Planet Money

Will limiting how much students can borrow force schools to lower their prices? 

The Department of Education thinks so. It has a new plan to bring down tuition costs. Starting today, July 1st, it’s going to cap how much it’s willing to loan to graduate students. 

You read that right. To reduce the burden of school…the plan is to give students less money to pay for school. 

This plan is, in part, based on an idea that’s been floating around higher education circles for decades: The Bennett Hypothesis, which claims there’s a direct relationship between student borrowing and tuition prices. And therefore, if the Department of Education — the biggest student loan provider in the country — limits how much students can take out, then schools will have no choice but to charge students less. 

This hypothesis was floated roughly 40 years ago...without evidence. But now, as the Trump administration rolls out their Bennettian plan, we have decades of data to see how true this hypothesis is.

Today on the show: NPR Education Correspondent Cory Turner explains this theory, and what the new plan influenced by it will mean for borrowers this fall.

Other notes:

Bill Bennett: “Our Greedy Colleges”
Cory Turner: "July 1 brings big student loan changes. Here's what you need to know"
The Indicator: "What you should know about your student loans" 

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This episode was hosted by Cory Turner and Kenny Malone. It was produced by Willa Rubin and edited by Marianne McCune. It was fact-checked by Charlotte Isidore and engineered by Robert Rodriguez. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

Music: NPR Source Audio - “Morning Chorus,” “Belle Mar,” and “The Sky Was Orange.”

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In the early 90’s, a company called General Magic began working on a portable device that would allow people to check email, make phone calls, even play games. It was basically a smartphone. But it never caught on.

On today’s show, a theory about why this device failed. General Magic had generous investors, world-class talent and creative freedom. But is it possible what they needed was constraints?

Further reading and viewing:

David Epstein’s book is Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better.

Tony Fadell’s book is Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Make Things Worth Making.

Sarah Kerruish and Matt Maude’s documentary is called General Magic.

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This episode was hosted by Erika Beras and Emma Peaslee. It was produced by Emma Peaslee with help from Sam Yellowhorse Kesler and James Sneed. It was edited by Marianne McCune and fact-checked by Charlotte Isidore. It was engineered by Jimmy Keeley with help from Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer.

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Prediction markets aren’t new. Election betting was common until the 1940s, then mysteriously faded away.

There was an entire political era when party bosses were expected to conspicuously gamble on their candidates (even if they secretly hedged).

And in the 1980s, a few economists designed an election market that beat out election polling 74 percent of the time.

Today, we’re running an excerpt from our friends at Throughline, NPR’s excellent history podcast. Subscribe right now if you don’t already. And, listen to their extended version of the episode to hear about the early markets for betting on terrorism and military uses of prediction markets.

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Today's episode was produced for Planet Money by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler, edited by Alex Goldmark, and engineered by Maggie Luthar. The original Throughline episode was produced by Rund Abdelfatah, Casey Miner, Cristina Kim, Devin Katayama, Sarah Wyman, Julia Redpath, and Kyana Moghadam. 

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Maybe the real monster in the Alien franchise isn’t actually the killer alien. Because behind the acid blood and jump scares is an even more insidious horror: a single employer with unchecked power. That employer is named Weyland-Yutani, a mega-corporation that dominates workers across the galaxy.

Weyland-Yutani is a sort of extreme example of what economists call a monopsony — when one employer dominates a labor market and gains power to underpay and mistreat workers. Sure, it’s science fiction. But a growing number of economists argue that monopsony power is a much bigger deal in the real world than previously thought.

We watch scenes from the movie Alien with labor economist Arin Dube, whose new book, The Wage Standard, shines a spotlight on the problem of monopsony power in the modern economy. We ask Arin what policy ideas he has that would have maybe prevented the worker tragedy seen in Alien. And we use his answer to try and rewrite the movie (spoiler: the movie becomes much shorter and less exciting).

Plus, we speak with Fede Álvarez, the director and co-writer of Alien: Romulus, which puts Weyland-Yutani’s poor treatment of workers front row and center.

For more on monopsony and anti-trust:
The labor economics of 'Alien' — and its lessons for inequality on Earth (PM newsletter)
The hidden power keeping wages low (PM newsletter)
Antitrust In America (PM series)
How we got free agents in baseball (PM episode)

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Today's episode of Planet Money was hosted by Greg Rosalsky and Kenny Malone. It was produced by James Sneed, edited by Jess Jiang, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Robert Rodriguez. Our executive producer is Alex Goldmark.

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The cyber weapon that might have prevented nuclear war.

The U.S. and Israel have long been in conflict with Iran over their nuclear development program. Some of that conflict has been out in the open, with bombs and blockades, but some of it has been invisible. 

Recently some security researchers discovered a cyberweapon likely tied to that invisible conflict. It looks like it was designed to hide on nuclear scientists computers, then throw off their calculations--just as they got close to achieving their goals.

Sounds like something out of science fiction. But it was created 20 years ago. 

On today’s show: a whodunit about hackers, ‘Cyber Paleontologists’, spy-vs-spy protocols, cryptic intelligence leaks, nuclear physics, high-precision math, and epistemological warfare.

Pictured: Juan Andres Guerrero Saade (JAGS) and his ‘Fast16 - NOTHING TO SEE HERE, CARRY ON’ tattoo. 

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This episode was hosted by Nick Fountain and Erika Beras. It was produced by Willa Rubin and edited by Marianne McCune with help from Jess Jiang. It was fact-checked by Charlotte Isidore and engineered by Kwesi Lee. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

Music: NPR Source Audio - “High Tech Expert,” “Digital Wave,” and “Hyper Pop.”

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