The One Big Beautiful Bill Act includes the largest overhaul to the federal student aid system in decades, limiting loan repayment and debt forgiveness options for borrowers.
I was like, 'What do you mean, I can actually work and take some classes?' I didn't even know there were apprenticeships out there, because I thought it was something of the past. That was my dream-to go into some field of engineering-so it was great to find something like AT&T, which has an apprenticeship program where you can jump into it, which later becomes software engineering.
"Our city advances when our workers can too. By connecting city workers to undergraduate and graduate educations, we're empowering the next generation of civil servants who act ambitiously, think creatively and believe firmly in government's ability to improve the lives of working people."
One of my favorite movies is Good Will Hunting. Will Hunting (played by Matt Damon) is a 20-year-old janitor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Although he works a blue-collar job, he is secretly a self-taught genius with an extraordinary gift for mathematics and an exceptional memory. One day, he anonymously solves a complex math problem left on a chalkboard by Professor Gerald Lambeau, astonishing the faculty.
Business Insider looked at wages and growth projections for jobs that usually need a high school diploma, its equivalent, or a postsecondary nondegree award. We then took the geometric mean of the ones that pay at least $75,000, based on 2024 median annual wage data, and are expected to need more workers, based on projected employment growth from 2024 to 2034. We then ranked the jobs, with the larger the geometric mean, the better the rank.
According to federal data, 24 percent of New York adults are at the lowest levels of literacy, defined by the advocacy organization Literacy New York as being either functionally illiterate (reading below a fifth grade level), lacking a high school diploma, or being unable to speak English. That same data shows Brooklyn and Queens rates are roughly ten percent higher than the state average, and in the Bronx, a whopping 50 percent of adults do not have basic literacy skills.
In general, students across all income brackets are paying less for college, adjusted for inflation, than they did six years ago at all types of institutions. In some cases, those drops were especially high, including for low- and middle-income students at the nation's wealthiest private colleges; their average net price dropped 28.1 percent and 30.8 percent, respectively.
Engineering jobs often require rigorous coursework if not a higher degree, and the scarcity of qualified engineers means employers are willing to pay high wages. Notably, the engineering field with the lowest mid-career median wage is still in the six-figure range.
Cuts that hurt are obvious: layoffs, program closures, college closures, furloughs, deferred maintenance, pay freezes, travel freezes, etc. It's a well-worn playbook at this point. Most of the moves in this category involve either attacking employee compensation, which causes obvious pain, or putting off necessary investments and living with gradual declines in quality.
It can be scary to borrow large student loans to finance an expensive college degree. There is a market failure, however, every time a student does not attend their preferred college, study their preferred major, or pursue their preferred career because they are afraid of student loans. Students should be free to pursue their passions - not forced into second-best choices because of the cost of the degree or the prospect of a lower income in the future.
Young people are "experiencing higher education differently, and that is shaping much of what parents are saying," said Lammers. "[Parents] are reacting to the questions their children are asking and trying to find the best way to help them navigate the next steps."
For many students, vertical transfer (transfer from an associate's to a bachelor's program) is less a bridge than a maze. Typically, about 80 percent of community college students say they intend to earn a bachelor's degree, yet only about 30 percent ever transfer and roughly 16 percent complete a bachelor's within six years. Yet under these topline numbers, outcomes vary widely. And figuring out which combinations of student actions and background factors matter, and which pathways are most promising, can be a complicated mess.
