Editorial voices from elsewhere
Editorial voices from newspapers around the United States as compiled by the Associated Press:
Congressional Republicans might be able to make a case for eliminating federal student loan programs, but there is no justification for targeting programs designed to help the poorest students.
Led by Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Senate Republicans recently allowed the 50-year-old Perkins Student Loan program to lapse Oct. 1. Nationwide, about 500,000 of the lowest-income students each year take out about $1.2 billion in Perkins loans through 1,500 participating colleges. The loans are at 5 percent interest and have longer repayment deferral periods than other federal student loans.
In Pennsylvania, about 40,000 students at more than 100 schools received about $70 million in loans last year. As noted recently by Wilkes University President Patrick Leahy, access to Perkins loans will determine whether many students are able to remain in school. He said 155 of Wilkes’ first-year students rely at least partially on Perkins loans.
College affordability is one of the pressing issues of modern times. It’s one thing to complain about a particular program, but quite another to cut off students. Congress should restore the program.
There was a time when college sports programs were a way to boost school spirit and cover the costs of scholarships, travel and other expenses. Today, major colleges have sports programs with multi-million dollar budgets, coaches with seven-figure contracts and lucrative television contracts or conference TV networks.
The universities get a cut of the money from selling gear with the school colors and logos.
The only ones not getting a chunk of this revenue are the players at Division I (major colleges) programs.
Facing threats of college athletes forming unions, athletic department officials and the NCAA have allowed “cost of attendance” money to be distributed to athletes. The money is in addition to the usual scholarships athletes receive. The cost of attendance is designed to cover the additional expenses student-athletes have to pay.
Don’t kid yourself, athletics are the “front porch” for many prospective students, as a way to boost contributions from alums and corporate sponsors. All those are additional revenue streams for the universities, not just the athletic departments.
At the bottom of the food chain are the men and women who actually play the games. Almost all won’t get a pro contract. Yet, they will have suffered several severe injuries and have spent an incredible amount of time training and at practice for the games.
The “cost of attendance” along with the traditional scholarship are a small price to pay for those athletes. At least it is a start to a more fair system.
About 6,000 drug offenders will be released from federal prisons within weeks, their terms cut short by new sentencing guidelines. Their release reflects not just the revised, retroactive guidelines enacted by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, but also the nation’s growing concern about the number of citizens it jails.
About one of every 100 Americans is incarcerated, one-third for drug crimes. Freeing nearly half of nonviolent drug offenders is a bold and necessary first step in restoring a criminal justice system burdened by draconian sentencing laws of the 1980s and 1990s.
Although America has just under 5 percent of the world’s population, it imprisons about 22 percent of the world’s inmates, in part because of aggressive drug prosecution and “three strikes” laws adopted by 23 states and the federal government. Since 1980, the federal prison population spiked by 800 percent, and federal prisons are nearly 40 percent over capacity.
The sentences come at great cost not only to prisoners, but also to taxpayers. Prisons consume one-third of the Justice Department’s $27 billion annual budget.