The U.S. Education Department’s top policymaker for higher education issued a report last week aimed at laying out the department’s agenda for the next several years. College leaders liked many of its 38 recommendations, but they questioned the report’s usefulness, coming as it did in the waning days of the Clinton administration.
They especially wondered about the agenda’s fate if Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, a Republican, wins the White House. In an interview, A. Lee Fritschler, assistant secretary for postsecondary education, said he expected that the report would be “very useful” to the next president, “whoever that may be,” because it reflects “the views of our constituents.”
Since joining the department last year after serving as president of Dickinson College for 12 years, he has traveled the country seeking advice from college officials, faculty and student leaders, and state higher-education officials to help the department develop an agenda for higher education.
Mr. Fritschler said he believed that the time was right for introspection. The agency is now marking its 20th year as a cabinet department.
In addition, Mr. Fritschler’s efforts were designed to boost the role of the Office of Postsecondary Education within the department, now that it is no longer responsible for managing the day-to-day operations of the federal student-aid programs. (In 1998, Congress moved management of those programs to a “performance-based organization,” an independent entity within the department that is charged with modernizing the programs.)
“What became clear through the process,” Mr. Fritschler writes in the report, “is that many factors point to a bigger role for the Office of Postsecondary Education -- not in terms of money or control, but primarily in terms of leadership and advocacy.”
Among its recommendations, the report says the postsecondary-education office should: look for ways to increase the participation of minority and disadvantaged students in graduate programs; help colleges with large proportions of low-income students keep up with technological advances; assist colleges in increasing the number and diversity of Americans studying abroad; determine how best to judge the quality of distance-education programs; and relieve colleges of unnecessary regulations.
One of the report’s more controversial proposals calls for the department to convene a study group to consider ways to overhaul the federal student-aid system, to make it simpler to understand and use.
“Too many low-income students” are unaware that financial aid is available to help them pay for college, and others do not even try to obtain it because they find the application process too confusing, the report says. And the Free Application for Student Financial Aid, which students must fill out to seek assistance, “remains daunting to many.”
The report recommends finding ways to simplify the application form and the “needs-analysis system,” the formula used to determine how much aid students are eligible to receive. “The process of determining student eligibility is so complex and highly detailed that it is difficult for students and families to have an accurate picture of the availability of financial aid, especially in a timely fashion.”
It suggests simplifying the application form by reducing the number of detailed questions that students are required to answer, and simplifying the needs analysis by reducing the number of variables that are considered in determining eligibility for aid. The report also recommends that students be allowed to file their aid applications earlier, so that they can find out more quickly how much aid they will receive.
“Because of the way the system is structured, students cannot apply early for aid, thereby adding to their uncertainty of aid eligibility,” the report states. “The earliest students can now apply for fall-semester aid is [the preceding] January, when they have their tax returns completed. They typically need to wait until the spring to find out what financial aid they will receive.”
Such recommendations concern some student-aid experts, who believe that there are more effective ways to help low-income students than overhauling the federal student-aid system.
“This report sweeps under the rug the most serious problem with the student-aid programs: They are not receiving adequate levels of funding,” said Brian K. Fitzgerald, staff director of the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, which advises Congress on student-aid issues.
Mr. Fritschler said that he supported getting more funds for the financial-aid programs, but that he believed the report would be dismissed if it simply sought money for the aid programs. “We didn’t want this to be perceived as a political document, so we didn’t talk a lot about appropriations,” he said.
Still, some college leaders and student-aid experts said it is likely that the report will be dismissed by the incoming administration, especially if it is Republican.
“I find it highly unlikely,” Mr. Fitzgerald said, “that a Republican administration will pick up these ideas and run with them.”
http://chronicle.com Section: Government & Politics Page: A27