Latest news with #GlengarryGlenRoss
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Colleges losing the blame game as D.C. aims to solve the student loan crisis
If the student loan crisis is our dreadful result, the rising cost of college is at least the chief cause. And it's easy to point the finger at those who set sticker prices. That's the position of Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. 'Colleges and universities call themselves nonprofits, but for years they have profited massively off the federal subsidy of loans, hiking tuition and piling up multibillion-dollar endowments while students graduate six figures in the red,' McMahon wrote in The Wall Street Journal in April. 'A widely cited 2015 study found that for every dollar of increased federal caps on subsidized loans, colleges raised tuition by 60 cents.' Yes, higher education institutions have played a role in a crisis that can't seem to get worse, yet does: We could see about a quarter of federal student loan borrowers — 10 to 11 million or more — in default this summer. Being in default means facing severe consequences like wage garnishment, federal benefit seizures, debt collections and credit harm. Besides a federal government that has, over the years, given borrowers whiplash with the amount of repayment programs that have appeared and disappeared, the schools themselves bear responsibility. The question is to what degree, and what comes next. The role of colleges in America's student loan debt If you think of the Education Department's federal student aid system as a spigot, it has been dispensing billions of dollars in aid to students via their schools over the last six decades, since at least the Higher Education Act of 1965. As federal loan limits have increased, the spigot has gradually turned into a firehose. The more money that's flowed from it, the more families can access, the more schools can raise their price tags. More, more, more and around and around we go. Skip ahead to today. It's difficult to square an apparent contradiction: One minute, you hear institutions of higher education express (cue a highfalutin voice) their noble mission of educating society writ large. The next minute, you realize some schools (enter the always-be-closing Glengarry Glen Ross guys) charge as much as they can get away with to families pursuing that education. But experts of varying ideologies worry that that's exactly what's happening. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Student Loan Ombudsman Julia Barnard told Bankrate in March that, before she was fired by the Trump Administration, 'literally 98 percent of colleges in the country were using data to do differential pricing for students.' Barnard has referred to this continuing trend as the 'financialization' of colleges. School-hired consulting firms also call it 'financial aid optimization,' as The New York Times reported in May. The firms' work boils down to algorithms that balance merit-based tuition discounts with a family's ability to pay — and use vast amounts of data to do it. 'Some of the things that we were learning about related to a kind of surveillance of [college] applicants — like what websites they were visiting and for how long,' Barnard says. 'We saw examples where was giving information about whether a person was a victim of domestic violence or even their documentation status, the education level of their parents, disciplinary records, religious activities. They had that information and were sharing it with colleges who were then using it to make admissions and pricing decisions.' So, the contention goes, it's the colleges and universities themselves that have figured out ways to game the system for the benefit of their bottom line. Learn more: Average cost of college for 2024-2025 Project 2025 — Republicans' widely-shared manifesto leading up to the 2024 election cycle — spends a chapter on the Department of Education and uses the words 'skin in the game' to describe the need for college accountability. McMahon also spent a paragraph of her op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on this very topic. 'Many of the degree-granting programs that qualify for student loans are worthless on the job market, but colleges continue to accept students to these programs and encourage them to borrow to pay for them,' McMahon wrote. 'Accountability is a two-way street. As we push to hold student borrowers to account, we will also push colleges to be responsible and transparent.' The good news: Like bipartisan understanding of consumer debt, holding schools accountable is something we can all agree on. Dr. Lindsey M. Burke, the author of the education chapter of Project 2025, among other conservative voices, is on board: In her keynote at the 16th Annual Education Finance & Loan Symposium in Alexandria, Va. in May, Burke said, 'A lot of the reforms [under consideration] are — I would argue, I think a lot of people would agree — fairly common sense reforms. When it comes to skin in the game; when it comes to universities being allowed to cap lending on their own.' Meanwhile, James Kvaal, the Biden Administration's top higher education official, used the words 'cutting off programs that leave most of their students unable to repay their loans' in a March interview with Bankrate. And Colleen Campbell, a former Federal Student Aid executive, wrote on her 'On Detail' Substack, 'I will be the first to tell you that accountability for colleges is SORELY [sic] needed.' Of course, the devil — and potential disagreement — lurks in the details. The Student Success and Taxpayer Savings Plan within Congress's progressing budget reconciliation bill puts an emphasis on risk-sharing. In certain cases, it would force colleges to reimburse the Education Department for their former students' unpaid balances. The bill features a carrot-and-the-stick approach, however. In addition to penalizing schools for their borrowers' unpaid loans, it would also award PROMISE grants to schools that improve access, affordability and student success. While it awaits passage of Congress's student loan repayment-reshaping budget reconciliation bill, the Trump Administration is making the most of what it has at its disposal. In a May letter, it reminded schools of the 'core default rates' policy and pushed them to remind their former students to resume federal loan repayment. 'Part of the problem here is that we don't do accountability at all in our higher education system,' Campbell says. Core default rates is the Education Department's lone mechanism at present, Campbell adds, and it's '90s-era' or in desperate need of a makeover. In fact, many have significantly increased their spending on lobbying Congress, according to an Inside Higher Ed analysis. And as Campbell told Bankrate in April for a story about the potential demise of Direct PLUS Loans, if schools are banging on the doors of their representative in the House or the Senate, 'This is really when the rubber hits the road in higher ed.' I spoke with multiple financial aid representatives large and small at the May symposium (who weren't authorized to speak on behalf of their schools). A common refrain: Charging more to students who can afford it helps the schools charge less to those who can't. But schools' calls for self-policing are likely to be ignored, given that history isn't on their side. At this point, it may be safer to judge colleges and universities on their actions rather than their words. Since we now know that merit-based aid can be manipulated for a given school's bottom-dollar benefit, a renewed emphasis on need-based funding would seem to be a big step in the right direction. Already, more than a 100 colleges and universities nationwide offer tuition-free attendance — a discounted net price — to low- and middle-income families, according to Appily's tracking. They do so by replacing student loans in financial aid packages with institutional, state and federal grants and scholarships. (Just be mindful that tuition is one piece of your cost of attendance, alongside secondary but significant expenses like room and board). 'This is one place I can speak for my employer in that it's really clear for us because we have specific need-based aid funding, and that's how you can do it morally,' said Charles Pruett, Georgetown University Law Center's assistant dean for financial aid, during a symposium panel. 'If you're looking at a situation where it's just merit, that is who asks [for aid] the best, right?' First of all, get good at asking. It's a negotiation, and the financial aid award letter you receive is merely an opening salvo. Your school is sharing their desired numbers. Go ahead and proffer yours (perhaps via an appeal letter). A statistic to remember The average discount for first-year students at private, nonprofit colleges and universities for the 2023-2024 academic year was 56 percent, according to the National Association of of College and University Business Officers. Yes, there are ways to attend college for free (or at least try), but for many families, you might have to pay out of pocket or borrow for college. If you have a long runway, consider different college fund investment options. If college attendance is right around the corner, however, it can be helpful to lean on your prospective school's financial aid office. Just don't trust that whatever they say goes. As the CFPB's Barnard says: 'I hope that the public, student loan borrowers and families applying for college will look at what's going on and perhaps reach out about their discomfort if they feel uncomfortable with [speaking] directly to their college.' Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Daily Mail
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Kieran Culkin faces fierce fury over his bizarre response to being cast in Hunger Games prequel
Along with his iconic role as Roman Roy in the hit series Succession (and his appearance as the lesser-known McAllister brother in Home Alone), Kieran Culkin is also known for his dry humor. For years now in various interviews and speeches, he's made countless 'jokes' about not caring about his job or not knowing what he's doing. He's sarcastically discussed his own award nominations, told fans who have called him their favorite actor that they should 'aim higher,' and claimed the Oscar awards was just a bargaining chip to get his wife to agree to have more children. And most recently, he's made a pretty shocking statement about his upcoming portrayal of Caesar Flickerman in the Hunger Games prequel, The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping. Culkin, 42, who was confirmed to appear in the series last month, was signing autographs for fans outside of his Broadway play, Glengarry Glen Ross, when he made the comment. A fan, recording Culkin, told him, 'You're going to an amazing Caesar Flickerman.' 'I don't think so,' Culkin responded as the supporter continued, 'I'm so excited.' Culkin then said, 'Lower those expectations please... please do... I have no idea what I'm going to do with that.' Most recently, he's made a pretty shocking statement about his upcoming portrayal of Caesar Flickerman (seen in the original franchise) in the Hunger Games prequel Culkin is an Oscar-winning actor, and yet his nonchalant attitude about his accomplishments is starting to rub fans the wrong way - especially when it comes to a franchise as beloved as The Hunger Games. Fans took to social media to share their disapproval over Culkin's comments after the video went viral on X, formerly Twitter. 'This "I don't take anything seriously" act of his has worn out its welcome' one X user shared. 'This whole bit of his where he doesn't give a f**k or care about his job is tired and annoying,' another agreed. 'I thought winning one of the most undeserved Oscars ever might make him less annoying, but it didn't,' said someone else. 'The pretending not to care thing is getting old because [people of color] would get slaughtered for this and there's better actors out there that probs couldn't even get an audition for this,' a different person pointed out. 'I cannot not think of all the actresses who are witch hunted daily for making jokes not even close to this… a woman publicly saying she is not prepared for a role? Cannot even imagine,' a fifth tweet read. has reached out to Culkin for comment. Fans expressed anger at Culkin's constant sarcasm, pointing out the double standards in the industry that allow him to get away with it 'Can you imagine the reactions if Rachel Zegler had said that?' asked another user, undoubtedly referencing the backlash Zegler received when she shared her opinions about the original Snow White movie being 'dated.' The upcoming Hunger Games film is set to be released on November 20, 2026, and explores the world of Panem about 24 years before Katniss Everdeen's story. As of right now, the franchise includes five books and six movies, the most recent release being The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes movie which was released in 2023. And with Sunrise on the Reaping being not too far away, fans are encouraging Culkin to get it together. 'Lower expectations... this is the f**king hunger games... not your little Saturday Night Live monologue..... READ THE BOOKS AND GET THE F**K TO WORK,' another user said.
Yahoo
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Iconic Hollywood filmmaker David Mamet dishes on why he was 'kicked out of the left'
One famed filmmaker and playwright spoke to Fox News about his transformation from a "brain-dead liberal" to his journey into constitutional conservatism. Film director and playwright David Mamet, known for writing the stage play "Glengarry Glen Ross" and its film adaptation, opened up about his political values during a Thursday interview on the "Brian Kilmeade Show." Biden Fundraiser Calls Trump A 'F---ing Genius' As Democrats Wonder If Their Brand Is Broken Mamet discussed how he got "kicked out of the left" about 25 years ago and what led him to discover his right-leaning values. He noted his past comments referring to himself as a "brain-dead liberal" and urging for political civility in an article he wrote, resulting in many of his leftist peers losing contact with him. "I didn't know any Republicans, so I didn't understand what conservatism was," he said. "Then I got kicked out of the left, and I started researching what the constitutional conservatism was about, and I got very, very interested and very excited about it — here I am now." Billy Joel Opens Up About Affair That Led To Two Suicide Attempts Read On The Fox News App Mamet noted that he became disillusioned with the Democratic Party and its values, explaining how he thought that the party did not best represent American workers and had become the "party of the elites." "I discovered my conservative beliefs because I discovered everything I thought and believed about the Democratic Party was false," he said. Amid a tumultuous period in American politics, Mamet expressed optimism about the future following President Donald Trump's election victory in November 2024. "America is self-correcting again, as we saw in the election," Mamet said. "And the red states are thriving." Referring to his vast theater experience, Mamet also touched upon the media and entertainment's focus on "social consciousness." Trump's Pardon Of Chrisleys Praised By Joe Giudice As 'The Only Way' After 'Harsh' Prison Sentences "Black people are people too, gay people are people too, but the problem with that is, everybody knows that," he said. "So we don't want to come to a theater or a movie to get lectured to, right? Our wives will do that — so in order to keep their place, the idea of a meritocracy crumbled in the media, so the awards and safety, or the illusion… was awarded to those who could scream the loudest." Mamet released his book "The Disenlightenment: Politics, Horror, and Entertainment" on June 3, which details his musings about politics and article source: Iconic Hollywood filmmaker David Mamet dishes on why he was 'kicked out of the left'
Washington Post
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Tony Awards 2025: How to watch, who's hosting and favorites to win
The Tony Awards on Sunday night may have several down-to-the-wire races, but one thing about the 2024-25 theater season is certain: Broadway rallied at the box office. Powered by starry productions of 'Othello,' 'Good Night, and Good Luck' and 'Glengarry Glen Ross,' the season that ended in April grossed $1.89 billion, according to the Broadway League, which at last brought Broadway's grosses back to around pre-pandemic levels.
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
David Mamet's Complicated Brain
DAVID MAMET, THE PULITZER PRIZE–WINNING, Trump-and-Israel-supporting writer and filmmaker, is having something of a banner year. After the premiere of the much-ballyhooed Broadway revival of Mamet's essential play Glengarry Glen Ross (this time, boasting a headline-making cast that includes Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr, and Kieran Culkin), Mamet premiered Henry Johnson, his first film as a director since Phil Spector in 2013. And now, this month, we have the publication, for the first time ever, of Russian Poland, an unproduced screenplay written by Mamet in 1993, when his then-burgeoning career as a movie director was really beginning to ramp up. In 1991, Mamet released Homicide, his divisive but impactful third film as writer/director, and in 1992, the late James Foley's electric film of Glengarry Glen Ross, featuring a stacked ensemble cast led by Jack Lemmon and Al Pacino, became something of a cultural event—not a box office hit, but critically acclaimed, nominated for a slew of awards, and considered a bit of a comeback for Lemmon, while its (movie-original) scene featuring Alec Baldwin as an abusive sales executive became instantly iconic. The stage should, by all rights, have been set for Mamet to get a new project, something really ambitious, off the ground. Mamet's Jewish faith had been strengthening in those years, and had manifested itself in his writing most forcefully in Homicide, the victim at that film's core murder investigation being an old woman whose corner shop was a front for an operation running guns into Israel. The opportunity to pursue these themes further seemed to have presented itself. Mamet attaches a very brief introduction to the published screenplay of Russian Poland; in it, he lays out the historical, as well as the political, but more so the personal, inspiration for the script. For instance, he writes that his grandmother grew up near the Polish city of Chelm, and that she told him stories of the pogroms she'd survived in the Pale of Settlement—the area permitted to the Russian Jews. The Pale was geographically known as Volhynia, known to her, and, then, to me, as Russian Poland. The tales-within-the-tale, here, are fables of Isaac Luria, the Ari (lion) of Sfat, in the late 16th century… I set his mystical tales in my grandmother's Volhynia, and framed them in another fable. And that is, ultimately and unexpectedly, what Russian Poland is: a collection of Jewish fables, almost an anthology, with an illegal shipment of supplies by air to Israel functioning as a kind of framing device. This setting for this framing device is the late 1940s, shortly after the establishment of the state of Israel. The military men carrying out the mission are British RAF officers, and throughout the script, they are referred to only as Sergeant and Officer. Also on board is an elderly Holocaust survivor called Old Man. (Almost none of the characters are given names, except for one or two that appear in the fables.) Neither the Officer nor the Sergeant seem to know who the Old Man is, and they even ask him what he's doing there. Not very talkative, the Old Man does indicate he's on the plane because he's going to Palestine. The RAF men object that none of the planes at the airfield have the fuel capacity to reach that destination (and the Officer also asks why the Old Man wants to go to Palestine, because, he says 'The Arabs say they're going to drive you people into the sea'), to which the Old Man offers only a shrug. Something mysterious has now been established. Explore the deep mysteries while supporting our growing coverage of books, culture, and the arts: Sign up for a free or paid Bulwark subscription today. The Old Man begins to drift into his past, and into Mamet's fables, as the flight becomes more dangerous. In the first, set in a village in the 1890s, the Beggar roams the village, seeking charity, first from a pair of housewives, then from the local Rabbi, and then from the Rich Man (or, Reb Siegel, one of the few proper names in the script). As these short tales begin to take over the narrative of Russian Poland, the dialogue becomes less casual and more formal, but what's most interesting about this aspect of Mamet's script—Mamet being justly famous for his gift for stylish, stylized dialogue—is how it reflects his attitudes as a director more than as a writer. In his book On Directing Film, and more recently when promoting Henry Johnson, Mamet has said that ideally, when directing a film, it should be possible to remove all the dialogue and, as in silent films, let the images and the editing tell the story. This is, of course, the central idea behind all motion pictures, but I can't imagine following the narrative of a film as word-drunk as Henry Johnson with all the language removed. Henry Johnson is a very skillful and artful piece of film direction, but the words, and the performances of those words, are the whole show. This is not the case with Russian Poland, or it wouldn't have been, had a film ever been made from it. In the story about the Beggar, the Rabbi, and the Rich Man, Mamet lays out his scenes and his shots in strict visual terms, as directing choices he made at the screenplay stage. It begins with this image: A longshot. A road on a hill. A Beggar comes into the shot, moving across the frame from left to right. A mullioned window bangs into the shot. Camera pulls back slightly to reveal we have been looking at the scene through a window. The window frame bangs in the window. Then a cut to the Rabbi, outside the building, commenting on the deteriorated state of the window, and the Shul to which it is connected. We have also been introduced to the Beggar, and his journey. There is now a connection (ideally, anyway) in the viewer's mind between the state of the shtetl, where this is all taking place, and the Beggar. There is conflict in this connection, one that will play out as both Rabbi and Rich Man are shown to be somewhat callous towards the Beggar—though the Rabbi is perhaps more officious than callous—but the story is one of redemption. More importantly, that window, through which we were introduced to a setting and a key character, returns as an image, and through it we are shown actions the meanings of which the audience understands better than the characters do. We see, more than hear, both the Beggar and the Rich Man, independent of each other, find evidence for the existence of God, through each man's misunderstanding of events. To Mamet, these misunderstandings, and the revelations they inspire, are as true and as spiritual as would be those brought about by a literal angel appearing on the scene. Join now It's difficult, in this venue, to get across how much of Russian Poland's story is communicated visually rather than through dialogue. But this is very much a script written by a man who intended to direct: visuals, shot descriptions, and even camera edits are described at length, broken up by streams of conversation that is sometimes of a spiritual nature, sometimes just pure gossip. This is done in the same way that a film heavy with talk might find relief, or a heightening of emotion, through bursts of silence. I can imagine one fable, late in the script, being told entirely through images, with no dialogue whatsoever (not that there's so very much of it to begin with). This fable is much darker than the life-affirming tale of the Beggar (Russian Poland can get pretty bleak at times), and it ends with a punchline—I think a certain gallows humor is at play here, but as far as gallows humor goes, it's pretty heavy on gallows—that is entirely visual. (Words are spoken, but don't need to be.) Granted, these visuals include words written on a piece of paper—words that reveal the aforementioned punchline—but this is all part of the silent film grammar Mamet aspires to. Because of his outspoken conservative politics over the last several years, even well before Trump, Mamet long ago fell out of favor as an artist. Some artists, when confronting such a fate, will withdraw; others will lean into it, inflating the political rhetoric that had been subliminal or even non-existent in their work before. And while Mamet's responses in interviews and his nonfiction writing have gotten nakedly reactionary, it has not gotten in the way of his fiction. As implied earlier, this unproduced screenplay is particularly compelling when looked at Mamet's career as a film director as a whole, and especially in the context of his work during the 1990s. Once again, Homicide, his best film, can't help but spring to mind. Mamet's current politics (many say his politics have always leaned right, if not far-right, but I don't), and what I'd call the spiritual politics of Russian Poland, often seem to be at odds with each other. In Homicide, for example, the murder of the Zionist shopkeeper is not, as homicide detective Bobby Gold (Joe Mantegna) believes, an antisemitic act. In a final twist (a swing so wild I almost can't believe Mamet brings it off), it's shown to be a random act, an apolitical crime of greed, and evidence for the anti-Zionist motive is revealed as a blind alley. Though Gold has faced antisemitism in his past, and experiences it over the course of the film, his political righteousness becomes a mental trap, and his inability to view the situation from any other angle ultimately destroys him. Not the same kind of thing you'd expect from the author of Russian Poland, which radiates a kind of arcane energy. If Russian Poland can seem esoteric, especially to a gentile like myself, it is nevertheless clearly the work of an artist who sees in it a grand truth, whereas Homicide is awash with uncertainty. Yet both works are about, essentially, the same thing. And if Henry Johnson, the story of an unprincipled idiot who believes everything people tell him, doesn't seem like it could possibly have been made by someone who supports Donald Trump, well, the human brain is a complicated organ. Share this article with someone who appreciates the complicated nature of the human brain. Share
