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.

The decade of relative prosperity prior to the fall was importantly fueled by an expansion in credit and rising leverage that spans about 10 years; it is followed by a lengthy period of retrenchment that most often only begins after the crisis and lasts almost as long as the credit surge.

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.

Rather than postponing reform for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Democratic Party should follow the lead of Andrew Jackson, who confronted the government sponsored enterprise issue of his day by disbanding the Second Bank of the United States.

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.