The Chronicle of Higher Education

In the next eight years, medical schools intend to increase enrollment in order to accommodate the medical needs of aging baby boomers and replace retiring doctors from that generation. But Shannon Brownlee, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, writes that adding more doctors does not necessarily mean better care.

The Association of American Medical Colleges, which advises the federal government on how many medical residents to support, says that the country will be 100,000 doctors short by 2025… more

The student lender Sallie Mae, after trying to force colleges in at least three states to provide it with contact information for potential student borrowers, is backing down.

The company, which is the nation's largest student-loan provider, described the shift in strategy after a Washington-based policy group revealed this month that the lender had filed a New York Freedom of Information Law request asking community colleges in the State University of New York system to provide it with student names,… more

Nebraska’s attorney general, Jon Bruning, attacked his counterpart in New York on Tuesday over his investigation of Nelnet, a student-loan company based in Lincoln, Neb.

In an interview with the Omaha World-Herald, Mr. Bruning called the New York attorney general Andrew M. Cuomo’s investigation of Nelnet and other student-loan companies “ridiculous” and “political.” Mr. Cuomo expanded his investigation last week to include alleged improper ties between lenders and 40 athletics departments.

Mr. Bruning has himself come under fire in connection with Nelnet.… more

Congress is considering a plan that would require banks and other lenders to compete for the right to make federally guaranteed student loans. The proposal, which has bipartisan support, would set up government-run "auctions" in which lenders would bid on loans based on the size of the government subsidy they would be willing to accept. Those lenders that agreed to the lowest subsidy rate would "win," earning the right to lend to students in a particular state, region,… more

The investigation of New York State's attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, into the questionable practices of lenders in federal student-loan programs has helped raise public awareness of one of the greatest scams in our government: The Federal Family Education Loan program, otherwise known as the guaranteed-student-loan program, is unnecessarily expensive, structurally broken, and rife with corruption. It is increasingly clear that our convoluted federal student-loan delivery system, through which private lenders provide government-backed loans to students, cannot be fixed by… more

Senate Democrats introduced a bill on Tuesday that would slash government subsidies to student-loan companies and use the savings to pay down a portion of the federal deficit and create two new grant programs aimed at helping low-income students attend college. The bill-- a "budget reconciliation" measure that will be considered by the Senate education committee today, along with legislation introduced on Monday that would reauthorize the Higher Education Act -- would also cap the amount of money… more

America’s financial-aid system provides too much taxpayer support to banks that make college loans, asks too little of students who assume them, and burdens families with too much debt. We need to rethink the system in order to improve college access and affordability. Federal higher-education policy largely fails to reward rigorous college-preparatory work in high school. It penalizes students who hold jobs while in college. Lenders make extraordinary profits, while young people leave college burdened with debt and, more often… more

On the eve of the Congressional elections, a report has surfaced that reinforces the close ties between members of the student-loan industry and Republican leaders.

Now that polls show that Democrats have a good chance of gaining control of the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate, many lenders fear they will pay for tying their fortunes so closely to the Republican Party.

According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, no company has donated more money this year to… more

Today the U.S. military and NATO are engaged with the Taliban on a scale not seen since the winter of 2001, both because coalition forces are pushing into areas that were formerly no-go and dominated by the Taliban, and because religious warriors have regrouped substantially over the past few years. In the past three months, U.S. military officials estimate that coalition forces have killed more than a thousand Taliban, while the religious militia has in turn killed dozens of coalition… more