St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Student loans feeling credit crunch, too (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

Those students, though, paid interest rates of up to 20 percent to finance their educational dreams. Stephen Burd, senior research fellow at the New America Foundation who blogs about higher education, says the lending practices got out of hand. "We actually think that this is a positive development that subprime lending in for-profit education is being curtailed, because we don't think students should have been stuck with these high-interest, high-cost… more

Late in October, plans by the U.S. Department of Energy to construct a new, $500 million nuclear weapons plant in Kansas City came closer to fruition: The White House Office of Management and Budget signed off on a novel private financing arrangement for the deal.

The plant would replace an existing facility, known as the Kansas City Plant, that makes roughly 85 percent of the components that go into building a nuclear warhead. Key members of the Missouri congressional… more

Student loan banks and their allies are trying to spin away the public’s outrage over the discovery that private lenders have been bribing college aid officials to steer student business their way. The banks want to change the subject by criticizing the government’s separate direct loan program instead of looking at where all that bribe money comes from: You.

The government spends billions each year on unnecessary subsidies to banks that make student loans. It’s these excess taxpayer subsidies to private… more

Twenty-five years ago, far-sighted Missouri officials recognized that a college education gave people more control over their destinies, more options to improve their own lives, even the tools to break themselves and their families out of the cycle of poverty. They also recognized that the high cost of college could keep a lot of ordinary folks from getting such an education.So Democrats and Republicans in state government created a non-profit, public-private corporation and gave it the mission of… more

You might think that holiday shoppers driving on the nation’s highways would have enough to worry about with bad weather and high gas prices. But unless there is a sudden about-face on the part of the Federal Highway Administration, Americans are about to receive an unwelcome gift that, unlike a wrong-color necktie or bad-fitting socks, could literally kill them.

The FHA, which oversees our nation’s highway system, is about to issue a regulation allowing 97-foot-long multi-truck monstrosities to roar up… more

Missouri’s pending plan to sell its student loan non-profit’s assets in order to pay for $350 million in college construction is doomed to fail. What seems like a great arrangement for everyone has two major problems:

First, the deal depends on an illegal bribe. Second, it’s actually not that great for either students or taxpayers. Even so, there are ways to turn it into a good deal, if Washington and Jefferson City work together.

The plan calls for Missouri’s Higher… more