A Republican senator says that American universities have a “monopoly” on higher education, and he has some legislation aimed at breaking it up and putting more federal support behind vocational and skills training.

Tuesday morning, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., announced a pair of bills to expand federal aid available for vocational training and to hold universities accountable when students can’t pay back their loans, calling the ideas a “bold reform of higher education.”

The first bill would “amend the Federal Pell Grant Program to support career training opportunities for young Americans,” according to its description. It would do this by telling the Department of Education to develop “an alternative certification program” in order to allow Pell grants to go toward toward things like apprenticeships and certification programs.

How would this work? As an example, background materials from Hawley’s office say a company that partnered with a local technical college to create an employee training program would be able to grow it using Pell grant dollars, which are not available now.

The second bill would impose on institutions shared responsibilities with students for their college loans. It would require colleges and universities to pay half the balance of the student loans accrued at their school if students default on them.

The current maximum award for a Pell grant, which is need-based federal assistance based on a variety of factors, is $6,195 for the current award year.

“American students and workers need more pathways into the middle class, more opportunities to get good work and build bright futures. And they shouldn’t have to further enrich colleges by taking on a mountain of debt or mortgage their lives in order to get a good-paying job,” Hawley said in a statement.

The senator also derided the current education system “that preferences students who want to attend a four-year college over Americans who want to learn a skill” and”protects higher education institutions that have been padding their endowments with taxpayer money while they raise tuition.”

Hawley’s proposal would also help correct a major problem in the United States economy: A lack of skilled tradespeople. A 2018 report at NPR delved into just how bad the labor disparity is for trade jobs in the U.S., most of which have far more vacancies than trained people to work them.

“It’s time to level the playing field and provide more options for career training,” Hawley’s statement said. “We also must hold higher education institutions accountable that take advantage of students who rack up mountains of debt, are unable to find a good job and default on their loans.”

Hawley’s student loan plan stands in stark contrast to proposals put forward in the 2020 Democratic primary field. Sens. Bernie Sanders, Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, Mass., have introduced loan “forgiveness” proposals in Congress, while other primary candidates have introduced their own differing loan proposals. A recent survey of Senate Democrats, however, found most of them silent on whether or not the American taxpayer should pick up the tab for other peoples’ student loans. (For more from the author of “Republican Senator Introduces Plan to Break the Universities’ Higher Ed Stranglehold” please click HERE)

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Campus radicalism and intolerance have become so virulent at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln that a former university official warned current administrators that the campus is no longer “safe” for conservatives.

Contrary to repeated assurances from university officials, internal emails show the UNL campus is not a welcoming environment for conservative students. When a records request submitted by Conservative Review threatened to make those emails public last week, school officials scrambled to address the anti-conservative bias of UNL faculty and staff and their hostility to free speech. That was almost three months after a campus incident captured national attention.

On August 25, the chapter president of a campus conservative group, Turning Point USA, was mercilessly harassed by professors. As Campus Reform reported, University of Nebraska-Lincoln sophomore Katie Mullen said at least two professors and a lecturer circled the group’s table yelling, “TPUSA Nazis” and “Fuck Charlie Kirk!” Kirk is the founder and executive director of Turning Point USA.

Turning Point USA captured video of lecturer Courtney Lawton, reportedly a member of the English department, holding a “Just say NO! to neo-fascism” sign, flipping off the camera, and yelling, “Neo-fascist Becky right here! Wants to destroy public schools, public universities, hates DACA kids.” “Becky” is slur with sexual connotations used against white women to mean “basic bitch.”

A second professor, Amanda Gailey, carried a sign that read “Turning Point: Please put me on your watchlist. Prof. Amanda Gailey.”

A later video shows Mullen being threatened with arrest by a school administrator for setting up her Turning Point USA table in an area that wasn’t a designated free speech zone.

Nearly three months later — when a Conservative Review public information request threatened to expose internal communications about the unsafe environment for conservatives on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus — school officials declined to release the documents promptly, citing “the extensive nature” of the request.

Instead, University of Nebraska President Hank Bounds preemptively sent copies of several damning internal emails to Gov. Pete Ricketts and the Nebraska legislature on Friday, Nov. 17. “These documents will be made public soon and I wanted you to receive them from me directly rather than hear about them from another source,” Bounds wrote in a letter to the governor.

Before the university fulfilled CR’s records request, copies of Bounds’ letter and some of the requested documents were news-dumped to local media in Nebraska. The resulting stories were published late Friday afternoon before Thanksgiving week. (For more from the author of “Campus Not ‘Safe’ for Conservatives, Public Records Reveal” please click HERE)

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