Calls U.S. colleges “self-serving” and “risk averse”
The nature of higher education as we know it is about to be changed forever, according to the members of the federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education, authors of a new report recommending reforms to the Department of Education.
The Spellings Commission report highlights a number of needed reforms for colleges and universities across the country, including recommendations on financial aid reform, academic credit transfers between universities, enhanced transparency and cooperation with K-12 education, among others.
Whether or not universities will enact the reforms themselves, whether federal legislation will be imposed or whether anyone will listen at all remains to be seen, but the report is catching the attention of educators across the country.
This week it headlined the front page of the Chronicle of Higher Education.
In an interview yesterday, University President John J. DeGioia brushed aside concerns that the conclusions of the report would have a significant effect on Georgetown.
Upper-tier schools like Georgetown, “are not the schools that are being targeted,” he said.
Georgetown already has a solid, 28-year record as a needs-blind institution, and has a “high, high graduation rate,” DeGioia said.
That is not to say that the University would emerge unscathed if the recommendations all went into effect, according to Assistant to the President for Federal Relations Scott Fleming.
An important aspect of the report calls for a consolidation of federal aid programs, similar to previous failed proposals by the Bush Administration to eliminate Perkins loans and consolidate the money with other programs.
Through the federal Perkins program and associated interest income, the University has acquired a pool of about $27 million for student loans, all of which Georgetown would need to pay back to the federal government if the program is folded into alternative aid programs, Fleming said.
“I’m not going to sit back and say, ‘Oh, consolidation. That sounds nice,” Fleming said.
The report also proposes the creation of a national student database to monitor schools’ performance and compare results across universities.
“[Higher education] must change from a system primarily based on reputation to one based on performance,” the report states.
The data would include everything from average test scores and graduation rates down to statistics on individual categories of students. It is a proposal that Georgetown administrators have opposed in the past.
Although the report states that student names in the database would be kept confidential, Fleming said the idea of a government database of students raises important privacy concerns.
“It is very worrisome,” Fleming said. “We are sensitive to the student privacy concern.”
Despite the concerns, Fleming emphasized that the reports proposals, if put into effect, could also benefit the University in several important ways, especially if the federal deficit decreases.
One of the commission’s objectives was to determine ways to enhance the U.S.’s global competitiveness, specifically in international education, a significant focus of the University.
“If they want to put more money in international education, my guess is that Georgetown will benefit,” Fleming said.
The report also recommends steps to facilitate foreign students’ entrance in the U.S., such as exempting math & science majors from caps on green cards and removing the requirement that students prove that they have no intention of living in the U.S. to receive student visas.
Another potential boon to the University is the goal of coordinating the jump from K-12 to tertiary education.
If acted upon, this could lead to an increase in federal funding for two Georgetown programs that research education: The Center for the Study of Learning and the Center for Health and Education.
The commission was particularly critical of rising tuition costs. The report includes a proposal that “growth in college tuition not exceed the growth in median family income over a five year period.”
Fleming said that the potential financial benefits from the commission’s proposals could help hold down the rise in tuition cost, but the University remained opposed to new controls on its finances.
“It should come as no surprise that the University community does not want price controls,” Fleming said.
He said that the debate over how to control tuition increases was ongoing and he said he was not convinced that the matter had been sufficiently researched.
“I think they need to figure out what the measure should be,” he said.
