Battling Poverty in Community Colleges

Battling Poverty in Community Colleges

Top of Mind with Julie Rose - Radio Archive, Episode 977 , Segment 6

Episode: National Debt, Alaska Musher, Dark Side of the Moon

  • Jan 3, 2019 11:00 pm
  • 19:36 mins

(Originally aired September 10, 2018) Guest: Russell Lowery-Hart, PhD, President, Amarillo College Getting a college degree is a proven pathway out of poverty, but poverty itself is a major barrier to actually getting that degree. A national survey of university students found a third of them had been without a reliable source of food in the last month. And nearly 10 percent had been homelessness in the last year. Among community college students, those numbers are higher. There’s a community college in Amarillo, Texas with an unusually, aggressive approach to making sure poverty doesn’t derail students from their studies.

Other Segments

Why It Matters That Interest on National Debt Will Soon Eclipse National Defense

17 MINS

Guest: Doug Criscitello, Executive Director, Center for Finance and Policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology The ongoing budget dispute and government shutdown in Washington is not really about money. It’s about politics –President Trump trying to fulfill a campaign promise to build the wall and Democrats hoping to stop him. What they’re not talking about in any serious way is the nation’s debt –that even with a strong economy, budget deficits are increasing.  And all that borrowing has a price. The amount of interest America pays on its debt is the fastest growing part of the government’s budget. In less than five years, we’ll be paying more interest on our national debt than we spend on national defense. What does that say about our priorities?

Guest: Doug Criscitello, Executive Director, Center for Finance and Policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology The ongoing budget dispute and government shutdown in Washington is not really about money. It’s about politics –President Trump trying to fulfill a campaign promise to build the wall and Democrats hoping to stop him. What they’re not talking about in any serious way is the nation’s debt –that even with a strong economy, budget deficits are increasing.  And all that borrowing has a price. The amount of interest America pays on its debt is the fastest growing part of the government’s budget. In less than five years, we’ll be paying more interest on our national debt than we spend on national defense. What does that say about our priorities?