Jason Delisle
Washington Examiner
Washington, DC, United States
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Past articles by Jason:
Private colleges punch above their weight on economic mobility
Public universities are in trouble. The COVID-19 pandemic is set to blow a hole in state budgets across the country, and legislators will surely balance the books, as they always do, by cutting funding for public higher education. A recent Brookings Institution analysis warns against this move, arguing that public colleges and universities are the “workhorses” of economic mobility. → Read More
Biden’s free-college plan is a solution in search of a problem
Policymakers should instead embrace our existing, well-functioning student-aid system and improve upon it. → Read More
The Report Card with Nat Malkus: What lessons can we learn from other countries’ higher education system? (with Jason Delisle and Alex Usher)
Germany has free college. Australia has low default rates. Why can’t America just follow their example? When proposing higher education reform, politicians → Read More
Graduate Schools with the Lowest Rates of Student Loan Repayment
Graduate and professional degrees, in contrast, receive far less scrutiny. For example, when the Obama administration... → Read More
Two student loan studies everyone missed
Jason Delilse describes two research studies that have received little public attention but that are very relevant to changes in federal student loan policy that are under consideration in the run up to reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. → Read More
How Secretary DeVos could explain student loan interest rates
The right’s typical talking points on student loans are misguided. Here's a better answer. → Read More
Maybe public universities aren’t shutting out more poor students after all
The income distribution of students at selective public colleges has barely changed in recent decades. → Read More
Even the Education Department is confused about the student loan program
Policies for curing a defaulted loan are so confusing, even the Department of Education gets them wrong – really wrong. → Read More
The Pell Grant proxy: A ubiquitous but flawed measure of low-income student enrollment
Delisle documents deep flaws in the measure that is used to rate colleges and hold them accountable for serving low-income students. He recommends as a replacement for the Pell measure a new measure that draws info on income of college students directly from IRS tax records. → Read More
Sure, 529 plans benefit the wealthy — but what about student loan forgiveness?
While critics are correct that 529 plans provide a subsidy to upper-income families, they often do not realize the federal student loan program does too. But in contrast to the calls to end 529 plans, lawmakers have only made federal student loans more generous in recent years as they seek to address a perceived student debt crisis. → Read More
A compelling argument for Ivy League obsession falls flat
Yes, you can become a billionaire, be elected to Congress, or run one of the largest nonprofit organizations without an Ivy League diploma. → Read More
Trump proposes more student loan forgiveness, activists yawn
President Trump proposed a generous loan forgiveness program in his budget request earlier this year, but those who you would expect to support such a plan actually oppose it. → Read More
The tangled world of teacher debt
The reauthorization of the Higher Education Act presents an excellent opportunity for policymakers to create a clearer and fairer system ... → Read More
The disinvestment hypothesis: Don’t blame state budget cuts for rising tuition at public universities
Researchers treat two theories in higher education--the Bennett hypothesis and the state disinvestment hypothesis--with very different levels of skepticism. → Read More
The Disinvestment hypothesis: Don’t blame state budget cuts for rising tuition at public universities
There are many popular explanations for why college tuition tends to rise faster than inflation, and each of these motivate different policy proposals about whether, how, and whom to subsidize in o… → Read More
Lower-income borrowers get extra help in Trump's student loan budget
Most undergraduate students will come out ahead under the Trump plan. → Read More
Gainful employment: measuring quality or measuring subsidy?
The Obama administration's "gainful employment" rule for higher education is an incomplete measure of the value an educational program provides to society. → Read More
Do state subsidies for public universities favor the affluent?
Indirect subsidies at public universities are inherently opaque and less understood than grants and loans. A more rigorous approach requires student-level data about family income and the finances of the school each student attends. Jason Delisle and Kim Dancy link two datasets to develop a more refined measure of indirect subsidies. → Read More
Headache for Hillary's higher education plan
Hillary Clinton's higher education platform is misguided, says Jason Delisle. Although the government is expected to earn profits on the student loan program, it is only earning profits on federal loans for graduate students and parents of undergraduates, not for undergraduates. Clinton is targeting rate cuts for the wrong loans. → Read More