access to student loan information, including names and loan balances. Congress authorized the creation of… more

For parents who struggle like Sisyphus to overcome mountainous college expenses, only to be frustrated by the system, a bit of relief may be in sight.

No, college costs aren't coming down. Not even close-private schools are projected to raise tuition and fees about 5 1/2percent for the coming academic year, says the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities...

But while the cost of an education keeps growing at a significantly faster clip than inflation, the tools parents can use to… more

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's hiring this month of the prominent and prolific neoconservative analyst Eliot Cohen has Washington foreign policy watchers puzzling more than usual over what it may signal...One of the more intriguing theories is that Cohen's selection may reflect Rice's tactical pragmatism: It could give her greater political cover with increasingly skeptical conservatives in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney and at the Pentagon and National Security Council. Cohen, that thinking goes, could facilitate… more

Eli Broad never met a schedule he couldn't love...A newshound who built two Fortune 500 companies and a multibillion-dollar fortune, Broad (rhymes with road) whizzes through the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times each morning before most people can conquer a double cappuccino. He rarely slows down to finish a story, unless, as someone close to him puts it, "it's about him."But it's "about him" so often these days that just keeping… more

Making college more affordable was one of a half-dozen items in congressional Democrats' "Six for '06" campaign agenda. The goal, as it was succinctly put in the House Democrats' official policy document before the election: "Make college tuition deductible from taxes, permanently. Cut student loan interest rates. Expand Pell Grants."

What might such proposals cost? Although the Congressional Budget Office has not analyzed the potential costs of any of these initiatives, analyst Jaret Seiberg of Stanford Washington Policy Research has taken… more

In a television interview last weekend, President Bush said Social Security reform was "still alive" and again declared that it would be one of his top goals when the next Congress convenes. Of course, that's what Bush said right after the 2004 election. And despite pushing the issue hard and personally campaigning for it around the country–60 cities in 60 days in early 2005–the idea's beta version never really took off with the American people, and no legislation was ever… more