Government Relations Archive

It is becoming increasingly unlikely that reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA) will happen this session of Congress. The House passed its version of the HEA reauthorization in March (H.R. 609), but the Senate has yet to act on its version of the bill (H.R. 1614). A number of HEA provisions related to student aid were passed in another bill (the Higher Education Reconciliation Act of 2005), but other provisions, including accreditation, still must be addressed.

If there is no action on the reauthorization this year, there have been indications that the House Education and Workforce Committee will take it up early next Congress. However, reauthorization of No Child Left Behind will also occur in 2007, which could divert attention away from any attempt to reauthorize the Higher Education Act.

The extension of HEA is set to expire on September 30, 2006.

I. The Spellings Report on the Future of Higher Education begins with a preamble about how the Commission believes “U.S. higher education needs to improve in dramatic ways.”

It then goes on to outline the Commission’s goals:

We want a world-class higher-education system that creates new knowledge, contributes to economic prosperity, global competitiveness, and empowers citizens;

We want a system that is accessible to all Americans, throughout their lives;

We want postsecondary institutions to provide high-quality instruction while improving their efficiency in order to be more affordable to students, taxpayers, and donors who sustain them;

We want a higher-education system that gives Americans the workplace skills they need to adapt to a rapidly changing economy;

We want postsecondary institutions to adapt to a world altered by technology, changing demographics and globalization, in which the higher-education landscape includes new providers and new paradigms, from for-profit universities to distance learning.

II. The next section of the report is a summary of the most pressing issues in higher education as identified by the Committee. These issues include the value of a higher education, access, cost and affordability, financial aid, learning, transparency and accountability, and innovation.

III. This is followed by the Commission's findings in each of the areas listed above.

Findings Regarding the Value of Higher Education

-The world economy increasingly demands a more highly educated workforce.
-Higher education benefits both the individual and the nation as a whole.

Findings Regarding Access

-There is insufficient preparation of high school graduates for college.
-The levels of educational achievement of young people who graduate high school are not sufficient to succeed in college.
-There is insufficient alignment between the K-12 and higher education systems.
-Remediation is a persistent and troubling issue at our institutions of higher education.
-Achievement and access gaps disproportionately affect minority and low-income students.
-Gaps in access also affect adult learners.

Findings Regarding Cost and Affordability

-From 1995 to 2005, average tuition and fees at private four-year colleges rose 36 percent, 51 percent at public four-year institutions, and 30 percent at community colleges.
-One reason for this is that state funding has dropped significantly in the last two decades.
-Another reason is that institutions are spending more money in such areas as financial aid and improvements to student services.
-This is compounded by a lack of transparency in financing caused by “accounting habits that confuse costs with revenues and obscure production costs.”
-An obstacle to better cost controls is third-party payments (public funds and private donors) that insulate colleges and universities from the consequences of their spending habits.
-Colleges and universities also lack incentives to contain costs because prestige is measured in resources and holding down spending could mean a manager loses his/her academic reputation.
-Another source of cost increases is excessive and burdensome state and federal regulation.

Findings Regarding Financial Aid

-Twenty separate federal programs in direct financial aid produce an overly complex system.
-The FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) is more complicated and longer than the federal tax return.
-Families often have trouble planning for college since “definitive information” about freshman year financial aid is not provided until the spring of the senior year in high school.
-From 1990 to 2004, unmet need among the lowest-income families grew more than 80 percent.
-Many adults believe that students graduate today with too much debt.

Findings Regarding Learning

-The U.S. higher education attainment has slipped to 9th place in the world and high school graduate rates to 16th place.
-Not enough attention has been focused on ensuring students graduate from college.
-National studies have shown the shortcomings of U.S. higher education with regard to literacy and achievement for minority students.

Findings Regarding Transparency and Accountability

-Institutional quality has been measured through financial inputs and resources, which is no longer adequate today.
-There is no solid evidence of learning results for parents and students.
-Policymakers need more data to show them if the national investment in higher education is paying off and if taypayer dollars are being wisely spent.
-Institutions of higher education can use more comparable data as benchmarks of success including retention, learning, educational costs and productivity to “stimulate innovation and continuous improvement
-Government data on higher education do exist, but leave out the growing sector of nontraditional students.
-The accreditation process has significant shortcomings.

Findings Regarding Innovation

-Government and institutions have both failed to support innovation in our nation’s colleges and universities.
-Many institutions have not embraced significant opportunities for innovation in the areas of teaching and content delivery.
-Traditional academic calendars promote the inefficient use of learning and physical plant programs.
-Challenges are posed to students due to the barriers in the recognition of transfer credit.
-Accreditation can sometimes impede innovation.
-There are too few Americans pursuing degrees in the STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, mathematics.)
-The U.S. needs a smarter immigration system that allows highly educated graduates to enter and remain in this country in critical fields of study.
-Innovation increasingly intersects multiple disciplines, yet curricula and research funding remain in separate departments.

IV. The next section of the report focuses on the Commission’s recommendations.
Taken directly from the report, these are the Committee’s recommendations. Each recommendation is followed in the full report by additional details on how they should be implemented.

-We recommend the U.S. commit to an unprecedented effort to expand higher education access and success by improving student preparation and persistence, addressing non-academic barriers and providing significant increases in aid to low-income students.

-To address the escalating cost of a college education and the fiscal realities affecting a government's ability to finance higher education in the long run, we recommend that the entire student financial aid system be restructured and new incentives put in place to improve the measurement and management of costs and institutional productivity.

-To meet the challenges of the 21st century, higher education must change from a system primarily based on reputation to one based on performance. We urge the creation of a robust culture of accountability and transparency throughout higher education. (this includes the creation of a “consumer-friendly information database on higher education to enable students, parents and policymakers to weigh in and rank comparative institutional performance, disseminating more and better information on the quality and the cost of higher education to researchers, policymakers and the general public, and measuring and reporting meaningful student outcomes.”)

-With too few exceptions, higher education has yet to address the fundamental issues of how academic programs and institutions must be transformed to serve the changing needs of a knowledge economy. We recommend that America’s colleges and universities embrace a culture of continuous innovation and quality improvement by developing new pedagogies, curricula, and technologies to improve learning, particularly in the area of science and mathematical literacy.

-America must ensure that our citizens have access to high quality and affordable educational, learning, and training opportunities throughout their lives. We recommend that the development of a national strategy for lifelong learning that helps all citizens understand the importance of preparing for and participating in higher education throughout their lives.

• The United States must ensure the capacity of its universities to achieve global leadership in key strategic areas such as science, engineering, medicine, and other knowledge-intensive professions. We recommend increased federal investment in areas critical to our nation’s global competitiveness and a renewed commitment to attract the best and brightest minds from across the nation and around the world to lead the next wave of American innovation.

The report concludes that “in short, the Commission believes it is imperative that the nation give urgent attention to improving its system of higher education.”

For learn more about the Commission and for additional information about this report, you can visit the Department of Education’s web site at http://www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/hiedfuture/index.html.