Education Economics Commons^™

Income-Driven Repayment And The Public Financing Of Higher Education, John R. Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article provides the first comprehensive analysis in the legal literature of the federal government’s new income-driven student loan repayment programs, known as Income-Based Repayment and Pay As You Earn. In a set of gradual and little-noticed statutory and regulatory moves, the federal government, through these programs, has dramatically reshaped higher education finance in ways that schools, students, and even the government itself are only beginning to understand.

Under IBR and PAYE, a student borrower pays no more than 10% of her discretionary income in loan service payments, and after a maximum of 20 years, the remaining debt is forgiven—for …

Quasi-Public Spending, John R. Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The United States has increasingly designed certain public spending programs not as traditional tax-financed programs, but rather as mixtures of private expenditures, subsidies, and limited taxes. Thus part of what could have gone to the government as a tax is instead used to purchase the good or service directly, with only incremental taxes and subsidies to manage distributional goals. This Article terms this “quasi-public spending,” and argues that it is descriptive of our evolving approaches to both health care and higher education. Based on this observation, the Article defines and analyzes quasipublic spending and compares it to both traditional public …