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The Commission's Report: Landmark or Footnote?
Wednesday, August 30, at 11 a.m., U.S. Eastern time
The Commission on the Future of Higher Education has called for an overhaul of higher education, emphasizing the need to make colleges and universities more innovative, more accountable to the public, and more affordable.
Among the commission's controversial proposals are a so-called unit-record system that would track individual students' educational progress, annual public reports on college revenue and spending, and changes in the federal financial-aid system. The Bush administration has announced that it will take up some of the recommendations as part of a broader rule-making agenda scheduled for the fall.
How should higher-education leaders and state officials respond? Is it true, as critics say, that the report takes a 'one size fits all' approach, neglects graduate and professional education, and ignores many of the factors contributing to rising college costs? If so, what needs to happen next? Can those failures be overcome as policies are developed out of the report? Or is the likeliest result that the report will simply be forgotten?
» Uncertainty Greets Report on Colleges by U.S. Panel (9/1/2006)
» The Spellings Report, 'Warts and All' (9/1/2006)
Charles Miller, chairman of the federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education, was involved in bringing accountability testing to the University of Texas System as chairman of its Board of Regents.
Jeffrey Selingo (Moderator):
Hello, and welcome to Colloquy, The Chronicle's online forum. I'm Jeffrey Selingo, editor of business and politics here. Our discussion today is about the draft report released earlier this month from the Commission on the Future of Higher Education. In this week's Chronicle, we have a special 9-page package of articles (Go to http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i02/02a00101.htm) that looks at several parts of the report and what it means for higher education.
We're joined today by Charles Miller, chairman of the commission. Thanks so much for being here today Mr. Miller.
Charles Miller:
I'm pleased to be able to engage in this dialogue and welcome the opportunity provided by The Chronicle. My responses will represent my own opinions and interpretations and not the positions of the Spellings Commission.
Question from Bernard Ferguson, International Association of Medical Colleges(IAOMC):
IAOMC a global medical school accreditor has adopted total openness and transparency as a part of its process (http://www.iaomc.org). What do you mean when you say you want accreditors to be transparent?
Charles Miller:
Perhaps the question might be posed as "What about the accrediting process shouldn't be publicly available?" The answer would be: Very little.
Question from Sherman Dorn, University of South Florida:
Chairman Miller, the drafts of the Commission have consistently argued that market forces would be the best tool to ensure better quality in undergraduate institutions. In the report, the Commission fails to address places where marketing has contributed to the problems of higher education that the Commission wants to solve.
As John Lombardi has noted, declining state subsidies force state institutions to sell themselves more than they did in the 1960s and 1970s. I'm not going to claim that this "selling" is solely responsible for grade inflation or overspending on lavish student facilities or athletic programs, but I have serious doubts that relying on market mechanisms will solve problems that sometimes have their roots in the market.
How would you balance the individualizing effects of marketing education against the collective goals we should share for higher education?
Charles Miller:
That's a very broad and important question and deserves a better answer than I can offer here. The Commission had a goal of creating a "National Dialogue." That dialogue must continue in order to resolve the balance. (We do not actually have a market system in higher education, in my opinion)
Question from Jeffrey Selingo:
In an interview with The Chronicle last week, David Ward discussed how difficult it was to serve on the commission given his role with ACE. Looking back on it, do you think it was a good idea to have the president of the leading higher-education association on the commission? And what does his refusal to sign the final draft report say about the document or about the higher-education community?
Charles Miller:
I have the highest regard for David Ward. He contributed to the Commission's work and I often sought his counsel. In the broader sense of the higher education community, I tend to think in terms of the many institutions and the people who serve there as representing higher education. What they think and say is what is most important, not necessarily the associations in Washington, D.C.
Jeffrey Selingo (Moderator):
For a comprehensive list of articles by The Chronicle on the commission go to http://chronicle.com/indepth/commission/
Question from Frank Schmidt, U of Missouri-Columbia:
Please define "accountability" and give an example.
Charles Miller:
I think of an accountability system as measuring the performance or outcomes of a system or institution, which contains consequences or results. Those consequences can include rewards and recognition, or penalties.
Question from Catherine Wehlburg, Texas Christian University:
What do you think will change in terms of the accreditation process and the regional accreditation bodies?
Charles Miller:
I think the accreditation process will become much more public and transparent. I believe the process will improve significantly because of that, and will help both the accreditors and the institutions. I believe the focus will be more on institutional outcomes, including program outcomes, student learning, and productivity and efficiency of institutions. It's not clear what structural changes will take place, but it seems to me that geographical boundaries are not fully descriptive of the world we live in today.
Question from Jeffrey Selingo:
You said earlier that "we do not actually have a market system in higher education." What would you call the competition between institutions for students?
Charles Miller:
Well I think we do have competition among different sets of institutions, however I think competition does not automatically make a market system. I think competition can at times be very destructive. It is possible to argue that among certain sets of institutions we have the equivalent of an oligopoly, where there may be competition within a group of institutions, but that set of institutions has powerful advantages over other sets of institutions. Because higher education is heavily subsidized and regulated, and lacks serious penalties for poorer outcomes, and lacks transparency, it would be difficult to describe this as a market system. Worst of all, pricing information for individual participants is virtually secret.
Question from St. John's University, New York:
Why don't higher ed leaders create a ranking system (or adopt one like the Washington Monthly's) that measure positive outcomes by universities that are consistent with the very roots of American higher education? Instead of keeping their eyes on their institution's original missions, university presidents are pressured to pursue the US News metrics in the same way that corporate CEO's chase quarterly numbers and not long-term benefit for shareholders. The measuring stick encourages presidents to make decisions often not in keeping with their institutions original mission, nor with sound public policy.
How can we create a ranking system that is embraced by the public, yet encourages responsible use of resources?
Charles Miller:
I think this is a very important question, and I agree with the premise. The commission makes a recommendation about creating a user friendly, comprehensive database about higher education. Unfortunately today, while we have a huge amount of data about higher education, much of the data is irrelevant, hard to understand or digest, or not available in easy format for policy makers, the public, or researchers. We can create a database which will allow all of those stakeholders to access relevant data quickly and inexpensively. They can produce anything from a simple ranking based on a few criteria, or do complex long-term research oriented rankings. It is likely that the community at large will create many kinds of rankings that would be user friendly for the public and for policy makers.
Question from Barbara McKenna, American Federation of Teachers:
During commission meetings, when the issue of the Higher Education Act was raised, the commission decided it was not going to address the Higher Ed Act directly. However now through negotiated rule making, it appears that the department is using the commission report as a steppingstone to bypass HEA and Congress on a variety of important issues. How would you respond?
Charles Miller:
I would start of responding that the Spellings Commission was formed with the notion that we were to focus on long-term strategic issues for higher education. That implies a 10 to 20 year horizon. We did not look at short-term policy or political issues. I don't agree that steps taken by the DOE imply anything but normal responses to public duties.
Question from Mark Champion, Grand Rapids Community College, Michigan:
The commission report says little about community colleges and their role in higher education. What do you see as the role of the community college in the larger picture?
Charles Miller:
I think careful analysis of the report would show that a significant attention was shown to the issues important for community colleges. I think that the commission paid special attention to the question of life-long learning, which directly affects community colleges. I think that the recommendations regarding financial aid, affordability, and access all relate strongly to the needs of community colleges. It is important to say that thinking of higher education in terms of the current segments or definitions may lead to looking backwards, rather than forward. I would raise the question for community colleges, "wouldn't you expect the community colleges 10 to 20 years from now to be considerably different from today's model." That question can apply to other segments of higher education as well. So, the commission wasn't as focused on segments as higher education people tend to do. That is an important distinction for this report.
Jeffrey Selingo (Moderator):
We're about half way through today's conversation. Please keep the questions coming. We'll try to get to as many as possible.
Question from Timothy Sloate, University Continuing Education Association:
Chairman Miller, the earlier drafts of the report discuss Lifelong Learning Accounts but the final draft makes no mention of such accounts. Is there a reason the language was dropped from the final report?
Charles Miller:
I think the reason was for less specificity in some areas and more in others. We thought that the focus on the Pell Grant, and broader issues and the financial aid system would be the best approach.
Question from M. Clapp, education research firm based in Boston, MA:
Chairman Miller, the Commission's report indicates that there is a need to facilitate student transfer in higher education. Are there any particular directions in which the Commission is hoping higher education will go on this issue?
Charles Miller:
While I believe the commission understood the need to maintain quality in questions of transfer, there was a sense that more collaboration among institutions was needed and more attention by policy makers was needed. Some think that transfer policies create an additional expense we can't afford, and are a barrier to student completion and institutional innovation.
Question from Craig Smith, Free Exchange on Campus:
Chairman Miller: When Senator Lamar Alexander testified before the commission, he identified liberal bias in the academy as one of the top problems that needed to be addressed. However the Commission did not make any recommendations in this area (despite objections from some Commissioners such as Richard Vedder). Can you discuss why the Commission determined this was not a major problem to address?
Charles Miller:
We didn't conclude that it was or wasn't a major problem. While we didn't address it directly, our focus on student learning, institutional performance and accountability directly deal with the quality of the educational experience. Personally, I think where institutional biases exist those places will become less relevant. I think today's students will have access to information from many different sources, in many different forms, and if institutions don't adjust to that fact, they will become less valuable.
Question from Gary Brown, Washington State University:
One of the challenges I see is that the public's view of education tends to be quite traditional. In this light, isn't the expectation that we do more to be more innovative problematic?
Charles Miller:
I think the public and higher ed officials tend to think and talk in traditional terms. That was a problem throughout our discussions, since more and more students over time will be non-traditional in today's standards. The danger for those institutions that stay fixed in the traditional format is that somewhere outside of higher education, or outside of this country, innovative institutions could rise and become the dominant players in the future.
Question from Stella Flores, Harvard University:
Is there a separate document with a bibliography of works (from the position papers?) consulted to come to a number of the recommendations in the draft report(other than endnotes in draft)? To what extent were the recommendations based on empirical research and probabilities of success for models suggested?
Charles Miller:
There will be appendixes attached to the report, which will include the reference materials from various sources. While we considered ideas and models based on the most serious search available, in the final analysis, reports recommendations rests on the collective judgments of the commission. An important element of that judgment was public input, not just scientific studies.
Question from Roger Geertz Gonzalez, Florida International University:
Regarding your answer to the market question, you state that a true market system is one which isn't heavily subsidized, but aren't most Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. heavily subsidized through giant tax breaks, low government sponsored federal minimum wages, and other government laws favoring corporations? Compared to major companies, colleges and universities get a much smaller piece of the pie while still outperforming the rest of the countries in the world when it comes to graduate training in the STEM fields, technology transfer, etc.
Charles Miller:
I could agree that the private sector gets some direct and indirect subsidies through tax and other fiscal policies. However, direct subsidies from the federal government to so-called private colleges average 25 percent of revenues. In addition, substantial state and local subsidies, direct and indirect are made available, and federal tax subsidies as well. Historically, the performance of our colleges and universities has been world class. The question in a period of strong demand for public resources, is how to maintain that competitive advantage.
Question from Martha Jordan, Penn State University:
The report has addressed the ever-increasing numbers of adult students and how we must be flexible in terms of delivery of courses, workforce needs to acquire new skills, and affordability. Could you expand on the idea of accessibility for lifelong learners?
Charles Miller:
I think the final answer could still be discovered, it is likely that information and communications technology applied in different ways to applying educational services, could create major shifts in the entire spectrum of higher education. We can expect a large amount of new demand for higher education services provided in a more productive or cost effective model. This produces both great opportunities and great risks for traditional providers.
Question from Tut Bailey, Penn State University:
Chairman Miller, the U.S. certainly holds the top position for global higher education position it has held for a long time. Yet, in the last two reported years, we have actually seen a decline in international enrollment. Certainly there are more pressing issues that the commission had to address in its report, but I am hoping that you could shed some light some on the discussion about our ability to recruit (and then retain) the best and brightest from outside of the U.S. in order to secure the top position in global education in the future-and bring some of the best minds to the U.S.
Charles Miller:
I agree that we need to attract and retain the best minds from any where in the world to this country, and that idea is now pretty universal. We did address that also by reference to other reports, such as "The Gathering Storm," by the National Academies of Science.
Jeffrey Selingo (Moderator):
Well, we've run out of time for today. Thanks to everyone for the interesting questions and sorry we couldn't get to them all. We had a lot of interest in this subject. Thanks for Mr. Miller for taking time out of his busy schedule for us.
Charles Miller:
I think one of the most important things about the Spellings Commission is that it initiated a national dialogue. I appreciate everyone who has been involved in today's discussion, and especially The Chronicle for allowing this dialogue to continue.