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Budget Law Forgives Debt of Louisiana Black Colleges

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February 12, 2018

The budget bill enacted last week included a provision clearing more than $330 million owed by four historically black colleges for loans they took out from the U.S. Education Department to help with recovery from Hurricane Katrina, The New Orleans Advocate reported. The institutions include three historically black Louisiana institutions -- Dillard University, Southern University at New Orleans and Xavier University -- as well as Tougaloo College in Mississippi. The debts posed severe problems to the colleges, which are not wealthy and do not serve wealthy students. Congress granted the colleges a five-year break on repaying the loans in 2013, but that was about to expire. Historically black colleges were among the institutions most severely damaged by the post-Katrina floods.

Scott Jaschik

Scott Jaschik, Editor, is one of the three founders of Inside Higher Ed. With Doug Lederman, he leads the editorial operations of Inside Higher Ed, overseeing news content, opinion pieces, career advice, blogs and other features. Scott is a leading voice on higher education issues, quoted regularly in publications nationwide, and publishing articles on colleges in publications such as The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Salon, and elsewhere. He has been a judge or screener for the National Magazine Awards, the Online Journalism Awards, the Folio Editorial Excellence Awards, and the Education Writers Association Awards. Scott served as a mentor in the community college fellowship program of the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media, of Teachers College, Columbia University. He is a member of the board of the Education Writers Association. From 1999-2003, Scott was editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education. Scott grew up in Rochester, N.Y., and graduated from Cornell University in 1985. He lives in Washington.