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High default rates. Mega-sized loans. No relief in sight. College debt is a big problem for moms and dads too.

The Parent Trap

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JULY 30, 2021 _ VOL.177 _ NO.02

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An aging population—and one that is spending more and more of its time looking at screens—needs to look after its eyes. Finding the right professionals to help can be tricky but making the right choice is important.

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The Parent Trap Soaring default rates. Megasized loans. An exclusive Newsweek analysis reveals young people aren’t the only ones staggering under the heavy weight of student debt. BY MATT KRUPNICK

America’s Best Eye Doctors 2021 Newsweek teams up with Statista, a respected market data and research ﬁrm, to ﬁnd the 300 leading ophthalmologists and optometrists from across the country. 1

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DEPARTMENTS

EDITORIAL

Periscope

Culture

06 China’s Giant Bet

40 Art

on Technology A Digital Yuan is Part of a Plan to Lead the Future of the Internet BOURDAIN’S LEGACY

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How an Arkansas Museum Became a Soldier in the Culture Wars 45 Uncharted

10 The Learning

Recovery Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on America’s Schools

Dream PostPandemic Travel 48 Parting Shot

Morgan Neville

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Periscope

NEWS, OPINION + ANALYSIS

A CRYPTO WELCOME

China’s entry into the digital currency market, the digital yuan, is expected to debut RIɿFLDOO\ DW WKH %HLMLQJ Olympics next year.

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J U LY 30, 2021

“The laptop is the new pencil, connectivity is no longer a privilege.” » P10

T E C H NO L O G Y

China’s Giant Bet on Blockchain

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Beijing’s expected launch of a digital yuan next year is part of a bigger plan to take a global lead in the future of the internet

how far-reaching the ramifications will be across there is no stage bigger than the olympics, for the athletes and the host country. Modern issues related to who controls access to capital and China announced its arrival 13 years ago when 2,008 its movements.” synchronized drummers wowed the world at the But for all of the digital yuan’s consequence, it is Beijing Summer Olympics opening ceremonies. In a toe peeking out from a giant red curtain. Behind February, China is expected to use the Beijing Winter is an ambitious and largely invisible infrastructure Olympics to unveil a creation of intense internationprogram to rewire the country and its economy with a distributed ledger technology known as al interest: the digital yuan, the first major central bank digital currency, or CBDC. blockchain. China has moved deliberately to secure Consumers are unlikely to notice much differfirst-mover advantage in what it believes is the future ence shopping with e-CNY, as the currency is offiof the internet. cially known. It will be worth the same as cash and If the digital yuan is Beijing’s tender for the digital will activate with a tap, swipe or QR code. But the frontier, its blockchain initiative is its bid to build questions this form of money raises are profound. the railroads. As governments around the world move to phase out physical cash, what will become of financial privacy? A New Money How will state-sponsored digital money affect ChiThe story of how China came to settle the technologina’s economy, its trading relationships and—most cal frontier begins with the 2008 financial crisis. Just weighty of all—the future of the global financial one month after the Summer Olympics, an undersystem now dominated by the United regulated U.S. financial sector tripped States and the dollar? the world into recession. It was a vul“The question is not whether Chinerability that China decided it was BY na’s CBDC will upend the current no longer willing to accept. As the rules of global trade and commerce,” crisis was unfolding, then-President ALEXANDER ZAITCHIK, Hu Jintao called upon like-minded said Pauline Loong, director of Hong JEANHEE KIM, Kong-based research consultancy KELLY LE AND ANGIE nations at the G20 summit to “steadiAsia-analytica. “The only question is LAU, FORKAST.NEWS ly promote the diversification of the

Art work by A N D R I Y O N U F R I Y E N K O

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TECHNOLOGY

international monetary system.” Receiving a muted response, China forged ahead in creating parallel institutions to those dominated by the U.S. In 2010, when Washington’s sanctions effectively locked Iran out of the international financial system, China’s focus on cross-border currency flows intensified. By then, domestic concerns were spurring creative thinking around monetary policy. One was how to get 400 million “underbanked” Chinese out of poverty. E-commerce giant Alibaba introduced a mobile payment system in 2008, taking advantage of the country’s high rates of smartphone adoption: By 2015, 800 million Chinese would be using smartphones, according to the Pew Research Center. But such private payment systems left the Bank of China on the sidelines and did little for rising Communist Party leader Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption strategy, which required closer state monitoring of money. Then, around 2012, regulators began to observe strange patterns in power grids across the country. From Xinjiang to Inner Mongolia, huge amounts of electricity were surging into warehouses packed with powerful computers and colossal servers. The processors were crunching numbers to produce—or “mine”—a new kind of money called Bi te bi in Mandarin. At their peak in the late-2010s, Chinese miners are thought to have produced 95 percent of the world’s Bi te bi, or Bitcoin. This money had no connection to a bank, or any centralized authority at all. It was entirely digital and uniquely secure. Every transaction was broadcast to every computer within a network for confirmation and recorded permanently in a long series of distributed ledger entries, or blocks. Chinese officials grasped the im-

plications of this unregulated activity immediately. In 2014, its Peoples’ Bank of China (PBOC) began studying the possibility of a government version of Bitcoin. With each passing year, the disappearance of paper yuan from the economy made the idea more plausible. By 2019, PwC reported, 96 percent of Chinese regularly shopped online. “Before many governments even knew the basics of Bitcoin, Chinese authorities started to take leadership in the security of the network on the mining side,” said Ian Wittkopp, vice president at Beijing-based Sino Global Capital. “This led to the development of a strong blockchain and crypto ecosystem.” By October 2020, the digital yuan was ready for pilot testing to China’s masses. All told, 750,000 people chosen by lottery were given 150 million e-CNY ($23 million in U.S. dollars) to spend at roughly 70,000 brick-andmortar businesses plus a slew of online retailers. Six months later, new trials allowed open participation. This marked the first release of the digital yuan into the wild. By June, nursing homes in Chengdu were teaching elderly residents how to use the new money. Such care and expense are necessary to ensure the Olympics debut is as well-rehearsed as those 2,008 drummers, according to Peter Cai,

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“The question is not whether China’s CBDC will upend the current rules of global trade and commerce…[but] how far-reaching the UDPL˽FDWLRQV ZLOO EH Ť

who studies China’s economy and trade policy at the Lowy Institute in Sydney. “The cost of getting something wrong on this is tremendous,” he said. “Chinese officials are right to talk about the digital currency as if it’s a new frontier. What are the full implications for financial, banking and payment systems, or the conduct of a monetary policy? I don’t think anybody has a firm grip on that. And that includes China.”

The Next Internet During two decades of historic economic growth, China has had a mixed record on high technologies. It has struggled to attain self-sufficiency—never mind dominance—in the production of semiconductors and chips. It was ahead of the curve on 5G broadband, but lags behind the West in fields of arguably greater strategic value, such as artificial intelligence. When it comes to blockchain, China appears to have taken a lead in a technology of consequence. After President Xi in 2019 promised blockchain would “lead the next wave of the digital transformation of China,” thousands of companies reportedly initiated blockchain projects related to everything from retail banking to global shipping and supply chains. This profusion of activity continues apace. Said Wittkopp, “It’s a field of one. No other country is even close.” These projects are transforming a digital ecosystem that was already among the world’s most sophisticated, according to a recent McKinsey study. China has 850 million internet users and more than a quarter of the world’s most successful startups. One of them is Hangzhou-based Ant Group. The financial services giant has over 50 blockchain-based decentralized apps, or dApps, in areas such as shipping, insurance claim processing and

J U LY 30, 2021

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Periscope

DIGITAL JOURNEY

China’s path to e-CNY began shortly after the 2008 Games (top, Olympic Stadium in %HLMLQJ ZKHQ WKHQ President Hu Jintao EHORZ OHIW FDOOHG IRU GLYHUVLɿFDWLRQ RI WKH global monetary system. %HORZ D ELWFRLQ PLQLQJ facility in Inner Mongolia.

charitable donations. Internet search ﬁrm Baidu, the Google of China, has 20 dApps, including one that has handled 35 million pieces of electronic evidence for China’s “Internet Court.” It’s not just tech companies staking territory on the blockchain frontier. A division of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China has developed dApps for retail and corporate use. Insurance giant Ping An uses them to ﬁnance public-works projects. A dApp used by the China Construction Bank has helped local banks facilitate $134 billion in loans. “Blockchain will make our tech and

our society work better,” said Yifan He, blockchain evangelist and CEO of engineering ﬁrm Red Date Technology. “It can make all the IT systems in the world communicate like they are in one room.” He predicts in 10 years all transactions that require more than two parties will be blockchain-based. The state of blockchain today is like the internet of 1993, He said. Back then, most companies couldn’t afford the entry costs of the nascent internet (which began as a public infrastructure project overseen by the Pentagon). In April 2020, China formalized its bet on blockchain by creating the

Blockchain-based Service Network, or BSN, managed by Red Date. It is an infrastructure platform that allows private entities, especially small and medium-sized businesses, to overcome the two biggest barriers to entry—interoperability and prohibitive costs. “We built everything for you already; you just connect to it and work on your smart contract,” said He, who says the development cost of a simple dApp within the BSN could be as little as 1 percent of commercial blockchain. By its first anniversary in April 2021 the BSN had attracted 20,000 users and more than 2,500 projects across 120 “nodes” throughout China plus Johannesburg, Northern California, Paris, São Paulo, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo. S-Labs, a Beijing startup, has used it to develop applications that have helped over 5,000 SMEs find more than 500 million yuan in loans during the pandemic. S-Labs CTO Li Ming said the BSN is easy to use because it meets Chinese government standards and helps them find customers. “The biggest convenience of BSN is its brand effect.” If He has his way, today’s youth will be the first blockchain-native generation. This fluency is already being developed in high schools where the BSN is exploring how to teach students, including by holding programming contests with cash prizes. “Blockchain should be a basic skill,” said He. “The idea is to help more people become comfortable using the technology.” In June, Red Date closed on $30 million in Series A funding that was notable for its global reach. Major investors from Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and Thailand participated. Ơ This story was reported and written by forkast.news with support from the Judith Neilson Institute’s Asian Stories project.

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Periscope

E D U C AT ION

The Learning Recovery Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona talks about what schools will need to bounce back from the pandemic

it’s going to affect my wife who worked in the school. But we made the decision there, working with our health partners, that if we follow the mitigation strategy, there’s always going to be a risk when you walk out of your house, but we can reduce it to provide an opportunity for them to be in school in person. So that was June of 2020.... I’m at the point now where I’m feeling that with all the data we have, the science American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said and transmission rates, the president’s she wants to see schools opened push on vaccinations, what we know IRU ɿYH GD\V D ZHHN RI LQ SHUVRQ about COVID-19, it’s our obligation to learning and you give students an in-pertweeted in support of son option. KHU YLHZ &DQ \RX VKDUH Last June, I was like, BY your stance on opening “Let’s do this, parents. If schools this fall? ADRIAN you don’t want to do it, What I supported was CARRASQUILLO we respect your deci@Carrasquillo the fact that a lot of peosion. We’re not going to ple are saying teachers judge, this is uncharted don’t want schools open, but that’s territory.” A year later, we know enough about it to ease the fears absolutely not the case. Teachers want and provide safe learning environschools open safely. I had a meeting with the entire ments for students to learn and edustaff [recently] and I was sharing with cators to work. So I doubled down them that last June, July in Connection my language and my expectation cut we had to make a tough decision. on [reopening all schools] because We had to make a decision based on without it some kids are coming in a minuscule set of data around transmore than others and gaps are getmission rates because the pandemic ting worse, so we have an obligation to call that out and address it. was two or three months old. We were looking at ﬂu transmission rates and how it spreads to make decisions A recent AFT, NAACP, League of United Latin American Citizens on how we’re thinking about reopenpoll found that while 73 percent ing schools. of parents are comfortable with Whatever decision I made back in-person learning this fall, only then it was going to impact my kids,

NEWSWEEK.COM

SHUFHQW RI %ODFN SDUHQWV DUH FRPIRUWDEOH +RZ GR \RX JR DERXW squaring this? I appreciate that question. There are three big buckets right there. Number one, in Black and Brown communities and dense communities, the impact hit harder. In some communities, people know somebody that might’ve gotten it and they’re fine. In urban communities or Black and Brown communities, I know people that died from it. I’ve seen the impact it had on Black and Brown families. And there’s an increased level of trauma.

J U LY 30, 2021

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miguel cardona started out as a public school teacher, was later named principal of the year in Connecticut, and eventually served as the state’s education commissioner before being conﬁrmed as President Biden’s Secretary of Education. Newsweek spoke to him about the challenges facing students and parents as the country emerges from the pandemic.

LEARNING CURVE President Biden’s Education Secretary Miguel Cardona during his testimony before a House subcommittee on June 16 in Washington, DC.

they’ve experienced trauma in a different way, we need to respect and address that with different strategies.

Secondly, the hybrid model is not an option for families who can’t work from home. There’s a level of inconvenience for some of these families who can’t say yes to in-person learning on Monday and Wednesday week one, Tuesday and Thursday week two. It doesn’t work, it’s all or nothing. So there’s a level of inﬂexibility that the hybrid provides for working families in many of our Black and Brown communities. Lastly, there’s a level of concern, “I’m not ready to send my children back.” I’ve heard from some families,

“My kids are doing better. They were having issues in school before. I didn’t feel like that school was embracing them before, I’m not rushing to send them back.” That’s a smaller number, but the convenience and fact that

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'XULQJ \RXU ɿUVW VSHHFK DV nominee for education secretary you said you’re bilingual and bicultural: “As American as apple SLH DQG ULFH DQG EHDQV Ť +RZ GRHV \RXU EDFNJURXQG LQIRUP WKH NLQG RI OHDGHU \RX DUH DQG KRZ \RX YLHZ the American education system? Being bicultural and bilingual gave me an opportunity growing up to code switch, culture switch, understanding how people do things differently, but it doesn’t mean badly. If anything, you add value to the conversation. So I chose those words, “As American as apple pie and rice and beans” to illustrate the beauty of this country, the richness of this country, its diversity. My lived experience allows me to come here and look at things from different perspectives, but also to understand how important it is to embrace that. Especially as we come back from what I perceive to be a time in our country’s history where we’ve seen greater division and greater separation. We need to be intentional about embracing differences under one ﬂag, under one purpose. ,Q VWXGHQWV LQ WKH 8 6 ZHUH only 16 percent Latino, but now more than one in four students LQ . DUH +LVSDQLF 7KDW means that Latino education is LQFUHDVLQJO\ 8 6 HGXFDWLRQ ZKHQ it comes to preparing America’s NLGV IRU WKH IXWXUH :KDW GRHV that mean for how you approach

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LPSURYLQJ HGXFDWLRQ" It reminds me of some of the conversations I’ve had with educators and principals and superintendents in my career. Every teacher is an EL teacher, English-learners are part of the schools. They’re such a big part of the schools now that looking at it almost as if it’s a separate department is an antiquated mental model. We need to look at it as every school needs to be experts in how to teach the English language and understand the culture of the students they serve. Because that’s such a growing number, it’s really important that we think about how we’re providing opportunities for our Latino students to look at themselves as educators. We have to make sure we’re acknowledging the contributions of

EDUCATION

Latinos so students see themselves in the curriculum and are more engaged in their learning. Going back to that quote, it’s an American thing, they’re American. So it’s really important that we recognize—people like me—we’re second generation, we embrace our Latino-ness, but I was born here. One recent change you made IURP WKH 7UXPS HUD ZDV PDNLQJ undocumented and international FROOHJH VWXGHQWV HOLJLEOH WR UHFHLYH

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SDQGHPLF UHOLHI JUDQWV :KDW GR you say to people who say my family isn’t undocumented or international, so why should they JHW WKLV W\SH RI EHQHɿW GXULQJ D pandemic? It’s about recovery for our country, right? And the pandemic didn’t discriminate. It didn’t discriminate against students. So when we’re talking about lifting our country back, we also need to make sure that “all” means “all.” That all students are able to beneﬁt from it. %HWV\ 'H9RV ZRXOG QRW DIɿUP the 1982 case Plyler v. Doe that said undocumented children are entitled to a public school HGXFDWLRQ 'R \RX" I believe “all” means “all.” So when there are students that are here that need to be educated, we have an obligation. Whether or not that means they have different rights, I’ll leave that to others. But when it comes to education, every student should get an education when they’re here. You launched a major outreach FDPSDLJQ WR PLOOLRQ 3HOO *UDQW UHFLSLHQWV SURYLGLQJ D PRQWKO\ discount on broadband internet VHUYLFH XQGHU D WHPSRUDU\ )&& SURJUDP <RX VDLG ţWKH SDQGHPLF KDV PDJQLɿHG LVVXHV RI LQWHUQHW access and affordability for both K-12 students and college students, particularly students of color, students in rural or tribal communities and students IURP ORZ LQFRPH IDPLOLHV Ť &DQ \RX WDON DERXW WKH VLPLODULWLHV between low-income families in urban and rural areas and FIELD TRIP Cardona at a mentoring and tutoring event at Fairfax High School in Los Angeles on July 14.

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J U LY 30, 2021

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Periscope

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A teacher with masked students during a session in a socially distanced room at an elementary school in Louisville, Kentucky, this March.

how reliable internet access is a lifeblood of learning in 2021 and beyond? We say that the laptop is the new pencil, connectivity is no longer a privilege. It’s no longer a cool thing to have. I know from my own children, if they didn’t have connectivity, not only would they not be able to access basic learning, but parents wouldn’t have any way to communicate with the school, especially during the pandemic. What I learned was our rural community was hit hardest. Going back to the rescue plan, when I say some students were hit harder, we need to include students in rural communities where their only access to school would be through the internet. And when we have two or three kids sitting at home using the diminished bandwidth, how much learning has actually taken place, how

much interaction is taking place? We should be able to ﬁx this. It was magniﬁed by the pandemic, but we know now what we need to do and the funding is there. <RXŠYH VDLG FODVVURRP OHVVRQV should function as a “window, a PLUURU DQG D VOLGLQJ GRRUŤ VR FKLOGUHQ FDQ VHH WKHPVHOYHV UHʀHFWHG LQ ZKDW WKH\ŠUH EHLQJ WDXJKW )URP WKH 3URMHFW which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell assailed in a letter to you, to critical race theory which has been criticized E\ FRQVHUYDWLYHV ZKDW OHYHO RI LPSRUWDQFH GR \RX JLYH WR WHDFKLQJ D GLYHUVH YLHZ RI KLVWRU\ WKDW PD\ KDYH SDUWLVDQ GHWUDFWRUV" It was Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop that coined that term “windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors.” I want to give

her credit. As a Latino growing up, I learned about [18th century Black American author] Benjamin Banneker through KRS-One. I learned as much about Black history from Nas and KRS-One as I did from any book I picked up. It wasn’t until I found a Puerto Rico course in college that I learned about my own roots. That’s unacceptable. Then we wonder why kids are not engaged in school, why children of color don’t see themselves. I was having a conversation at dinner [recently] with Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and we were talking about Native Americans, Indigenous culture, and how students don’t see themselves, or they’re omitted from books. It’s almost like devaluing our students. I argue it’s as important for a white student to learn about the diverse cultures, diverse history of our country, as it is for students that are Latino or have that culture. It’s good for everyone. It’s becoming partisan because it’s very hard to ﬁnd anything else to complain about when we’re putting billions of dollars into schools to help them reopen and talking about providing four years of additional schooling for free, because we know community college graduates have 21 percent higher earning potential. We know a foundation of quality programs for three- and fouryear-olds addresses disparities that are exacerbated in elementary and middle school years. So to be honest with you, it’s disappointing that it has come to that.

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PH OTO I L LUST R AT I O N BY NEWSWEEK 62 85 &( , 0 $* (6 *( 7 7 < ʤ ʥ

Soaring default rates. Mega-sized loans. No relief in sight. An exclusive Newsweekk analysis rev

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J U LY 30, 2021

eals young people aren’t the only ones staggering under the heavy weight of student debt

Matt Krupnick

NEWSWEEK.COM

to help pay for a child or grandchild’s higher education. Those numbers reflect an explosion in borrowing in recent years fueled by soaring tuition rates, a change in rules that made it easier for parents to get loans and, in some cases, aggressive marketing tactics by schools that prompted more parents to borrow, in larger amounts. Over the past decade, a time when lending to undergraduates has actually been falling, parent borrowing under the federal PLUS loan program has increased 16 percent; over the past three decades, it’s shot up more than 750 percent, the College Board reports. Now, a new Newsweek analysis of parent-loan data released by the federal government for the first time this year shows how quickly many of these parents run into serious problems repaying what they owe, how deeply in the hole they are, which schools have the most serious problems and how much of a strain parents’ college debt puts on the households that can least afford them.

HEAVY BURDEN

(Above) Young people aren’t the only ones grabbling with the ball and chain of college debt. (Right) House members (from left) Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters and Chuy Garcia watch Biden sign a predatory lending bill into law last month. Many experts consider college loan practices to be predatory, too.

J U LY 30, 2021

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he debate over how to resolve the nation’s student debt crisis is heating up again, as pressure builds on President Joe Biden to extend the pandemic pause on repayments due to expire in September and progressives renew calls to forgive some of the $1.6 trillion that Americans owe. Advocates speak eloquently about the strain college debt puts on young people starting out in life: They can’t pay their bills, get married, buy a home, start a family or, often, move out of their parents’ basements. Typically left out of the discussion: those parents, many of whom are weighed down by college loans of their own—struggling to pay their bills or save for the future, forced to postpone retirement or wonder if they’ll ever be able to retire at all. One out of every four federal dollars lent for undergraduate education last year went to parents and a stunning 22 percent of that $1.6 trillion in outstanding student debt, $336 billion in all, is held by people 50 and older, who typically borrowed

E D U CA T IO N

According to the data, which covers nearly 1,000 colleges and universities that participated in the federal Parent PLUS loan program from 2017 to 2019, nearly one in 10 parents default or are seriously late with payments within just two years of borrowing. That’s far faster than the typical student borrower who takes three years to hit a comparable rate. The parent default and delinquency rate hit 20 percent or more at over 150 schools and at least 30 to 40 percent at dozens of institutions—a rate high enough for an institution to lose federal funding if the loans had been made to undergraduates instead of parents. The majority of these PLUS borrowers are from low-income households—nearly six in 10 in the Newsweek database are eligible for Pell grants, avail-

able only to families with exceptional financial need—busting the myth that it’s mainly affluent parents, who can comfortably afford their payments, who take out these loans. At over 140 schools of the 979 analyzed, 80 percent or more of the parent borrowers were from low-income homes. The problems were particularly acute at for-profit schools, the Newsweek analysis found. Default rates at these institutions, where three-quarters of the borrowers were typically from low-income households, ran double the national average—a particularly bad bargain for the parents shelling out this money given the historically low graduation rates at many of these schools. Among colleges where PLUSloan default and delinquency rates were at least double the national average, another roughly 30 percent were historically Black colleges and universities, which rely heavily on parent loans due to institutional underfunding and a larger share of students coming from lower-income families. Even if they’re not falling behind on payments, the amounts parents borrow—far more than their children, typically—put a strain on budgets for many families. Newsweek has identified more than 150 schools where the median parent loan is more than the maximum $27,000 students typically are allowed to borrow under the federal loan program for four years and more than two dozen schools where parent loans typically exceed $50,000. Something needs to change drastically, says Richard Fossey, a professor of education law and policy at the University of Louisiana, who has called on Congress to abolish the Parent PLUS program. Says Fossey, author of The Student Loan Catastrophe, “There are ways to go to school without putting parents in debt and people need to figure it out.” In addition to the personal crisis these loans create for many families, experts warn of the potential for serious damage to the U.S. economy if waves of parent borrowers default. Betsy Mayotte, president of The Institute of Student Loan Advisors, likens the situation to the 2008 mortgage crisis, when large numbers of new-home borrowers erroneously assumed that, if a bank said they qualified for the loan, that meant they could afford to repay the debt. When large numbers of homeowners subsequently

“There are ways to go to school without putting parents in debt and people need to figure it out.”

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defaulted, the country was plunged into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. In testimony about parent loans at a U.S. Department of Education hearing last month, Mayotte said: “In any other forum, the practice of awarding loans in large amounts without regard to the borrower’s ability to pay, while not providing tools for relief, would be considered predatory and unconscionable.” Talking with Newsweek, she put it this way: “The Parent PLUS program is fraught with peril—for families and for the U.S. taxpayer.”

‘The Money Just Kept Coming’ in the 2019–20 school year, according to the most recent federal data, parents of nearly 754,000 college students took out PLUS loans, borrowing an average of $16,305. Like government loans for undergraduates, these loans can be a boon for college access, allowing families who would have had trouble paying for school help their children get a degree. There are key differences, though, between the federal loans that students take out to pay for their higher education and the ones available to

Loans for Those Who Can Least Afford Them Nearly four in 10 parents who borrow through the federal PLUS loan program are from low-income households—and the numbers are even higher for families of color.

28%

30% 21%

19%

21% 34% 29%

28%

19%

21%

14% 11%

all

black

hispanic

asian

Parent PLUS borrowers with incomes of 100–200% of the federal poverty level Source Ơ Sandy Baum, Urban Institute

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other

white

Parent PLUS borrowers with incomes below the federal poverty level

their parents that increase the financial risks. For one thing, the amounts that parents can borrow are much higher: up to the full cost of attendance, including room, board, fees and other expenses, minus any financial aid the student receives. By contrast, loans to traditional undergraduates are typically capped at $5,500 to $7,500 a year. The cost of borrowing for parents is higher, too: 6.28 percent for the 2021–22 academic year plus an up-front fee of 4.228 percent, versus 3.73 percent for undergraduate loans with a 1.057 percent fee. Repayment starts as soon as the money is disbursed whereas students have an automatic six-month grace period after graduation before payments begin. Parents can elect to defer too, but interest accrues from the time the first dollar is dispensed. The Newsweek analysis shows how quickly those amounts can add up. At Spelman College in Atlanta, for example, the median PLUS loan for parents with a child who graduated or left school between 2017 and 2019 was nearly $85,000, the highest of any school in the database. Also in the top 10, by loan amount: NYU in New York, with a median loan of nearly $67,000 and Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, at $60,500. Many schools specializing in the arts were also among those with the largest loans, including Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York; Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida; Berklee College of Music in Boston and Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. And that’s just for one child. Consider that some parents take out these loans for multiple children

J U LY 30, 2021

&/2 &.:,6( )520 %27 720 /()7 &2857(6< 2) %(76< 0$<27 7( .(9,1 &/ $ 5 . ʔ 7 + ( 7 + ( :$6 + , 1 *72 1 3 2 67ʔ* ( 7 7 < 3$ 5 $6 * 5 , ) ) , 1 ʔ* ( 7 7 <

E D U C A T IO N

and it’s easy to see how fast PLUS borrowing can grow. Perhaps surprisingly, the data shows that parent default rates are actually lower-than-average at many of the schools associated with the biggest PLUS loans. But the staggering amounts may still be causing hardship, straining current living expenses and prompting some parents to rethink when and how they’ll be able to retire. That’s the case for Phil Bender, a former publicschool superintendent in Venice, Florida. When the oldest of his three daughters enrolled at Indiana’s Butler University in 2014, the family was able to pay for the first year from savings. But when a college financial aid officer floated the idea of Parent PLUS loans, they seemed like the right call in subsequent years, Bender says. Within four years, Bender’s two other daughters had enrolled in college—one at Robert Morris University in Chicago (since merged into Roosevelt University) and the other at the public Florida Gulf Coast University—and he had taken out 10 more loans to pay for it. Today, with accrued interest, Bender owes more than $300,000. He deferred payment while the three girls attended graduate school but his oldest graduates this spring and he knows what’s coming. “I’m 66 years old and the chance of this debt being paid off in my lifetime is pretty slim,” says Bender, who expects to owe up to $1,400 per month for the loans. He’s retired from his superintendent position but now consults and substitute teaches and doubts he’ll ever be able to stop working completely. “Looking back, it was a huge mistake, I don’t think it should have been that easy,” Bender says. “Nobody seemed to be very interested in how I was going to pay them back, the money just kept coming.”

“The result is that some parents are on the hook for debt most lenders never would have granted in the first place,” says Sandy Baum, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute’s Center on Education Data and Policy and author of Student Debt: Rhetoric and Realities of Higher Education Financing. At the 979 schools for which Newsweek has data, 58 percent of parent loans went to lower-income households; at for-profit schools, the figure jumped to 75 percent. And there were at least 45 schools where 90 percent or more of parent borrowers had low incomes.

(Left) College loan expert Betsy Mayotte, who likens the current situation with parent debt to the 2008 mortgage crisis. (Below) Graduation at Spelman College, where the typical parent borrows nearly $85,000 to put their child through school.

Few Barriers to Borrowing for better or for worse, the department of Education does make it easy for families to get PLUS loans—too easy, many experts say. The application process only takes about 20 minutes, according to the department’s website, and doesn’t ask for any information about income or other debts to help determine whether a borrower can afford to repay the loan. There’s a credit check but it’s cursory at best: As long as the applicant isn’t 90 or more days late on debt over $2,085 and hasn’t had a bankruptcy, foreclosure or similar setback within the past ﬁve years, the loan will be approved.

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EDUCATION

homeless,” she said. “I was getting back on my feet. But whenever I call, I can’t get anyone over there.” LeMoyne-Owen’s ﬁnancial aid director, Amanda Headen, who wasn’t in the position when Johnson got her loan, said she was disappointed to hear what had happened and planned to do what she could to ﬁx it. But the data suggests Johnson’s situation is not entirely uncommon—either at LeMoyne-Owen or other schools dependent on parent loans for funding. The federal government did make one attempt to tighten PLUS-loan criteria a decade ago but the effort did not go well. The reforms led to a spike in loan denials, and some schools that relied heavily on parent borrowing, including many HBCUs, argued they were being unfairly targeted. The resulting backlash led to an apology from then-Education Secretary Arne Duncan and a loosening of the rules again in 2014.

DEBT PAYOFF

Parents typically borrow nearly $67,000 to put their child through NYU—one of the highest loan burdens in the country. Yet just 5 percent default or are late with payments in two years, while 85 percent of students graduate. Here: this year’s commencement in New York City.

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One of those schools is LeMoyne-Owen College, a private historically Black school in Memphis, Tennessee, where Enger Johnson’s son Marquez was recruited to play basketball a couple of years ago. Johnson, 46, had just moved out of a homeless shelter when she sat down with one of the college’s financial aid officers, intent on finding a way to afford the school. She ended up signing the paperwork to borrow through the Parent PLUS program; looking back, she’s not quite sure how it happened and didn’t understand what the loan entailed. Now working as a security guard in Memphis, Johnson is behind on payments—nearly a third of the school’s parent borrowers are delinquent or have defaulted on their loans, according to the federal data— and besieged by collection calls. She says appeals to the school for help have gone nowhere. “I explained to them I was just coming out of the shelter after being

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How to Borrow Smarter

Need a loan to pay for your child’s college education? These 10 tips will help make the costs manageable

over a 10-month period, can also make payments more affordable.

Parent PLUS loans can be a lifeline to helping your child obtain a college degree. But they can also saddle you with high monthly payments that strain your wallet now and threaten your IXWXUH ɿQDQFLDO VHFXULW\ in retirement. Here’s what you need to know before you take on this debt.

Consider other loans. Banks are offering home equity lines of credit ZLWK UDWHV DV ORZ DV percent. That makes them a compelling alternative to a PLUS loan if you’re a homeowner with a healthy amount of equity. Private parent loans charge interest rates as low as 3 percent but you’ll miss out on the protections federal loans provide, such as forgiveness if you become disabled.

before you apply

once approved

Understand your true cost. Some schools include Parent PLUS ORDQV LQ WKH ɿQDQFLDO DLG package they present to accepted students, which can create confusion about the true cost of attendance. “Many families, especially those whose children DUH ɿUVW JHQHUDWLRQ 8 6 college students, don’t realize this is a loan because of how it shows up on the aid letter,” says Betsy Mayotte, president of The Institute of Student Loan Advisors. If the DLG SDFNDJH LV GLIɿFXOW to decipher, reach out to WKH ɿQDQFLDO DLG RIɿFH IRU help and a breakdown without the PLUS loan.

Borrow as little as possible. PLUS loans allow you to borrow the full cost of attendance, without regard to your ability to afford the payments. Just because they let you borrow that much doesn’t mean you should. A good rule of WKXPE VD\V ɿQDQFLDO DLG expert Mark Kantrowitz: Limit your total education debt for all children to no more than your annual household income—less LI \RXŠUH ZLWKLQ ɿYH WR 10 years of retirement.

Ơ by kerri anne renzulli

Max out student loans ɿUVW Federal loans for undergraduates currently carry interest rates of 3.73 percent, almost half WKH SHUFHQW UDWH for parent borrowers. Loans to students also come with a wider variety of repayment plans,

and may offer partially subsidized interest. So before you even consider a PLUS loan, have your child borrow in their own QDPH ɿUVW W\SLFDOO\ XS to $5,500 for freshmen, $6,500 for sophomores and $7,500 for juniors and seniors. If you have WKH ɿQDQFLDO PHDQV \RX can always give them a hand with payments later. Calculate the hit to your lifestyle. Because you will likely be taking out more than one loan to cover your child’s education—and possibly be borrowing for more than one child—it’s important to think long-term. If you borrow $15,000 this year, you’ll owe $170 a month for the next 10 years. Factor in similar borrowing for another

three years and you’ll be $60,000 in debt and owe $679 a month. Breaking it down this way shows the loan’s impact on your future ability to sustain your lifestyle, save for retirement or pay off other debt. Look into other ways to pay. Check the online databases at FastWeb. com and the CollegeBoard for scholarship opportunities. Some schools, such as Clarkson and Purdue, offer income-sharing agreements, in which they provide a set amount toward tuition in exchange for a percentage of the student’s post-graduation income IRU D ɿ[HG SHULRG 7XLWLRQ installment plans, which spread college costs

Start repaying immediately. Unlike loans to students, payments on parent loans begin as soon as the money is doled out. You can defer for up to six months after your child graduates but interest will FRQWLQXH WR DFFUXH LI \RX borrow, say, $15,000, ZLWK D SHUFHQW interest rate, that loan ZLOO EDOORRQ WR by the time repayments start. “If you can’t afford

the payment now and plan to defer, that’s a sign that you shouldn’t be borrowing that amount,” says Mayotte. Let your employer help. $ERXW SHUFHQW of employers provide workers with student loan repayment assistance, including Aetna, Google and Hulu. More companies are expected to add this perk, thanks to pandemic legislation WKDW PDGH XS WR of such assistance a taxIUHH EHQHɿW WR HPSOR\HHV WKURXJK WKH HQG RI Let Uncle Sam help. PLUS loan borrowers can deduct up to LQ VWXGHQW ORDQ interest a year from their taxable income, without itemizing—a break worth up to $600. 7KH EHQHɿW LV JUDGXDOO\ reduced if your income is EHWZHHQ DQG $170,000 for married couples, or $70,000 and IRU VLQJOH RU KHDG RI KRXVHKROG ɿOHUV Catch a break. StrugJOLQJ ɿQDQFLDOO\" ,I WKH problem is temporary, you can apply for forbearance, or a pause in payments, IRU XS WR PRQWKV Alternatively, you can reduce monthly payments E\ VZLWFKLQJ WR D \HDU repayment plan, from the standard 10 years, or an income-contingent plan that will limit payments WR SHUFHQW RI \RXU GLVcretionary income (after \HDUV DQ\ UHPDLQLQJ balance is forgiven). The downside: You’ll pay more in interest and it will take longer to get out of debt— you could be paying well into your retirement.

NEWSWEEK.COM

EDUCATION

ers and more than a third of Black borrowers have incomes below the federal poverty line, according to Baum. More broadly, her research shows, six in 10 Black parents with PLUS loans would be considered lower-income versus 25 percent of white PLUS-loan holders. One sign of the problems this may cause for families is the relatively high PLUS-loan default and delinquency rates at some HBCUs. Of the 182 schools in the Newsweek database with a combined rate that’s at least twice the median, three in 10 percent were historically Black institutions. One of them is Philander Smith College, in Little Rock, Arkansas, where more than nine out of 10 PLUS loans go to lower-income families and 30 percent of parents are behind or in default on their payments. Somewhat ironically, given the backlash against tightening lending standards 10 years ago, ﬁnancial

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Among the members of Congress who pressured the department to change its mind was Democratic Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, who said stricter credit checks had made it particularly difficult for Black parents to send their children to college. “We keep putting rules out there knowing full well the rule has a more adverse impact on people of color,” Clyburn, now the House Majority Whip, tells Newsweek. “All you’ve got to do is look at the result. If you pass a law and the law has an adverse impact on Black students, it speaks for itself.” It’s a Catch-22, say researchers who have studied the impact of PLUS loans on lower-income households and Black families. Looser credit standards improve college access for parents with limited financial resources but leave them with debts they struggle to pay. One out of every five PLUS borrow-

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J U LY 30, 2021

lose significant federal funding if 30 percent or more of its student borrowers are in default for three consecutive year or 40 percent or more default in a single year. But there isn’t a comparable rule associated with parent loans. “For the institutions, Parent PLUS loans are like a grant,” said Rachel Fishman, deputy director for higher education research at New America, a Washington, D.C. think tank. “They get the money regardless of what it does to the family.” There’s no way of knowing how many institutions put pressure on parents to borrow. Some schools, as a matter of policy, do not mention PLUS loans unless a student has exhausted other means of paying for their education and is still coming up short. Case in point: At Wayne State University in Detroit, where just 7 percent of the school’s more than 1,000 parent borrowers defaulted in 2017–19, PLUS loans are regarded as a last resort. “We found that parents don’t always understand the implications of borrowing,” says Catherine Kay, Wayne State’s senior director of financial aid. “If you offer these loans from the front end, people sometimes borrow more than they need to. A parent could potentially borrow every year and the debt really adds up.” The University of New Orleans leaves all loans out of its initial aid offers, but does provide them as a final option, says Ann Lockridge, the financial aid director at the public university, where fewer than 80 parents used PLUS loans in 2017–19. The school had a 13 percent default rate in those years. By contrast, both Philander Smith and LeMoyne-Owen say they provide Parent PLUS loans as a financing option from the start. It’s a tricky conundrum for colleges and universities, many of which depend on maintaining steady enrollment for their survival. Smaller private colleges in particular depend on tuition, so losing Parent PLUS loans as a financing option could have dire consequences, they say. Dillard University in New Orleans, where 15 percent of parent borrowers default, tried downplaying PLUS loans as an option a couple of years ago by mentioning them only as a backup plan, only to lose potential students who no longer saw Dillard

“In any other forum, the practice of awarding loans in large amounts without regard to the borrower’s ability to pay would be considered predatory and unconscionable.” aid director Kevin Barnes blames the school’s high default rate on the federal government for allowing risky borrowers to take out loans in the ﬁrst place. “We don’t issue the credit decisions,” Barnes tells Newsweek. “We’re not responsible for collecting the payments.” PAYING THE PRICE

(Far left) Parent Phil Bender of Venice, Florida, who has $300,000 in college loans for his three daughters, including eldest Korey. (Left) Wayne State University in Detroit, where parent loans are a last resort. (Above) Former Education Secretary Arne Duncan couldn’t make a change in criteria stick.

The Role that Schools Play colleges do have a hand, though, in steering families to PLUS loans. Parents rarely know about this borrowing option until a college ﬁnancial aid ofﬁcer tells them, Fossey says. And some schools actively push parents to borrow instead of their children, according to Mayotte and other experts, in order to keep their student default rates down. That’s because a college or university stands to

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ED U C A T I O N

as an affordable option, says David Page, vice president for enrollment management at the private, historically Black university. Families looked at the ﬁnancing options the school offered up-front, such as scholarships, grants and traditional student loans, and didn’t see a way to pay, he says. “Ultimately it is their choice,” says Page. “I think schools should have the opportunity to create whatever plan they ﬁnd appropriate for their students.”

Default Is Not the Only Danger

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“We keep putting rules out there knowing

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parents, however, face some unique challenges in repaying their loans compared to student borrowers. The most obvious one: They do not have as much time left in their working lives to pay back what they owe and, typically already at or past their earnings peak, they cannot count on a rising income to make repayment easier in the future. The amounts they owe are usually much larger too, since the maximum they can borrow is higher and they may take out loans for multiple children. If parents run into problems making payments, though, they do not have access to as much help as their kids do. Parents are only eligible for one of the federal government’s four income-based repayment plans, which lower the amount due each month by stretching payments beyond the standard 10-year schedule. Parents can switch to a plan that limits payments to no more than 20 percent of discretionary income over 25 years, whereas the plans students commonly use limit payment to 10 percent of income. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in a 2017 report, documented the hardships student loans often result in for borrowers age 60 and older. It reported that a large portion struggle to pay basic living expenses and are more likely than same-aged people without student loans to skip going to the doctor or dentist or buying prescription drugs because they cannot afford it. They’ve also saved less for retirement and a growing portion have had a portion of their Social Security beneﬁts offset because of unpaid student loans. Phi Linh Ellis, a 38-year-old New Orleans pharmacist, is already anticipating the strain PLUS-loan payments will put on her family’s budget. She and her husband borrowed $7,500 to help pay for their son’s freshman year at the University of Holy Cross this past year and expect to owe at least $60,000 by the time he graduates. And the couple have two

STATUS QUO

House Majority Whip James Clyburn, who pushed back against tighter credit checks for parent loans a decade ago and remains opposed now: “If you pass a law and the law has an adverse impact on Black students, it speaks for itself.”

J U LY 30, 2021

full well the rule has a more adverse impact on people of color.”

NEWSWEEK.COM

E DU C AT IO N

median loan amount

low-income borrowers (%)

graduation rate (%)

school

default & delinquency rate (%)

Despite having comparatively modest loans, parents struggle the most to make payments at these schools, where the majority of students come from lower-income households. Borrowing is often a bad bargain for these families: Graduation rates are below the national average rate of 63 percent at nearly WKUHH TXDUWHUV RI WKH VFKRROV PRUH WKDQ KDOI RI ZKLFK DUH IRU SURɿW LQVWLWXWLRQV

2,867

5,638

N/A

4,786

6,411

4,961

4,828

5,637

5,417

9,878

7,899

N/A

4,153

5,339

7,334

8,000

3,898

19,530

11,250

9,631

6,500

3,138

7,899

8,320

7,502

8,634

7,925

South Texas Vocational Technical Institute-Weslaco

42.94

National College-Nashville

40.00

Stevens-Henager College

39.24

Vista College

38.83

Career Quest Learning Centers-Lansing

38.78

Southern Technical College

38.71

Blue Cliff College-Metairie

38.67

Dakota College at Bottineau

37.93

Centura College-Virginia Beach

37.84

Allen University

37.80

Southern Careers Institute-Austin

36.58

Dorsey School of Business-Woodhaven

36.42

City College-Fort Lauderdale

35.79

Lane College

34.36

Altierus Career College-Tampa

33.76

Benedict College

33.12

Lackawanna College

32.90

Miles College

32.70

Le Moyne-Owen College

32.39

Empire Beauty School-Manhattan

31.73

UEI College-Fresno

31.64

Jarvis Christian College

31.63

Academy of Cosmetology & Esthetics NYC

31.43

Florida Career College-Miami

31.37

Pinnacle Career Institute-South Kansas City

31.15

NEWSWEEK.COM

younger children in daycare who are likely to need their own tuition assistance someday. “Any time you have a new debt you have to cut back on costs: groceries, eating out, anything that’s not a fixed cost,” says Ellis, who finished repaying her own student loans just a few years ago. “It does stress me out, especially knowing I have other children behind my son.” Repayment can be even more challenging for retired parents. A 2015 GAO report found that there were 870,000 or so student loan borrowers over age 65, of which 210,000 owed Parent PLUS-loan debt; hundreds of thousands more likely had private loans, often cosigned with their children. Overall, the CFPB found that nearly three-quarters of college borrowers age 60 and older took out the loans on behalf of their children and grandchildren. Even borrowers who are more prepared for the PLUS debt find themselves taken aback by it. Take New York City residents Lee Johnson and his wife, a retired nurse, who borrowed about $160,000 to send their son to the University of Florida in 2004 and their daughter to Spelman in 2008. The Johnsons did their homework, never missed a payment and have since paid off the loans in full. But they were still surprised by the high interest rates—around 7 percent at the time—and how quickly the debt added up. “I went to school for economics, so I understand the tricks of the trade but the average person knows nothing about this,” says Johnson, 65, a retired truck driver. “This is a big trap for poor people.” For many parents, the struggles they face repaying PLUS loans might be worth it if borrowing achieved the desired result: getting their child a college degree. But many of the schools with the highest default rates have a graduation rate far lower than the 63 percent national average. Consider Stevens-Henager College, a Utah-based

NOTES Ơ 'DWD LV IURP -XO\ WR -XQH

'HIDXOW LV GHɿQHG DV IDLOXUH WR PDNH SD\PHQWV IRU PRUH WKDQ 360 days, delinquent as failure to pay for 31 to 360 days. Median loan amount represents how much parents borrowed for each student who graduated or otherwise left school during the two-year period. Eligibility for a federal Pell grant, JLYHQ WR VWXGHQWV ZLWK H[FHSWLRQDO ɿQDQFLDO QHHG LV XVHG DV D SUR[\ IRU ORZ LQFRPH ERUURZHUV WKH GDWD UHSUHVHQWV the percentage of Parent PLUS borrowers whose student is Pell eligible. Graduation rates are over eight years. SOURCE: College Scorecard, U.S. Department of Education

J U LY 30, 2021

- 2 6 + % 5 $67 ( 'ʔ* ( 7 7 <

The 25 Schools with the Highest Parent Default Rates

The 25 Schools Where Parents Borrow the Most

low-income borrowers (%)

default & delinquency rate (%)

graduation rate (%)

84,671

76,882

76,470

73,101

72,056

70,445

66,714

66,687

61,411

60,500

59,252

57,949

54,628

54,285

54,068

53,794

52,884

52,686

52,490

52,037

51,635

50,758

50,696

50,511

49,248

school

median loan amount

Although the amounts typically borrowed at these schools are staggering, PRVW SDUHQWV PDQDJH WR NHHS XS ZLWK SD\PHQWV WKH FRPELQHG GHIDXOW DQG delinquency rate for all but two of these institutions is at or below the 9 percent national average for our database. There’s a clear payoff, too: Graduation rates at most of these colleges are above the national average of 63 percent.

BAD OUTCOME Dillard University says it lost potential

students when it recently tried to downplay parent loans.

school owned by the Center for Excellence in Higher Education, which has repeatedly faced criticism about its quality from graduates, accreditors and judges. Nearly 40 percent of PLUS borrowers at Stevens-Henager and its related Independence University defaulted within two years. Meanwhile, the eight-year graduation rate is just 32 percent, according to the Department of Education. The college chain has a department meant to prevent defaults, but hasn’t been able to get a handle on PLUS borrowers, says Scott Schuler, vice president of ﬁnancial aid for the schools. Close behind Stevens-Henager is Centura College, a for-proﬁt school in Virginia where 38 percent of PLUS borrowers defaulted within two years and just 43 percent of students graduated in eight years. The college provides “intensive” financial counseling for its students, says Joel English, Centura’s executive vice president but “for parents, we don’t have such a program.”

Solutions Proposed, None Taken what’s to be done? student loan forgiveness was a hot topic in the presidential campaign and earlier this year but none of the proposals ﬂoated explicitly addressed parent debt. Since then, President Biden has said he is looking into forgiveness options, but it’s not clear how that would work or whether his plan will include parents either. Several experts told Newsweek they’re not convinced Biden will take action at all, despite pressure within his

Spelman College

Pratt Institute-Main

Ringling College of Art & Design

High Point University

Berklee College of Music

School of Visual Arts

Savannah College of Art & Design

New York University

American Musical & Dramatic Academy

Loyola Marymount University

University of San Diego

Quinnipiac University

The Catholic University of America

Howard University

Saint Joseph’s University

MCPHS University

American University

Fordham University

Belmont University

Saint Mary’s College of California

The New School

Drexel University

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Daytona Beach

Bryant University

Texas Christian University

NEWSWEEK.COM

EDUCATION

own party to do so, noting the president did not include student debt forgiveness in his proposed budget or infrastructure legislation. Congress could take the lead in trying to implement a solution. But while legislators have occasionally attempted reforms, results are rare. “It certainly seems like an area that needs a champion,” says Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell of California, who tells Newsweek he intends this year to reintroduce a 2019 bill he proposed to wipe out interest on federal student loans, including Parent PLUS debt. Meanwhile, Representative Bill Foster, a Democrat from Illinois, tells Newsweek he hopes to propose a bill this year that will allow graduates to take over their parents’ school loans. But that won’t address what Foster says is the real driver of high college debt: state and federal education budget cuts that have pushed schools to raise tuition repeatedly in recent years. He says, “We seem to have just lost that social compact.” The Department of Education could reform aspects of the Parent PLUS loans without congressional approval, but it’s not clear whether it will. The department did not respond to repeated interview requests. Still, a few relatively minor changes could help large numbers of borrowers, experts say. Mayotte, for example, suggests allowing students to cosign parent loans, which would enable them to take over some responsibility for the debt if the parent runs into financial trouble. She also advocates broadening the income-based repayment options available to parents. And both Mayotte and Fishman urge the federal government to pay more attention to a potential borrower’s ability to repay the loan before allowing the parent to sign the contract. For instance, Fishman says, the Department of Education could use information gathered in the FAFSA— the federal application for student aid—to determine whether a family has the financial means to repay a loan before offering one. A simple credit check is not enough, she notes, because it often leads to parents with no credit history, and therefore no blemishes on their record, being eligible for loans they can’t afford. Both Fishman and Baum also advocate expanding grant aid to lower-income families to lessen the need for loans in the first place. Baum’s research shows that an extra $6,000 a year in Pell grants for four

years, up from the current maximum of $6,345 now for the lowest-income borrowers, would wipe out the need for PLUS loans for about three-quarters of parents with incomes below the poverty level, including 85 percent of low-income Black PLUS borrowers. Schools also have to do their part, these experts say. Tuition and fees have more than doubled in the past 30 years at both public and private colleges and universities, according to the College Board, and the added costs have required families to seek new ways to pay. If schools reduce the cost of education and the federal government provides more money for Pell

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)5 2 0 / () 7 0 , & + $ ( / 0$& 25 ʔ 7+ ( 6$ 1 )5 $ 1&, 6& 2 &+ 5 21 , &/ ( ʔ*( 7 7< 3$8/ 0 25 , *, ʔ :( 7 + ( 0 , / / , 2 1 ʔ* ( 7 7 <

“Borrowing is a symptom of a cost disease. It’s very expensive to go to college and aid hasn’t kept pace.”

TRY, TRY AGAIN

(Left) Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell of California says he plans to reintroduce a bill that would wipe out interest on federal college loans, including parent debt. (Above) Advocates of loan forgiveness make their feelings known one more time outside the White House last month.

grants, parents won’t need to borrow as much money, said Fishman, of New America. “Borrowing is a symptom of a cost disease,” she said. “It’s very expensive to go to college and it’s expensive to cover living expenses. The rest of the aid hasn’t kept pace.” In the meantime, their experiences with PLUS loans have parents like Michele and Paul Billich, small business owners in South Plainfield, New Jersey, rethinking their options for paying for college. The couple took out two PLUS loans totaling $49,000 for their daughter starting in 2009 as the economy fell off the table; they eventually closed the family construction-equipment company and, a dozen years after they first borrowed for college, they still owe a few thousand dollars. Says Michele, “We just didn’t think we would be holding onto the debt for this long.” When it came time to send their two younger children to college, the family chose not to use PLUS loans, deciding the kids should have more of a financial stake in their own education.

Phil Bender, still sitting on $300,000 in student loans in Florida, is also wondering what he could have done differently. “Being strapped to this sort of debt into my 80s isn’t something I look forward to,” he says. All three of his daughters are planning to help pay back the loans, he says, but he knows he’ll probably end up working long into what was supposed to be his retirement. While he has regrets, though, Bender isn’t sure what else he and his wife could have done to pay for their daughters’ education. “If I had to do it over again, I don’t know if I would have done anything differently or not,” he says. “I had the opportunity to go to college and I wanted my daughters to have the opportunity to go to college. What else can a parent hope for?” Ơ Matt Krupnick is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles. His reporting has appeared in the new york times, the guardian, the washington post and the hechinger report, among other publications.

NEWSWEEK.COM

America’s Best

EYE DOCTORS

NEWSWEEK.COM

J U LY 30, 2021

emand for professional eye care in the U.S. is expected to increase significantly in the coming years as the population ages. Not only are we collectively growing older, we’re also working our tired eyes harder than ever before as more and more of our time—both at work and at play—is spent looking at screens. Meanwhile, serious eye ailments, like glaucoma, which can lead to blindness, are on the rise. With all that in mind, Newsweek partnered with the respected global data research firm Statista, to find the best eye doctors in the country. We looked at the 20 most populous states in the U.S. and selected the 300 best ophthalmologists (M.D.s who specialize in treating the eye) and optometrists (licensed professionals who have earned a post-college doctor of optometry degree). We did not rank opticians, who are trained to design and fit eyeglasses and lenses but not to diagnose or treat diseases or injuries. Our research started with a survey of over 10,000 ophthalmologists, optometrists, clinic managers and other health care professionals who we asked to recommend the best eye doctors in the U.S. What we were looking for were the doctors who had earned the most respect from their peers in three categories: the quality of care they provide, the continuity of care and the quality of the technology they use in their practices. (See methodology, p. 32.) Taking care of your eyes is important and finding the right doctors can make a big difference. If you are looking for an eye doctor, we hope you’ll find our ranking helpful. Ơ Nancy Cooper, Global Editor-in-Chief

NEWSWEEK.COM

METHODOLOGY

participate in the survey of America’s Best Ophthalmologists and America’s Best Optometrists on newsweek.com. All data was collected during a survey period from April to June 2021. It was mandatory for participants to verify their email addresses. Quality checks were performed to avoid selfrecommendations. More than 4,000 votes from medical experts in the ﬁeld of ophthalmology and optometry were collected.

america’s best ophthalmologists and Optometrists 2021 recognizes the 300 best eye doctors in the U.S. Survey participants were asked to recommend eye doctors in their own state as well as throughout the U.S. (In-State and Out-of-State recommendations). The ranking distinguishes ophthalmologists and optometrists in separate lists to account for differences in services and treatments. Ophthalmologists are doctors who have completed a medical degree and a residency in ophthalmology. These doctors have received 8 years or more of medical training. Optometrists are licensed practitioners who have received a Doctor of Optometry degree. They must obtain a 4-year post undergraduate degree. A score was calculated for every eye doctor that was part of the analysis. This total score is based on four sub scores: the In-State recommendations, Out-ofState recommendations, recommendations from the other specialty as well as a quality score.

Score for Each Ophthalmologist/Optometrist In cooperation with Newsweek, Statista invited over 10,000 medical experts (ophthalmologists, optometrists, clinic managers and health care professionals) to complete an online survey. Additionally, experts from all over the U.S. could

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Calculation of Recommendations Score For the In-State recommendations participants were asked to recommend up to 15 of the best eye doctors for each specialty in their state. They were asked to recommend eye doctors by considering the quality of care, continuity of care and quality of technical equipment. For the Out-of-State recommendations, participants were asked to name up to 15 eye doctors in the U.S. Optionally, participants could also recommend doctors from the other specialty (ophthalmologists for optometrists and vice versa). These recommendations were weighted lower than recommendations from the same specialization. Entry of recommendations was aided by an autocomplete function, which showed eye doctors based on the letters entered. It was also possible to recommend eye doctors that were not proposed by the autocomplete list. Recommendations received different weights depending on the order in which they were given, with the first recommendation being assigned the highest weight. For example, recommendations for the best optometrist or ophthalmologist in each state received a 36 percent higher weight than recommendations for the ﬁfth best optometrist or ophthalmologist in a state. A score was assigned to each eye doctor based on the number of weighted recommendations.

Recommendations constitute 85 percent of the overall score.

Calculation of Quality Score Within the In-State recommendations participants were also asked to rank the quality dimensions which inﬂuence the quality of eye doctors. Participants were asked to differentiate between these variables: Ơ Quality of care (e.g., treatments, consultation with a doctor)

Ơ Continuity of care (e.g., degree to which consistent and constant care is provided including preventive and follow-up care) Ơ Quality of technical equipment (e.g., use of the most recent equipment)

The quality dimensions were shown to participants in a randomized order. Based on the reported importance of each quality dimension a quality score was assigned using the following weights: 50 percent Quality of care, 30 percent Continuity of care and 20 percent Quality of technical equipment. For each recommended eye doctor, the participant rated the three quality variables on a scale from 1 (“Poor”) to 7 (“Excellent”). A quality score was assigned to each eye doctor based on the weighted average of these ratings. The quality score contributes 15 percent toward the overall score.

Disclaimer The rankings are comprised exclusively of eye doctors who were eligible based on the scope described here. A mention in the ranking is a positive recognition based on peer recommendations. The ranking was created through an elaborate process, however, the information in this ranking should be considered in conjunction with other available information about eye doctors or, if possible, accompanied by a visit to a facility. The quality of eye doctors not included in the rankings is not disputed.

7 + ( / , 6 7 , 6 $ / 6 2 $9$ , / $ % / ( $7 1 ( :6: ( ( . & 2 0ʔ$% ( ' ʝ

Ophthalmologists

SCORE

NAME/LOCATION

Daniel Martin, MD Cleveland, OH

Margaret K. Poulos, MD Orlando, FL; Kissimmee, FL

RANK

SCORE

NAME/LOCATION

RANK

SCORE

NAME/LOCATION

Eric D. Donnenfeld, MD Fairﬁeld, CT; Garden City, NY

Warren E. Hill, MD Mesa, AZ

Anthony John Aldave, MD Los Angeles, CA

David F. Chang, MD Los Altos, CA

John A. Hovanesian, MD Orange, CA

Uday Devgan, MD Los Angeles, CA

Nate Kleinfeldt, MD Dearborn, MI; Livonia, MI; Madison Heights, MI

Douglas Donald Koch, MD Houston, TX

Stanley Chang, MD New York, NY

Terry Kim, MD Durham, NC; Morrisville, NC

A.K. Gulati, MD Kenmore, NY

Ryan C. Young, MD Austin, TX; Dripping Springs, TX; Fredericksburg, TX; Round Rock, TX; Wimberley, TX; Temple, TX; Bastrop, TX; Waco, TX; Lakeway, TX

Archana Seethala, MD Boston, MA; Medford, MA; Peabody, MA

Alan B. Aker, MD Boca Raton, FL

Carl D. Regillo, MD, FACS Plymouth Meeting, PA; Philadelphia, PA; Newtown Square, PA; Huntingdon Valley, PA; Cherry Hill, NJ

Benjamin Bakall MD, PhD Phoenix, AZ

Leon W. Herndon Jr., MD Morrisville, NC; Durham, NC; Raleigh, NC

Brandon D. Ayres, MD Bala Cynwyd, PA; Marlton, NJ; Philadelphia, PA

Richard F. Spaide, MD New York, NY

4 5

Francis Price, MD Indianapolis, IN

Carol L. Shields, MD Philadelphia, PA

Timothy You, MD Santa Ana, CA; Laguna Hills, CA; Newport Beach, CA; Fullerton, CA; San Juan Capistrano, CA

9 10 11 12 $ 1 ' 5 ( 6 9 , & 72 5 ( 5 2ʔ* ( 7 7 < 3 5 ( 9 , 2 86 ( 6 3 5 ( $ ' :$9 ( % 5 ( $ . 0 ( ' , $ ʔ* ( 7 7 <

RANK

14 15

Kevin M. Miller, MD Los Angeles, CA

M. Bowes Hamill, MD Houston, TX

Esen Karamursel Akpek, MD Baltimore, MD

Robert W. Nash, MD Bellevue, WA

Lawrence A. Yannuzzi, MD New York, NY

Richard Lindstrom, MD Minnetonka, MN

Matthew Timothy Feng, MD Indianapolis, IN

Navin Tekwani, MD St. Louis, MO; St. Peters, MO

Jeffrey Heimer, MD State College, PA; Tyrone, PA

David M. Fastenberg, MD Elmhurst, NY; Flushing, NY; Great Neck, NY; Hauppauge, NY; Riverhead, NY; Rockville Centre, NY

D. Brian Kim, MD Dalton, GA; Calhoun, GA; Oglethorpe, GA; Chatsworth, GA

David A. Goldman, MD Palm Beach Gardens, FL

Jeffrey M. Liebmann, MD New York, NY

Keith A. Skolnick, MD Plantation, FL; Fort Lauderdale, FL

Christopher J. Rapuano, MD Philadelphia, PA

Kevin R. Baxter, DO Mishawaka, IN

Angela Turalba, MD Dedham, MA; Boston, MA; Norwood, MA

Harry W. Flynn Jr., MD Miami, FL

Inder Paul Singh, MD Racine, WI; Kenosha, WI

William M. Schiff, MD New York, NY

Max Parikh, MD San Diego, CA

Philip J. Ferrone, MD Elmhurst, NY; Flushing, NY; Great Neck, NY; Hauppauge, NY; Riverhead, NY; Rockville Centre, NY

Jeffrey Heier, MD Boston, MA

Nicole Fram, MD Los Angeles, CA

Maayan E. Keshet, MD New York, NY

Amy C. Scheﬂer, MD Bellaire, TX; Katy, TX; Lufkin, TX; Houston, TX; The Woodlands, TX

NEWSWEEK.COM

SCORE

NAME/LOCATION

Aaron V. Weber, MD Westerville, OH

Neil S. Patel, MD Bronx, NY; Jamaica, NY; Jackson Heights, NY; New York, NY; Brooklyn, NY

Joseph P. Gira, MD St. Louis, MO

Gary Fillmore, MD Spokane, WA

Robert A. Goldberg, MD Los Angeles, CA

Marguerite McDonald, MD, FACS Manhasset, NY; Oceanside, NY; Garden City, NY

Edward J. Holland, MD Blue Ash, OH

Richard Gans, MD Cleveland, OH

Craig M. Greven, MD Winston-Salem, NC; Greensboro, NC

RANK

SCORE

NAME/LOCATION

RANK

SCORE

NAME/LOCATION

Drew Sommerville, MD Evansville, IN

Shamil S. Patel, MD Glendale, AZ

Steven J. Gedde, MD Miami, FL

Anup Kubal, MD Jupiter, FL

Anne L. Coleman, MD, PhD Los Angeles, CA

Rahul K. Reddy, MD, MHS Phoenix, AZ

Derek Kuhl, MD, PhD Bryan, TX; Huntsville, TX

Andrew Lee, MD Houston, TX

Todd D. Severin, MD Brentwood, CA; San Ramon, CA

Evan D. Schoenberg, MD Atlanta, GA; Duluth, GA; Woodstock, GA

Jamie Alexander, MD Plano, TX; Dallas, TX; Fort Worth, TX

Narsing A. Rao, MD Los Angeles, CA

Benjamin Y. Xu, MD, PhD Los Angeles, CA

Sweta Kavali, MD Des Peres, MO; St. Louis, MO

Robert N. Weinreb, MD La Jolla, CA

J. Shepard Bryan, MD Phoenix, AZ

Charles C. Wykoff, MD, PhD Bellaire, TX; Katy, TX; Livingston, TX; Lufkin, TX; Houston, TX; The Woodlands, TX

Jack M. Dodick, MD New York, NY

Dan S. Gombos, MD, FACS Houston, TX

Neal V. Palejwala, MD Bullhead City, AZ; Goodyear, AZ; Kingman, AZ; Peoria, AZ; Phoenix, AZ; Tuba City, AZ

Stephanie Vanderveldt, MD Cumming, GA; Sandy Springs, GA

Lena A. Dixit, MD Round Rock, TX; Taylor, TX

Jay L. Schwartz, DO Glendale, AZ

Laura Periman, MD Seattle, WA

63 64

Jody G. Abrams, MD Sarasota, FL; Venice, FL; Lakewood Ranch, FL

Nicholas F. Hrisomalos, MD Carmel, IN; Greenwood, IN

Jeffrey Wipﬂi, MD Tampa, FL; Tarpon Springs, FL; Spring Hill, FL; St. Petersburg, FL; The Villages, FL

Jennifer I. Lim, MD Chicago, IL

K. Bailey Freund, MD New York, NY; Brooklyn, NY

James Loden, MD Goodlettsville, TN; Gallatin, TN; Nashville, TN; Paris, TN; Smyrna, TN

Jeffrey Martin, MD, FACS Smithtown, NY

Mark Falls, MD Vienna, VA; Fairfax, VA

Noha S. Ekdawi, MD Wheaton, IL; Naperville, IL; Plainﬁeld, IL; Hinsdale, IL Robert H. Osher, MD Blue Ash, OH

NEWSWEEK.COM

Louis B. Cantor, MD Indianapolis, IN; Carmel, IN

Maz Kazahaya, MD, FACS Allentown, PA; Bethlehem, PA

Galen Grayson, MD Charlotte, NC

J U LY 30, 2021

) * 7 5 $ ' ( ʔ* ( 7 7 <

RANK

SCORE

NAME/LOCATION

RANK

SCORE

NAME/LOCATION

109

Ralph E. Wesley, MD Nashville, TN; Bowling Green, KY; Clarkville, TN; Franklin, TN; Hendersonville, TN; Murfreesboro, TN; Tullahoma, TN

129

Albert S. Khouri, MD Newark, NJ; Roseland, NJ

130

Vikram Brar, MD Richmond, VA

131

John R. Stechschulte, MD Columbus, OH

132

Thomas A. Oetting, MS, MD Iowa City, IA

133

Jay S. Duker, MD Boston, MA

134

Seth D. Potash, MD, FAAO Harrison, NY; Yonkers, NY

135

Pradeep Yammanuru Ramulu, MD, PhD Baltimore, MD

110

Les Grosinger, MD Bloomﬁeld Hills, MI

111

Vincent A. Deramo, MD Elmhurst, NY; Flushing, NY; Great Neck, NY; Hauppauge, NY; Riverhead, NY; Rockville Centre, NY

112

William Dupps, MD, PhD Cleveland, OH

113

David Perlmutter, MD Albany, NY; Clifton Park, NY

114

Andrew Lewicky, MD Chicago, IL

136

Michael E. Snyder, MD Blue Ash, OH

RANK

SCORE

NAME/LOCATION

115

Alan N. Carlson, MD Durham, NC

137

Lee M. Jampol, MD Chicago, IL

Carol L. Karp, MD Miami, FL

116

Karina Billiris Findlay, MD Tampa, FL; Temple Terrace, FL

138

Steve Gerber, MD South Bend, IN

Richard Cohn, MD Maitland, FL

117

Dean Eliott, MD Boston, MA

139

T. Michael Nork, MS, MD Madison, WI

Steve Charles, MD, FACS, FICS, FASRS Germantown, TN; Oxford, MS; Memphis, TN

118

Jay Arora, MD Scottsdale, AZ

140

Jeffrey Ewing Lee, MD La Jolla, CA; San Diego, CA

119

Ryan D. Walsh, MD Milwaukee, WI

141

Peter Kaiser, MD Cleveland, OH

Philip J. Rosenfeld, MD, PhD Miami, FL; Palm Beach Gardens, FL

142

W. Barry Lee, MD, FACS Cumberland, GA; Buckhead, GA; Piedmont, GA; Macon, GA

143

Craig M. Fern, MD, PC Mt. Kisco, NY; White Plains, NY

144

Sharon F. Freedman, MD Durham, NC

145

Ricardo J. Ramirez, MD Orlando, FL; Kissimmee, FL

146

Michael A. Kipp, MD Wheaton, IL; Naperville, IL; Hinsdale, IL; Plainﬁeld, IL; St. Charles, IL

100

John C. Baldinger, MD Fairfax, VA

120

101

Mark Fromer, MD New York, NY; Bronx, NY; Forest Hills, NY; Bayside, NY

121

Anna Allen, MD, PhD Latham, NY; Albany, NY

122

Stephen P. Verb, MD, MHSA, FACS Madison Heights, MI; Livonia, MI

102 103 104

V. Nicholas Batra, MD San Leandro, CA Neil R. Katz, MD, FAAO Harrison, NY; Yonkers, NY

123

Jeffrey Goshe, MD Cleveland, OH

124

Craig See, MD Cleveland, OH; Independence, OH

125

Bradford J. Shingleton MD Boston, MA

147

Gregory Kosmorsky, DO Cleveland, OH; Strongsville, OH

126

Megan M. Geloneck, MD Cedar Park, TX; Austin, TX

148

Paul T. Finger, MD, FACS New York, NY

Anna Luisa Di Lorenzo, MD Troy, MI

127

John C. Hart, Jr., MD, FACS Farmington Hills, MI

149

Rishi Singh, MD Cleveland, OH; Twinsburg, OH

Anne Barmettler, MD Bronx, NY

128

Henry D. Perry, MD Rockville Centre, NY

150

Michelle M. Kron-Gray, MD, PhD Wheaton, IL; St. Charles, IL

Joshua Ford, MD Memphis, TN

105

Vikram David Durairaj, MD, FACS Austin, TX; Cedar Park, TX

106

Charles Bouchard, MA, MD Orlando Park, IL; Burr Ridge, IL; Maywood, IL

107

108

7 + ( / , 6 7 , 6 $ / 6 2 $9$ , / $ % / ( $7 1 ( :6: ( ( . & 2 0ʔ$% ( ' ʝ

Optometrists

RANK

SCORE

NAME/LOCATION

Aaron M. Brewer, OD St. Louis, MO

Kevin M. Donausky, OD Scottsdale, AZ; Glendale, AZ; Mesa, AZ

Julie D. Ngo, OD, FAAO Sugarland, TX; Webster, TX; Bellaire, TX; Pasadena, TX; Houston, TX; Conroe, TX

RANK

SCORE

NAME/LOCATION

RANK

SCORE

NAME/LOCATION

Arthur B. Epstein, OD Phoenix, AZ

Jill C. Autry OD, R.Ph. Bellaire, TX

Viola Kanevsky, OD New York, NY

Josh Johnston, OD, FAAO Atlanta, GA

Alan Glazier, OD Rockville, MD

Kuniyoshi Kanai, OD, FAAO Berkeley, CA

Dennis R. Miller, OD Warsaw, IN

Joseph W. Sowka, OD, FAAO, Diplomate Englewood, FL; Venice, FL; North Port, FL

Jamie Kuzniar, OD, FAAO, FSLS Bloomﬁeld Twp, MI

Philip E. Walling, OD Big Rapids, MI

Charles Clayton, OD Bellevue, WA

Michael J. Earley, PhD, OD Columbus, OH

Thomas P. Arnold, OD Sugar Land, TX

Thomas A. Myers, OD Spokane, WA

Shannan E. Brown, OD Mishawaka, IN

Oliver K. Lou, OD Cedar Park, TX

Stephanie M. Baxter, OD Mishawaka, IN

Anne Mika Moy, OD, FAAO Berkeley, CA

Ellen Butts, OD Pittsburgh, PA; Monroeville, PA; Wexford, PA; Sewickley, PA

Phillip B. Brunson, OD, FAAO Humble, TX

Emily DePew, OD Pittsburg, PA

Keith A. Smithson, OD Reston, VA; Alexandria, VA

James M. Caldwell, OD, EdD Elkins Park, PA

Ryan P. Ames, OD Oshkosh, WI

Adam R. Rosati, OD Bethlehem, PA

Alan B. Schlussel, OD New York, NY; West Orange, NJ; Caldwell, NJ

Andrew A. Anderson, OD Mishawaka, IN

Gregory J. Nixon, OD, FAAO Westerville, OH; Johnstown, OH; Lewis Center, OH

Paul M. Karpecki, OD, FAAO Lexington, KY; Louisville, KY; Middlesboro, KY; Mount Sterling, KY

8 9 10

Nyok Alan Lee, OD Houston, TX Shannon L. Steinhauser, OD Phoenix, AZ Marc R. Bloomenstein, OD, FAAO Scottsdale, AZ April L. Jasper OD, FAAO West Palm Beach, FL

Aaron B. Mandel, OD Brooklyn, NY

Kristine M. Eng, OD Orinda, CA

Gregory D. Actipes, OD Chicago, IL

Andrew Gurwood, OD, FAAO Philadelphia, PA

Mark Perry, OD Orlando, FL

Mina Sehizadeh, OD Boston, MA

Barry A. Weissman, OD Los Angeles, CA; New York, NY

Albert Fonticoba, OD Philadelphia, PA

Richard Madonna, MA, OD New York, NY

Paul C. Ajamian, OD Atlanta, GA; College Park, GA

Reagan M. Ratcliff, OD Friendswood, TX

Alan P. Levitt, OD North Miami Beach, FL

Stephen V. Menzel, OD Fenton, MO

John Arthur Mcgreal Jr., OD St. Louis, MO

David Coulson, OD Phoenix, AZ

Katarzyna Ciesek, OD Hamilton, NJ

7 + ( / , 6 7 , 6 $ / 6 2 $9$ , / $ % / ( $7 1 ( :6:( ( . &2 0ʔ$% ( ' ʝ

STAT I STA

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Sarah D. Appel, OD Elkins Park, PA

Kevin T. Corcoran, OD Montgomery, OH

Marina Su, OD, FAAO Bronx, NY

Elliot M. Kirstein, OD Cincinnati, OH

Derek N. Cunningham, OD, FAAO Austin, TX

Lisa M. Steward, OD Linton, IN

Alexis Malkin, OD, FAAO Boston, MA

Aaron M. Banta, OD Kennewick, WA

Joseph D. Hashim, OD Pittsﬁeld , MA

Daniel Epshtein, OD, FAAO New York, NY

Shauna Lushko, OD Pittsburgh, PA

William Goodrich, OD Pittsﬁeld , MA

Cheryl Schmitt, OD Tucson, AZ

C. Douglas Stine, OD Weston, WI

Gloria Chow, OD San Jose, CA

Matthew Palmer, OD Tucson, AZ; Casa Grande, AZ; Scottsdale, AZ; Yuma, AZ

Laurie Sorrenson, OD, FAAO Cedar Park, TX

Alberto Camacho, OD Lubbock, TX

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Anita Gulmiri, OD Boston, MA; Roslindale, MA

Anna Lange, OD, FAAO New York, NY

Gloria B. Chiu, OD, FAAO, FSLS Los Angeles, CA

Robert Kessen, OD Weston, WI

Alexander Choy, OD Vancouver, WA

Mark T. Marciano, OD West Palm Beach, FL

Lauren Sanchez, OD Mishawaka, IN

Danica Marrelli , OD Houston, TX

Adam C. Cherry, OD Greenacres, FL

Parker S. Berg, OD Florissant, MO

Hannah Yecheskel, OD Rockville, MD

James M. Kernodle, OD Asheboro, NC

David Evans, OD Memphis, TN

Jerome Sherman, OD, FAAO New York, NY

Elizabeth F. Ellison, OD Gainesville, GA

Lawrence E. Addison, OD Weston, WI

Rebecca Kammer, OD, PhD Irvine, CA

Shane Presson, OD Knoxville, TN

Aaron D. Thornton, OD Oakland, CA

Randy W. Charrier, OD Houston, TX

Ajay S. Patel, OD Duncanville, TX

Michael Tortorici, OD Elmwood Park, NJ

Julie Manry, OD Fort Wayne, IN

Beverly Miller, OD Laguna Niguel, CA

Thuy Tran, OD Bronx, NY; Jamaica, NY; Jackson Heights, NY; New York, NY; Brooklyn, NY

Craig Thomas, OD Dallas, TX

Andrea P. Thau, OD, FAAO, FCOVD, FNAP New York, NY

Yin C. Tea, OD, FAAO Fort Lauderdale, FL

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NAME/LOCATION

Meredith M. Whiteside, OD, FAAO Berkeley, CA

113

Renee K. Lane, OD De Soto, MO

114

Nicole D. Pogue, OD, FAAO Boston, MA

115

Leonard J. Press, OD, FAAO, FCOVD Lakewood, NJ

100 101 102

Aaron Erdmanczyk, OD San Antonio, TX Mary Gouris, OD Chicago, IL Mark T. Dunbar, OD Miami, FL; Palm Beach, FL; Coral Gables, FL

116

Ian Benjamin Gaddie, OD Carrollton, KY; LaGrange, KY; Louisville, KY

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NAME/LOCATION

127

David Geffen, OD, FAAO San Diego, CA

128

Gabriel G. Lazcano, MD Miami, FL

129

JulieAnne M. Roper, OD Columbia , SC

130

N. Ron Melton, OD Charlotte , NC

131

Mindy C. Nguyen, OD, FAAO Huntley, IL

132

Joanna Cotter, OD Miami, FL

133

Andrew Rothberg, OD Tampa, FL

134

Todd J. Agnew, OD Dallas, TX

135

Aaron C. Lahman, OD Dover, OH

136

Randall K. Thomas, OD, FAAO Concord, NC

137

Angela Nguyen, OD Long Beach, CA; Sacramento, CA

138

Lori Ann Vollmer, OD Venice, FL; Sarasota, FL

139

Leonard Messner, OD, FAAO Chicago, IL

140

Aaron Wiens, OD Fresno, CA; Madera, CA

103

Julie Rodman, OD, MS, FAAO Fort Lauderdale, FL

117

Judith Schaffer, OD Fort Lauderdale, FL

141

Karla Zadnik, OD Columbus, OH

104

Justin Bazan, OD Brooklyn, NY

118

Randall Go, OD San Francisco, CA

142

Marie I. Bodack, OD, FAAO Memphis, TN

105

R. Aaron Werner, OD El Cajon, CA

119

Aaron Lee, OD Fort Worth, TX

143

Aaron Evans, OD Boca Raton, FL

106

Reed A. Hopping, OD Friendswood, TX; Houston, TX

120

Sonia J. Rose, OD Fredericksburg, VA

144

Aaron Thompson, OD Chattanooga, TN

107

Susan Resnick, OD, FAAO New York, NY; Roslyn, NY

121

Sam M. Stumer, OD McLean, VA

145

Amanda L. Havens, OD Los Angeles, CA

108

Aleshia N. Luu, OD Raleigh, NC

122

Marilyn Vricella, OD New York, NY

146

Kevin Biermann, OD Washington, MO

109

Benjamin Casella, OD Augusta, GA

123

Aaron W. Bronner, OD Chehalis, WA

147

Kelly Malloy, OD, FAAO, Dipl. Philadelphia, PA

110

Monica Kalia, OD Evansville, IN

124

Negin Nikahd, OD Oxnard, CA

148

Aaron Neufeld, OD Los Altos, CA

111

Lindsay Greiten, OD Tucson, AZ; Douglas, AZ

125

Alex Reed, OD Ardmore, OK

149

Long D. Tran, OD Jacksonville, FL

112

Autumn Mantel, OD Redmond, WA

126

Dat Bui, OD Cupertino, CA

150

Joel Ackerman, OD Phoenix, AZ

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CANCER DOESN’T STOP. NEITHER DO WE. FOR ONE NIGHT. WE STAND TOGETHER.

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How a Walmart Heir’s Arkansas Museum Became a Soldier in The Culture Wars

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almost 10 years ago—november 11, 2011, to be exact— the world, but it’s never been an American cultural center. As far Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opened its doors. as most of the art world was concerned, Bentonville was literally The spotlight was immediately bright. It was the first major in the middle of nowhere, and Walton was a super-rich art enthuleague museum built in the U.S in decades and the founders, siast trying to buy into the big leagues. Walmart heir Alice Walton and the family’s foundaNow, the museum is not only an internationally respected institution, it’s also, by the numbers, a tion, poured hundreds of millions into the building, designed by super architect Moshe Safdie, as well as success. Despite the location, patrons have knocked BY the collection. One of the more striking examples: down the doors. And recently, the museum began celebrating its 10th anniversary with the “Crystal The $35 million-plus Walton paid, or some say overHANK GILMAN Bridges at 10” exhibition. “We knew there was suppaid, the New York Public Library for the Hudson @hankgilman port for a cultural institution in the heartland, but River landscape Kindred Spirits by Asher Durand—a I was surprised and encouraged by the number of people who record at the time for an American painting. You, and everyone else, could also see Kindred Spirits for free thanks to Walmart. embraced the museum immediately,” Walton tells Newsweek via The new museum also got a lot of notice because of its location. email. “By the end of our ﬁrst year, our attendance was 650,000— Northwest Arkansas may be the home of the biggest company in more than double our projection.” Since the opening, she adds,

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“We knew there was support for a cultural institution in the heartland,” Alice Walton says.

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“5.3 million people have visited from every state in the country and across the world.” Not only that, Crystal Bridges has developed, by design, a diverse collection—heavy on works by contemporary women and minority artists like Amy Sherald, Rashid Johnson and Nari Ward, not just long-gone white guys. (Almost half the works in the contemporary art galleries are by artists of color.) As art critic Philip Kennicott wrote in The Washington Post in 2018, Crystal Bridges “has established itself with more gravitas than other museums that have been fashioned, ex nihilo, from the gleaming lucre of a single wealthy person.” I’m not an art expert or even much of an educated fan. Still, I like the museum a lot, as I do its sister arts and performance space, The Momentary, from their beautiful designs and settings to the spacious galleries to the thought-provoking exhibitions. I’ve been back twice and will return a third time once it completes a major expansion by 2024 or so. It is a bucket list-level attraction. It is also loudly and proudly, as The Washington Post once said, “woke.” On a visit to the museum’s website, I found, along with the hours of operation and Crystal Bridges earrings, a slew of social justice declarations ranging from support for Black Lives Matter to the launch of a provocative current events series called “In Real Time” to having the back of the trans community when Arkansas state lawmakers passed anti-LGBTQ legislation. Some examples: On the January 6 insurrection in Washington, D.C.: “The symbols of racism brandished by the rioters and the artwork honoring problematic historical figures inside the Capitol building were chilling reminders that

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there is still much work ahead of us... the first step is to honor our commitment to being an antiracist institution and call out discrimination, injustice, and white supremacy when we see it.” On Black Lives Matter: “We can’t naively think that the same prejudices and privileges currently shining a spotlight on Minneapolis, Atlanta and other areas don’t exist here in Northwest Arkansas.” On a new Arkansas law restricting gender-affirming treatments for trans kids: “In light of the recent legislation... we share our support for all LGBTQ+ people as a valued and respected part of our community.” Rod Bigelow, the museum’s longtime executive director and chief diversity and inclusion officer says the announcement was a tad “late,” but, still, a great example of the staff and the museum’s leadership jumping into the fray on a controversial equality issue in their own backyard. How did a museum in an ultra-red state—and a congressional district that hasn’t elected a Democrat since A Hard Day’s Night hit screens—get into the business of social justice? Arkansas doesn’t just lean right, it is a state represented in Congress by Senator Tom Cotton who recently filed a tax bill to punish colleges such as Harvard and Stanford for teaching “un-American ideas” like critical race theory. Nonetheless, Walton says, “The museum was founded with a mission to welcome all and that’s guided us since day one.”

“I was surprised and encouraged by the number of people who embraced the museum immediately.”

I’ve been to Northwest Arkansas a few times over the years and have always enjoyed my visits there. Back in the 1980s, as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, I covered the young Walmart before people started blaming it and founder, Sam Walton, for destroying small-town America’s picturesque downtowns, some of which had never existed anywhere but in our imaginations. Bentonville, obviously, has changed a lot since then. On my first trips here, I, on occasion, stayed in motels with Gideon Bibles inside creaky bedside tables along with instructions about what to do in case of a tornado. When I visited this May, I stayed at the Aloft, a contemporary hotel with fashion-first rooms. Bentonville now has its own designer downtown with all the trendy restaurants and shops that go along with it. (Kind of ironic if you think about it.) But some things haven’t changed. If you are any shade of blue, you might want to proceed with some caution here. As in many places in the South, and I’ve lived in a few, think twice before talking about anything more serious than SEC football. Arkansas did, after all, deliver almost 30 percentage points more votes to Trump than Joe Biden. Recently, according to the U.K. newspaper The Guardian, a yearbook at a Bentonville middle school had photo captions referring to Black Lives Matter protesters as “rioters” and insisting “President Trump WAS NOT impeached.” And if that’s not enough, former Trump flack Sarah Huckabee Sanders is a candidate for governor. The state flag also celebrates Arkansas’ membership in the confederacy. So how did liberalism or wokeness or whatever you want to call it evolve at Crystal Bridges? Folks I talked to at the museum say it was part of Alice’s original thinking to be a safe place for

J U LY 30, 2021

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BURSTING BUBBLES?

Clockwise from bottom left: Crystal Bridges founder and Walmart heir Alice Walton; artist Rich Simmons’ controversial take on Batman and Superman caused some school groups to cancel visits; and outside the museum.

all patrons: Black, white, gay, straight, Asian, Hispanic...everyone. So that kind of explains it. But four years after the doors opened, something else happened that served as a wake-up call for Crystal Bridges in particular and the museum and arts business world in general. In 2015, the Andrew Mellon Foundation and the Association of Art Museum Directors released a study that showed that museums were really, really, white places in terms of stafﬁng—more than 70 percent non-Hispanic white. It is not entirely clear if Crystal Bridges management at that point had an

epiphany that they weren’t as “open to all” as they thought they were. No one at Crystal Bridges I talked to would quite put it that way. But the Mellon report clearly struck a chord with the board. In 2016, after the Mellon report came out, only 11 percent of the staff at Crystal Bridges identiﬁed as “diverse,” according to the museum. (The current number: 28 percent.) “Seeing the data created a moment of clarity about our path forward,” Alice Walton says, “We took a closer look at who we were as a museum just four years old and realized we needed to do better if we were truly focused on

fulﬁlling our mission.” The board decided to take a look at itself, at its staff and even the collection. “Chief diversity & inclusion ofﬁcer” was added to Executive Director Bigelow’s title. “We knew we could do more,” he recalls. “It was then that the board made a commitment to diversify and adopted a strategic priority to be an anti-racist institution.” The numbers show the changes. In the contemporary art galleries, 48 percent of the works are by artists of color and 53 percent by women. In terms of acquisitions, 18 percent of the pieces were categorized by Crystal Bridges as “racially/ethnically” diverse in 2015 compared to 71 percent in 2020. In any event, the proof of wokeness is not only in the numbers but also in the eye test. Depending on when you visit, you may see the “greatest hits,” as chief curator Austen Barron Bailly calls them, like Norman Rockwell’s 1943 Rosie the Riveter and the aforementioned Kindred Spirits. Edward Hopper, Thomas Hart Benton and John Singer Sargent are there, too. But a walk through the museum will also show you something very different. The opener to the early American art galleries is a massive work by Nari Ward called We the People. Its accompanying commentary points out that “the guiding ideals and aspirations outlined within” the preamble to the United States Constitution “excluded many—essentially guaranteeing equality and rights only to white men.” An exhibit on Black churches has an historic map of key events including the Tulsa race massacre of 1921, which just marked its 100th anniversary, and the 2015 church murders in Charleston. “ We are very intentional with our words and our interpretive approaches and are not afraid to burst a bubble,” explains Barron Bailly. A

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2020 exhibition “Ansel Adams: In Our Time” featured this comment from an “interpretive panel” with the photographer’s iconic landscapes: “While Ansel Adams and his images helped create a general sense of pride in our national parks, not all Americans feel welcome in these outdoor spaces.” Even the museum gift shop continues the message that this is a place that welcomes everyone. For example: children’s books for sale include the legendary Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold, The Youngest Marcher: The Story of Audrey Faye Hendricks, a Young Civil Rights Activist by Cynthia Levinson and From Cotton to Silk: The Magic of Black Hair by Crystal C. Mercer. In addition, the staff is given a lot of latitude to weigh in not only on the collection, but also on the museum’s public declarations as well. Statements on Black Lives Matter, for instance, were initiated “with support of the board,” says spokesperson Beth Bobbitt, by the staff and top brass such as Bigelow. Another example of the museum empowering its staff: At the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, Allison Glenn, Crystal Bridges’ associate curator of contemporary art, was recently guest curator for “Promise, Witness, Remembrance,” an exhibit on the life of Breonna Taylor, killed by police during a raid on her home. Glenn says there was never any doubt she was going to work on the exhibition even though it wasn’t part of her Crystal Bridges portfolio. “It’s something I just had to do,” says Glenn, who will soon take a position at the Contemporary Art Museum of Houston, but ﬁnish up projects at Crystal Bridges. (Glenn, a rising star,

OPEN TO ALL Terry Berry Jr, Citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma by Blood and by Freedmen Descent by Navajo photographer Will Wilson.

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says Bobbitt, “can’t be contained in one museum.”) Has there been any backlash from conservatives? Some for sure, but not a tsunami of criticism. The worst perhaps came from the conservative National Review’s art critic Brian T. Allen, who is actually a fan of the museum. A sample: “Crystal Bridges, a great museum, should ditch the preachy wall panels, let the art speak for itself—and let the visitors think for themselves.” And sometimes the art itself, and the mission, speak too loudly for some local audiences. Consider “Men of Steel, Women of Wonder,” Crystal Bridges curator Alejo Benedetti’s celebration of comic book art that “delves into many issues in contemporary life: race, immigration, sexism, gender and human frailty….” The exhibition featured Between the Capes, a painting by Rich Simmons showing Batman and Superman sharing a decidedly non-Platonic kiss and

“We took a closer look at who we were as a museum just four years old and realized we needed to do better.”

a video by Sarah Hill about a transgender Wonder Woman. Beth Bobbitt says “there were ﬁeld trips canceled after a (local) school district learned” about the superhero embrace. “The school tour didn’t include this artwork as one of the tour stops, but it was upsetting to some parents nonetheless.” While a quick scan of Crystal Bridges’ Facebook page features mostly positive comments, some of the more unprogressive patrons are certainly taking notice of the social justice advocacy. And they are not all that, well, nice. When the museum announced plans to celebrate Gay Pride Month by featuring works of LGBTQ+ artists like Robert Indiana and Martine Gutierrez, one Facebooker responded: “You are no longer on my bucket list...if you support LGBTQ.” Another comment triggered by the museum’s support of BLM: “Left wing groups like Black Lives Matter and (the) media have us believing there is systemic racism.” But all that aside, Crystal Bridges and Walton have managed to do what they said they were going to do when launched in 2011: build a world-class museum with a diverse collection, open its doors to everyone who stops by and take a stand on some of the big social justice issues of our time. And the customers keep on coming. In preCOVID 2019, for example, 702,000 people passed through its doors compared with 506,000 in 2013. No one, now, questions that Walton and her museum are playing, and quite well at that, in the major leagues. Ơ Hank Gilman is a senior-editorat-large at newsweek. He has also worked at the wall street journal, the boston globe and fortune as that magazine’s deputy editor. Gilman is also the author of you can’t fire everyone, a management memoir. He’s not sure that’s true these days, however.

J U LY 30, 2021

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Where Our Favorite Travel Experts Are Dreaming of Traveling Now

One upside from the pandemic? We’ll never take travel for granted again—even those whose job it is to see the world and report back. Grounded, we all missed the once-ordinary act of landing in a new place. Now that the world is slowly opening up and vaccinations have made travel safer, the question many of us have is, “Where in the world do I want to go?” For some inspiration, Newsweek caught up with our favorite travel experts to ask about their dream post-pandemic trips. Journalist and TV host Oneika Raymond is dreaming of expansive views on Namibia’s endless sand dunes, while PBS Travel TV Host Samantha Brown wants to take it nice and slow on a horse-drawn wagon on Mackinac Island, Michigan,and The Points Guy founder Brian Kelly says it’s time to dream big, like “swimming with humpback whales off of Tahiti”-big. But they all agree—it’s time to start believing in travel dreams again. —Kathleen Rellihan Illustration by M A L T E M U E L L E R

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Culture

“I don’t think anybody’s shown more of the world, to the world, on television, than Tony.”

You never met Bourdain. How did that shape how you told his story? I never met Mr. Rogers either, but you feel you have a relationship with them through the television. They were both people that played pretty authentic versions of themselves on TV. People fell in love with Tony QRW LQ VSLWH RI KLV ʀDZV EXW EHFDXVH of them. Through everything he did from .LWFKHQ &RQɵGHQWLDO on, there’s this kind of wounded, self-deprecating, brutally honest voice that makes you trust him. Why do you think that he left such a large hole in the world when he left? It feels like when you read him or watch him, you’re hanging out or on a journey with a friend. This kind of sense of “I really know you, I traveled the world with you.” And that sense of loss like we’re never going to take a trip again. I don’t think anybody’s shown more of the world, to the world, on television, than Tony. :KDW GR \RX KRSH WKLV ɿOP VD\V about Bourdain’s life and legacy? He was profoundly curious about learning and understanding more. If there’s anything you want people to be reminded of, it’s that you should get out there and see how other people live. What Tony was about more than anything is just to be as open-minded as possible. He got this tattoo later in life that said, in ancient Greek, “I am certain of nothing.” Ŝ.DWKOHHQ 5HOOLKDQ

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it’s been over three years since the death of anthony bourdain— explorer, chef, storyteller and one of the most influential cultural correspondents of our time. Throughout his career as an NYC chef, best-selling author and an Emmy-award winning TV host of No Reservations and Parts Unknown, Bourdain shed a light on the human experience and showed the great equalizing power of sharing a meal with a stranger. A new documentary Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain by Academy Award winner Morgan Neville, director of 20 Feet from Stardom and the Mr. Rogers documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? follows Bourdain’s trajectory as he became the beloved star so many grieved for when he took his own life. “I didn’t want the film to feel like a eulogy. We tend to read history backward, but life lives forward,” says Neville.“The film itself should at least help people process his death enough so we can start to think about his life again.” So, rather, this film is an ode to the uncommon life of Bourdain, the journey of what made his brutally honest star rise.