Panel's Draft Report Calls for Overhaul of Higher Education Nationwide

NYT: Panel's Draft Report Calls for an Overhaul of Higher Education Nationwide
By KAREN W. ARENSON
Published: June 27, 2006

Nearly every aspect of higher education in America needs fixing, according to a draft report of a national commission that calls for an overhaul of the student financial aid system, better cost controls by colleges and universities and more proof of results, including testing.

The report by the panel appointed last year by Education Secretary Margaret Spellings was highly critical of the nation's institutions of higher education. It said there was a lack of accountability to show that students were learning, that college costs have risen too high, and that "unacceptable numbers of college graduates" were entering the workforce without skills that employers say they need.

In addition, the draft said, "rising costs, combined with a confusing, inadequate financial aid system, leave some students struggling to pay for education that, paradoxically, is of uneven and at times dubious quality."....

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The 19-member commission, led by Charles Miller, a private investor and former head of the University of Texas Board of Regents, was formed to study how to increase access, affordability and accountability in higher education. Its recommendations could prove important for the country's 17 million college students and their parents.

But with panelists from different branches of higher education and from business, the commission has shown sharp divisions. Mr. Miller described the draft, released yesterday, as a "work in progress" that was being released "to further engage the public in our national dialogue."... Robert Zemsky, a professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania, said the draft did not reflect his views and needed significant re-writing. "The report is really by the staff and the consultants and not by the commission," Professor Zemsky said, calling the process by which the report was produced "bolixed."...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/27/education/27educ.html

This is not good...this is no child left behind for adults.

more spreading of a Bush brother's testing company's reach to higher education.

Testing won't give employers any more assessment tools than they have now. They need employees who can read and write reports, balance figures, speak coherently. Testing will only show what factoids they retain and how good they are at taking tests.

Personally, I think what we need to fix is HIGH SCHOOL. Most students are bored out of their minds for the four years they're there, learning stuff that will be completely irrelevant while the practical components are totally ignored.

That's all I needed to know. This proposal must be defeated!

I didn't realize our higher education system was in such a crisis. I mean students from all over the world come to be educated. Our universities are considered among the best if not the best in the world.

As usual, they are barking up the wrong tree. Get more financial aid students, but schools like the University of California, Michigan, Washington and Virginia etc., not to mention the private schools like uhhh, Harvard etc. aren't the best for nothing.

Lets fix the school systems that really need it, K-12. I guess they'd rather distract themselves than tackle the actual problem.

I haven't read the draft report so I won't comment on it directly, but I think most of the worst problems with higher ed in the U.S. are essentially "management issues" with their roots in the notion that education should be run according to some business management model or other. Education is not a product. When you pay for college education you pay for opportunities, not outcomes. You pay to be challenged. You pay for access to people who think about things for a living. What you do with that access is your own business, and there is no effective measure of "success" in that regard, IMO.

That's the first problem-- people have begun to regard education as job training, social preparation, etc. That's what vocational schools are for, not colleges and universities. The personal return on one's investment is an enriched life, not necessarily job skills. The social return is a literate, educated populace that's facile at acquiring new skills and knowledge. It has always been that way-- it's only in the last fifty or sixty years that we've begun to regard higher ed differently, and only in the last 15 or 20 that we've begun to actually talk about the expectations underlying society's investment in education, at least in any broad sense. And of course, it's only fairly recently that we've tried to implement the notion that higher education even should be generally available to all.

I don't necessarily agree that higher ed is too expensive (sometimes it is, but often it's a bargain). I do think that it is not accessible enough, on the other hand, and the key to solving the financial aid issue is to understand that cost and accessibility should be separate issues. Cost is a matter of value. Financial constraints should never prevent anyone from achieving their personal potential, and that often requires years of higher education. Again, society's investment in higher ed pays dividends throughout the lives of graduates. It's only when we begin to apply business management models-- inappropriately IMO-- that we are led to try to do it "on the cheap."

I could write about this topic all day, but I'm on my way out of town so I'll stop.

"When you pay for college education you pay for opportunities, not outcomes. You pay to be challenged. You pay for access to people who think about things for a living. What you do with that access is your own business, and there is no effective measure of "success" in that regard, IMO." . . .

couldn't agree more . . .