Inside Higher Ed: A Stinging First Draft
For railroads and steel manufacturers, the best days are past. Do American colleges and universities face the same fate?
That’s the grim prospect laid out in a draft report released Monday by the Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education, which the panel’s chairman, Charles Miller, in a hastily written e-mail note that accompanied the document’s release, described as “very rough.”
The Chronicle: Draft Report From Federal Panel on Higher Education Takes Aim at Academe
A draft report released on Monday by the Commission on the Future of Higher Education calls for overhauling the federal student-aid and accreditation systems, easing the process of transferring credits between institutions, and using testing to measure the “value added” by a college education.
The report, which the panel will consider during a closed meeting on Wednesday, also endorses the creation of a national “unit record” system, which would use students’ Social Security numbers or another identifier to track the educational progress of every college student in the United States.RECOMMENDATIONS IN THE COMMISSION’S DRAFT REPORT
The draft report issued on Monday by the Commission on the Future of Higher Education contains recommendations in four key areas: access, affordability, quality and innovation, and accountability. Following are highlights in each area. When the recommendation addresses a specific party, that is noted in parentheses.
Access
Review and revise standards for transfer of credit among higher-education institutions to improve quality and reduce the amount of time it takes students to reach their educational goal (states and institutions).
Overhaul K-12 teacher preparation with particular emphasis on reforming colleges of education.
Address nonacademic barriers to college access by developing partnerships among schools, colleges, and the private sector to provide early and ongoing college-awareness activities, academic support, and college-planning and financial-aid-application assistance.
Affordability
Overhaul the entire student-financial-aid system in favor of substantial increases in need-based aid. Consolidate programs and restructure the system to increase access and retention and decrease debt burden.
Significantly increase federal funding of need-based financial aid, subject to simplification and restructuring of the system. Give priority to need-based financial aid (state and local governments, private institutions, businesses, and private contributors).
Replace the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as Fafsa, with a postcard-size application form, and analyze student need through the federal tax system.
Create a “bottom line” for college performance that measures institutional costs and performance, and enables parents and policy makers to see institutional results in terms of academic quality, productivity, and efficiency.
Provide financial incentives to institutions to lower costs through technological advances (federal and state policy makers).
Reduce barriers to transfer of credit and unnecessary accrediting constraints on new institutions.
Quality and Innovation
Establish a federal fund to provide incentives for effective teaching and use of the latest research in rapidly growing areas such as neuroscience, cognitive science, and organizational science.
Do more to support and harness the power of distance learning.
Develop a national plan to keep the United States at the forefront of the knowledge revolution (secretary of education).
Establish a nationwide pilot program for Lifelong Learning Accounts (individual asset accounts to finance education and training), to allow workers to continuously upgrade their skills while increasing their earnings. The accounts would be financed through tax incentives to individuals and employees.
Establish a National Innovation Partnership that provides federal matching funds to states to encourage innovations in program formatting, delivery, and transfer of credit.
Develop a comprehensive plan for better integration of policy, planning, and accountability among postsecondary education, adult education, and vocational education (secretary of education).
Accountability
Require institutions to measure student learning using measures such as the National Survey of Student Engagement and the Community College Survey of Student Engagement, as well as the Collegiate Learning Assessment and the Measure of Academic Proficiency and Progress (states). Provide incentives for states, higher-education associations, systems, and institutions to develop outcomes-focused accountability systems (federal government).
Make results of such measures available to students and report them publicly in the aggregate. They should also be included on transcripts and in national databases of accountability data. Institutions should make aggregate results publicly available in a consumer-friendly form.
Administer the National Assessment of Adult Literacy every five years, instead of 10 (Education Department).
Require the National Center for Education Statistics to prepare timely annual public reports on college revenues and expenditures, including analysis of the major changes from year to year, at the sector and state levels (secretary of education).
Develop a national student unit-record tracking system to follow the progress of each student in the country, with appropriate privacy safeguards.
Create a consumer-friendly information database on higher education that includes a search engine that allows parents, policy makers, and others to weigh and rank institutions based on variables of their choosing (Department of Education).
Establish a national accreditation framework that contains a set of comparable performance measures on learning outcomes appropriate to degree levels and institutional missions, and that is suitable for accreditation, public reporting, and consumer profiles; that does not prescribe specific input and process standards; and that requires institutions to report progress relative to their national and international peers.
Make accreditation more transparent as a condition of accreditation. Make the findings of reviews easily accessible to the public, and increase the proportion of public representatives in the governance of accrediting organizations and members of review teams from outside higher education.
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