The College Investor Audio Show

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) introduced the Debt-Free College Act of 2026 (S. 5403) last month. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) introduced the House version (H.R. 10455) to be a companion bill. The bills would create federal-state partnerships so students can attend public colleges in their home state without borrowing, and they target helping families cover unmet need.

“Student debt isn’t just about tuition—it’s books, housing, supplies, and food,” Pocan said, according to Maui Now’s report on the bill. The Senate bill has nine Democratic cosponsors, and the House bill has 18.

Schatz and Pocan first introduced the idea in 2018, as free-tuition proposals gained ground and states began offering free community college.

Syracuse University is turning its cost review from the classroom to the administration building. The private New York university spent the spring trimming its degree list after missing its fall enrollment target and posting its first budget deficit in years. Now the chancellor wants a hard look at the offices that run the place.

If you haven’t followed the Syracuse saga, this comes after several years of missing enrollment targets and now facing budget issues, driven both by economic headwinds and the school’s own unforced errors.

If your financial aid package falls short of your need, you can ask the college for more financial aid by sending them a financial aid appeal letter.

A financial aid appeal is not like a negotiation. It is not like bargaining for a lower price on a car at the car dealership.

Most students lack leverage to get the college to throw out its financial aid rulebook. Good grades and test scores, and strong extracurriculars may get a student into a college, but aren’t enough to earn the student a full scholarship.

To get an increase to your financial aid package, you need to know how to present your financial situation correctly. Merely asking for more money will not work, unless your appeal is supported by documented special circumstances.

A successful financial aid appeal is based on providing the college financial aid administrator with relevant new information about special circumstances that affect your ability to pay for college. In this article, we'll show you how to write a financial aid appeal letter and let you know what supporting documentation to provide.

New York City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) proposed a first-in-the-nation rule on AI customer service on October 20, 2026. The rule would make it a deceptive trade practice to advertise customer service while answering only with irrelevant or wrong information. That is a familiar problem for borrowers who have dealt with servicer errors like MOHELA’s false past-due notices.

Businesses would also have to disclose when a customer is talking to an automated system, including phone menus, and give an easy way to reach a person. Violations could bring restitution and civil penalties starting at $525.

The proposal builds on a legal brief from Columbia Law School’s Center for Law and the Economy and Protect Borrowers arguing that companies are liable for their chatbots the same way they’re liable for human agents. Regulators have held servicers accountable for call center conduct before, including when the CFPB banned Navient from federal loan servicing in a $120 million settlement.

The legal fight over paying college athletes just reached the NCAA’s largest division. Three current and former Division III athletes sued the NCAA on October 23, 2026. They argue the ban on athletic scholarships at more than 400 schools is illegal price fixing under federal antitrust law.

The case, Printz v. National Collegiate Athletic Association (2:26-cv-12448), seeks damages for athletes who competed in Division III since October 21, 2022. It also asks the court to stop the NCAA from enforcing the ban.

About 210,000 athletes compete in Division III each year, according to the NCAA (PDF File). None of them can receive an athletic scholarship today.

Robert joined Chuck Jaffe on the Money Life Show this week and discussed the latest that was happening with the PSLF lawsuits. You can listen to the clip and catch up on the latest.

For most undergraduates, paying for college starts with a Federal Direct Loan in the student's name, with no credit check and no cosigner. The problem is the size. A dependent freshman can borrow $5,500, and even a senior tops out at $7,500, while the average sticker price at a private four-year college runs well past $40,000 a year.

When the federal loan runs out, families turn to a Parent PLUS loan or a private loan, and that is where the "can't get a student loan" problem starts. Parents get denied for adverse credit history, or get approved but hit the new $20,000 annual cap. Students without a creditworthy cosigner get turned down by private lenders, and more than 93% of private undergraduate loans require a cosigner.

Each dead end below has a fix, from the federal options most families miss to the handful of private lenders that approve students other lenders won't, along with what those loans cost.

Yes. Unemployment benefits count as income on the FAFSA because the IRS treats them as taxable income, and the FAFSA starts with your adjusted gross income (AGI). Benefits received in 2025 are part of the 2025 AGI that the 2027-28 FAFSA imports directly from the IRS, so they raise the Student Aid Index the same way wages do.

The bigger issue for most families is timing. The 2027-28 FAFSA is open now and looks back to 2025 income, so a layoff in 2026 or 2027 doesn't show up on the form at all. Families in that spot can ask each college to adjust their aid through a process called professional judgment. Here's how unemployment benefits are treated on the form, and how to get the aid office to account for a job loss.

More than 870 colleges now advertise free tuition for some students, but a new Brookings Institution analysis finds most of these programs repackage existing financial aid rather than add new money. In a new research brief, economist Phillip Levine concludes that the biggest benefit of free tuition may be marketing: it tells families in plain terms that they won’t pay the sticker price that only 1 in 8 students actually pays.

Levine matched a Washington Post database of free tuition policies against federal IPEDS data and net price calculator results from 200 randomly selected four-year colleges. Of the 2,994 colleges in his analysis, 871 (29%) offer free tuition to some group of students, and those schools enroll about 42% of all students, according to Brookings. The programs range from campus-level offers like Rice University’s expanded $200,000 threshold to statewide programs such as New York’s Excelsior Scholarship.

The University of Arizona announced that it will freeze tuition and mandatory fees for every undergraduate and graduate student for fall 2027. Resident undergraduates will have gone four years without a tuition increase, and the freeze extends to nonresident undergraduates and all graduate programs for the first time.

For families watching college costs rise three times faster than inflation, a public flagship keeping its price steady gives them one less thing to plan around.

The plan still needs a final vote. The Arizona Board of Regents will review the full tuition, fees, housing and meal plan proposal at its November meeting, so the rates below are proposed rather than final. Families can see how the state’s three public universities fit with other Arizona financial aid and college cost options while the vote is pending.