The Philadelphia Inquirer is reporting that Philadelphia may one day have its own state university campus.

Pennsylvania higher education officials are currently in talks with Mayor Nutter’s office to try and provide a more affordable, four-year option for students inside the City of Brotherly Love — a city full of private universities where tuition comes in at over $20,000. (According to the Inquirer, average state tuition is $7,325.)

In a city were many adolescents can’t afford the costs of a private university or the costs of leaving home, a state university inside the city would be a welcome addition. Currently, the only real low-cost option inside the city are two year community colleges. This campus would have enormous potential to increase college enrollment for young Philadelphians. We at TRC hope to see the project move forward.

Note: Temple University is a public university inside Philadelphia. However, tuition at Temple comes in at over $11,000 per year for in-state students, a much higher tuition than its state school peers.

We all the know the Pennsylvania budget is a disaster. I mean, when the mayor of Philadelphia is proposing shutting down courts and weekly trash collection to save money, you know you’ve got a serious problem.

But sometimes, people look for answers in all the wrong places. In Philadelphia, they decided to start taxing the arts (read the DP editorial that outlines why this is such a bad decision here).

In Pittsburgh, however, they took it to a whole new level of “bad idea:” they considered taxing tuition. In early November, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl proposed a 1 percent tax on tuition to bolster the city’s pension plan. This would have made Pittsburgh the first city in the country to have such a tax.

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Here at Penn, excitement over yesterday’s elections was almost non-existant — less than 200 students voted on campus. And, with the exceptions of Virginia, New Jersey and New York City, I suspect the same can be said of students across the country.

Nonetheless, students came out ahead during this year’s fall elections. Across the country, voters increased funding and support for education. Check out this article on from Inside Higher Ed for the details.

Even though he’s less than a year into his term, no one will be shocked to hear that the University of Chicago is already vying for President Obama’s presidential library to be on its campus. Officials of the University have already approached the White House about it though there’s no word on how the White House feels about it yet.

Though Chicago (the city, not the school) seems to be the front-runner for any kind of presidential library or center, Hawaii is still a contender — and a location that I’m sure would probably make many a presidential scholar happy.

Okay, so maybe that headline was a little dramatic. But the Chronicle has published a report and analysis of the spending of the biggest lenders in the student loan industry. It’s pretty classic David and Goliath stuff. The industry spent about $14 million on lobbying efforts since Jan. 2008, with Sallie Mae leading the way. They’ve also donated heavily to Republican and moderate-Democrat reelection campaigns (though not as much as in earlier years). Since President Obama started talking student-loan reform (and passing it earlier this month) the efforts have ramped up.

Lobbying is both natural and inevitable in D.C., and these numbers are high but not astronomical. But these figures really represent what is likely a last-ditch attempt to preserve an evolving system.

Notre Dame (and especially Notre Dame president Rev. John I. Jenkins) got a lot of flack for having a pro-choice president speak at its commencement ceremony last spring. So Jenkins seems to have decided to make Notre Dame’s stance on abortion clearer for any remaining skeptics.

Jenkins will be attending a pro-life rally in Washington, D.C. this January. Jenkins emailed the Notre Dame community to inform them of his decision on Wednesday of last week and encourage community members to join him on Jan. 22 March for Life.

A couple days, I asked where all the young people went. Wherever they went, President Obama decided to bring them out of the woodwork and engage them in the conversation on healthcare. He spoke at the University of Maryland this morning to try and get America’s youth involved.

“When you’re young, I know this isn’t always an issue that you have at the top of your mind. You think you’re invincible. That’s how I thought,” he said.

UWire’s Joel Cohen is skeptical that the huge turnout for the event had anything to do with healthcare.

“After attending today’s health care rally at the University of Maryland, the student attendees generally were enthralled with being in the presence of the president — and could have seemingly cared less about what he was talking about,” he writes.

With healthcare as one of the most important debates in our country in years, am I the only one worried that our generation doesn’t seem to care? Surely not. I just hope we’ll start to see some of that caring sometime soon.

The House spent today debating HR 3221 — the comprehensive student-loan overhaul that we reported about earlier this week — and is scheduled to vote on it tomorrow.  On Tuesday the president formally endorsed the legislation, which the White House helped craft. We’re not the only ones who think saving the country $90 billion and helping out students is cool: The NY Times endorsed the bill yesterday.

We’ll be keeping you updated on the bill sometime tomorrow. Hopefully we’ll be eating the finest muffins and bagels in the land sometime soon.

American’s youth came out en masse to support now-President Barack Obama. Where are they now that we’re talking issues? Check out this article from Politico about youth in the health care debate.

For months now, health care (and, lately, Joe Wilson) has been the talk of the town in Washington. But while we’re waiting with bated breath to discover the fate of the public option, there’s an important vote in the House this week: Whether to approve the President’s student loan revamp.

Understanding the current student-loan system is like trying to read Madame Bovary in French after years of Spanish, but here’s a play-by-play of the last few months: The President wants to consolidate the student-loan industry into a program run mainly run by the Department of Education and expand the Pell Grant program (federal grants awarded to low-income students and often a measure of a school’s relative diversity) through the savings it will earn by eliminating the middleman, known as the student loan industry, and loaning directly to students. Obama’s projection will redirect about $80 billion over 10 years into student loans. The student-loan industry  had a couple rocky months after last year’s financial meltdown and its salaries came under increased scrutiny. It’s struck back against the President’s plan with a counter-proposal, which the CBO last week estimated would ultimately save about $67 billion (sadly, it’s the same link as just above, so nothing supercool here).

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