HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Closing Of A Newsroom’s Mind: I’ve seen how for-profit colleges can help students—many of them older and seeking better jobs—but the government and the media want to shut them down.

Until recently, we couldn’t answer a fundamental accusation. Knowing our students and following their careers, we believed that their education was opening doors to jobs and increasing their incomes. But to our frustration we couldn’t prove it. We didn’t have the third-party data. Once students graduated, we had no way of verifying their incomes.

A consortium of 35 states has now gathered income data from taxpayers for recent years (based on unemployment-tax filings). Researchers have access to that data, not for individuals but for groups like our former students. We cannot know the income of any individual student, but we can ask for the average of a group—say, nursing students.

Comparing Kaplan students’ pre-enrollment incomes (which we know from their student-aid filings) with their incomes in the years immediately after graduation:

• The weighted average gain in mean income among associate-degree graduates with jobs was 31%. This is the average earnings of graduates of all our programs—what most of you would call majors—weighted for the number of students in each program.

• The weighted average gain in mean income among bachelor’s-degree earners was 35%.

• The weighted average gain among masters-degree earners was 42%.

Of course, students paid tuition and spent years to earn those degrees. There is more research to do, and we’re just starting to evaluate the gains in income compared with the cost of education, but our initial figures look very good for students and for Kaplan.

We have educated students for degrees that have, on average, produced real gains in income. And we’ve done it with a student body 64% of whom were eligible for Pell grants (the Pell-eligible population is 38% at not-for-profit colleges). The numbers relate only to income gains in the first couple of years after college; graduates expect that they are starting a career and that their earnings will grow with time. . . . You would think that the earnings data above would be universally hailed as good news: Students on average are achieving significant income gains after getting degrees. I can promise you it will not be so hailed. Politicians, analysts and advocates—and some reporters or whole newsrooms—have closed their minds to the possibility of anything good being achieved by students at a place like Kaplan University.

For-profit schools compete with traditional schools, which are a core Democratic constituency. Naturally government and the media are out to get them.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 906.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM: Ignore The Prosecutor, Ignore The Problem.

Prison reformers are making a hash of things again. A measure designed to reduce the unfair use of mandatory minimums in Drug Laws may be ignoring, or possibly worsening, one of the biggest problems in the criminal justice system today—the coercion of plea bargains. . . .

Both the new proposed law and the one it replaces create a situation in which defendants are punished much more severely if they exercise their right to trial. They do so in part by leaving to prosecutors, not judges, discretion in when to pull the trigger on minimums. As Ginatta wrote, “Our research found that sentences for federal drug defendants who exercise their right to go to trial are three times as long as those who forgo that right.” This strikes us as contrary to the spirit of the Constitution, if not necessarily the case law on what it allows the government to do (we are not lawyers).

As we noted the other day, prosecutorial culture plays an enormous and under-appreciated role in the criminal justice and prison crises.

Happy to see this piece reference my Ham Sandwich Nation.

DRIVING WHILE BLACK: A SURVIVAL GUIDE: Advice from real black men who have survived traffic stops.

IT’S A “DEEP-ROOTED STEREOTYPE” FOR A REASON: Groups around the U.S. are pushing back on the deep-rooted stereotype that LGBTQ identity is incompatible with Islam.

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CARLY FIORINA: We caught Hillary Clinton red-handed on Benghazi.

Carly Fiorina took direct aim at Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton while on the campaign trail in Iowa, and said the Republican Party needs a tough presidential nominee ready to confront Clinton.

Despite sharing the stage at the Iowa Growth and Opportunity forum with more than a half dozen other Republican candidates, Fiorina focused on Clinton and her recent testimony before the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

“We need a fearless nominee who will throw every punch at Hillary Clinton; who will point out to the American people over and over again that she lacks a track record of accomplishment; that she is not trustworthy; and yes, indeed, she lied about the death of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya,” Fiorina told the crowd. “And we have her red-handed.”

Fiorina said anyone who watched the Benghazi hearings knows that Clinton told her daughter that she knew the firefight on Sept. 11, 2012, was a terrorist attack and chose to publicly proclaim blame on a video. The businesswoman turned GOP presidential candidate then sought to distinguish herself from Clinton and portray her candidacy as uniquely capable of combating Clinton’s advances.

Carly was an early adopter of the pugnacious GOP style. Glad to see it’s spreading.

ROSS DOUTHAT: Letter To The Catholic Academy. “What is that real position? That almost anything Catholic can change when the times require it, and ‘developing’ doctrine just means keeping up with capital-H History, no matter how much of the New Testament is left behind. As I noted earlier, the columnist’s task is to be provocative. So I must tell you, openly and not subtly, that this view sounds like heresy by any reasonable definition of the term.”

Well, it’s no Memorandum From The Devil — though the targeted audience is similar — but read the whole thing.

IF YOUR TEACHERS TOLD YOU OTHERWISE, THEY WERE LYING: Sorry, kids, the 1st Amendment does protect ‘hate speech.’

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Trump: CNBC’s Harwood a ‘fool’ and a ‘dope.’

Related: CNBC’s debate was a biased joke, says … Terry McAuliffe? “And so we have reached national consensus on at least one political issue. When the former chair of the Democratic National Committee goes on the air to complain about liberal media bias against Republicans, we have truly reached the brotherhood of Americankind, my friends.” So CNBC can feel good about that, anyway.

HILLARY, BUSTED AGAIN: New Email Shows Tripoli Embassy Warned D.C. to ‘Not Conflate’ Video with Benghazi Attacks.

THE HILL: ObamaCare’s tough road ahead.

The administration’s goal of having 10 million people enrolled by the end of next year, up from 9.1 million this year, is widely viewed as a low target that would represent a modest expansion of President Obama’s signature domestic program.

“It isn’t very much growth,” said Karen Pollitz, a former HHS official in the Obama administration who is now at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

While there is uncertainty about how the enrollment period will go, some fear that not enough healthy people will sign up to create a “risk pool” that balances the sick enrollees and prevents premiums from spiking.

“That would be a concern,” Pollitz said. “Sort of, how big of a risk pool do you need?”

Richard Frank, HHS assistant secretary for planning and evaluation, said the target does not mean enrollment growth has “plateaued,” but did say there would be “a much longer path” to signing up the rest of the uninsured.

About 29 million people remain uninsured in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Around 45 million people were uninsured when ObamaCare’s coverage expansion began in 2013.

Hopey Changey.

NOW THEY TELL US: “Everyone in the [CNBC] newsroom knows [John Harwood is] extremely far left:”

In the wake of the debate debacle that’s delivered a gut punch to CNBC, many staffers at the business network are divided over whether “extremely biased” and “far left” correspondent and moderator John Harwood should have been allowed on stage.

“Everyone in the newsroom knows he’s extremely far left,” a network insider told TheWrap about the prevailing opinion that pervaded the newsroom even before the debate.

Harwood is “not just extremely biased and partisan, but he’s worst kind who isn’t self-aware that he is,” the insider continued. “Blindness to that is what allowed him on the debate stage.”

Before the debate, that sentiment bred doubts among staffers over whether Harwood would be able to “stay in the middle ground” politically,” the insider said.

Afterward, Harwood was universally panned by Republican candidates and pundits along with many in the media for what was deemed an astounding display of bias toward the participants.

How bad was it? “CNBC’s debate was a biased joke, says … Terry McAuliffe?”

While Mollie Hemingway was spot-on predicting Harwood’s bias and sneering condescension, the near-universal* backlash against the NBC network is only happening because the candidates punched back on stage. Maybe — just maybe — Stupid Party insiders have finally learned something about the MSM.

* They’ll always have Media Matters, Gawker, and NBC-funded Vox on their side, of course. And when you’re an allegedly pro-business network being defended by the socialist far left, it might be time to question your assumptions.

LIFE IN THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: Swedish Foreign Minister claims the country is ‘facing collapse’ because of the mass influx of refugees.

KATHLEEN PARKER: IT IS PROBABLY OVER FOR JEB BUSH, an establishment man who “doesn’t know how to fight:”

In today’s theater of bloviating showmen, viral sound bites and platitudes passing as policy*, people like Bush who prefer experience and a more thoughtful approach to complex issues will never be appreciated. He’s a Charlie Rose kind of guy trapped in a Donald Trump reality show — miscast in a movie he would have no interest in seeing.

Wow, I’m not Jeb’s biggest fan, but even I wouldn’t insult him that badly.

*All of which Parker fell hard for in 2008.

A REAL RECOVERY, OR A DEAD-CAT BOUNCE? Number of LSAT Test-Takers Increases 7.4%, The Fourth Consecutive (And Biggest) Increase.

Sounds like the former, but the chart looks more like the latter. Plus: “As I hypothesized in June, more people might be taking the LSAT because of the media coverage saying now is the best time ever to go to law school. I happen to think this is a silly position: There really are far more people going to law school than there are indefinite-duration professional jobs available, but at least some lucky people might get strong scholarship opportunities. The catch is that someone has to pay for those scholarships, and that might also be people who borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars believing now is the best time ever to go to law school. … On the other hand, interest in medical school is at an all-time high. We certainly need doctors more than we need JDs.”

INSOMNIA THEATER (AFFIRMATIVE CONSENT EDITION): This summer New York became the second state to pass an affirmative consent—or, as I like to call it, “prove yourself innocent”—law, which requires college students to demonstrate that they received “clear permission” to engage in “sexual activity.” We at FIRE were curious how many students were aware of the new law and understood its implications, so we sent FIRE’s Shelby Emmett to New York University in New York City to ask the students themselves.

What Shelby found during her visit to the Big Apple, however, were more questions. Students were very confused about many of the key elements of the ambiguous law, such as what constitutes a “sexual act,” what demonstrates consent, the law’s requirements when one or both parties have been drinking, and, most importantly, how you would prove you got consent after the sexual encounter had already occurred.

Some of the students were not only confused, but also worried about the law. As one student said, “That’s what scares the sh*t out of me. Because if anything happens, if someone says I did anything or something is misconstrued, I’m automatically the villain, I’m automatically the bad guy, and it’s up to me to prove that I’m not—which is interesting, because in America it’s supposed to be innocent until proven guilty.”

You can read more about Shelby’s interviews over at FIRE’s website and watch the video below:

ROGER SIMON TO THE DONOR CLASS: Jeb Needs An Intervention.

BUT HE CAN’T SEEM TO MAKE THE LEAP TO THE “ALLOW FEWER LAWS” POINT: Cory Doctorow: The more unequal your society is, the more your laws will favor the rich. “This is a vicious cycle: the more unequal a society becomes, the more its politicians enact rules that lead to greater inequality.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Missouri sues Hollywood actress over SLU student loan debt of $77,000. “Emuge declined to comment via email Thursday, writing: ‘You can email the soulless people sueing (sic) me.'” Not an English major, I guess.

SOME THOUGHTS ON using habits to avoid decision fatigue. This is a very valuable tool, but so is breaking habits to produce new thoughts and patterns.

HALLOWEEN BOX OFFICE BLOODBATH: EVERYTHING FLOPS, ‘STEVE JOBS’ DOORNAIL DEAD: “This weekend, Sandra Bullock’s latest wide release, the $28 million ‘Our Brand Is Crisis,’ sunk like a rock with just $3.3 million. The political dramedy was produced by that box office kiss of death we call George Clooney, and ranks as the worst opening weekend of Bullock’s career…The good news is that next weekend is James Bond weekend.”

THANKS TO TED KOPPEL, a breakthrough on securing the power grid? If by “breakthrough,” you mean “the White House finally noticed the problem.”