Accumulated student loan debt now totals $1 trillion. The Super Committee should fix the student loan program by requiring evidence of ability to repay guaranteed loans.

The powder keg underlying explosive discontent in the Arab Middle East was – and remains -- the disconnect between the economy and the system of higher education.

J. M. Barrie's famous 1904 play, Peter Pan or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, reflected the difficulty of the young entering the adult world in Victorian times. The story, still enormously popular, made the refusal to grow up sound charming. Far less charming is the thwarted transition to adulthood...

A side effect of the risk-assessment approach to student loans is to nudge the student cultures of college campuses in the direction of making responsible adult behavior more respectable.

A change in the federal student loan program can potentially produce more studious behavior from many students, not only in college but also in primary and secondary schools.

Before World War II, academically excellent students from families unable to afford college for them could apply for scholarships available to outstanding students, but scholarships were scarce. The federal government itself did not then make direct grants to individual high school students to enable them to attend college, as it does now.

Properly targeted incentives can improve not only remediation programs for underprepared college students but also can reduce the number of underprepared college students enrolled in American colleges and universities.

Notwithstanding his accounts of interactions with ignorant, lazy, and occasionally duplicitous undergraduates, Professor Allitt"s tone remained consistently upbeat.

What happens to delinquents over the long haul?

Review of No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, by Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom.