Arne Duncan’s recent announcement that he’ll be departing as U.S. secretary of education provides an opportunity to reflect on his accomplishments in bringing critical higher-education issues to the forefront and helping tackle some of the sector’s most pressing challenges. It also should encourage those of us working to spur a student-centered redesign of the postsecondary-education system to redouble our efforts and build upon the headway Duncan made during his seven-year tenure.
Key to Duncan’s leadership has been his fundamental approach of putting students at the center of this work. If higher education is going to fulfill its mission, the system and government entities supporting it must undergo a similar shift and embrace a student-centric way of designing policies and practices.
From this framework of putting students’ needs first, Duncan built a significant list of higher-education accomplishments to advance the key goals of ensuring student access and success in education beyond high school and building a postsecondary system that prepares students with the knowledge and skills needed to thrive in the 21st-century work force. His achievements are building blocks from which we can continue to reshape the system.
Chief among Duncan’s accomplishments was his work to help make college more accessible, affordable, and transparent for students. Duncan worked in a bipartisan way with Congress to expand need-based financial aid, including increasing the maximum Pell Grant award and supporting significant investment in other student-aid programs. He also pushed to make the cumbersome Free Application for Federal Student Aid form, which students must complete to qualify for aid, simpler and more navigable for families.
Those are important moves, given the rising cost of college and the increasingly challenging financial circumstances faced by many of today’s students. Some 42 percent of college students live at or below the federal poverty level, and close to half are financially independent, meaning they support themselves and must work, borrow, or both to cover the cost of college and living expenses.
Ensuring there’s adequate support to meet those students’ needs is critical to their success. Only 11 percent of students living in poverty graduate from college within six years, a fact that must shift if we’re going to increase the talent pipeline needed for today’s work force and to meet our increasingly urgent need for civically minded and culturally informed citizens.
Duncan also supported competency-based programs that measure students’ advancement based on their learning, rather than time spent in a classroom. The Department of Education has issued guidance in support of that approach and urged institutions with competency-based programs to follow the steps needed to get access to financial aid, a move that would allow more students to use those programs. Shifting to an increasingly competency-based model is one key pathway to ensuring that students are prepared to thrive in the job market after graduation. Duncan’s support of the approach is evidence of the strong interest in quality and accountability that he brought to the Department of Education.
Arne Duncan’s efforts have laid a strong foundation from which to advance continued change in higher education that supports student access and success, and that increases high-quality attainment central to our collective well-being as a nation. But the agenda is far from finished. Even in the short time remaining in this administration, the acting secretary-designate, John B. King Jr., and other leaders in higher education and federal policy, have an opportunity to build upon this progress in several ways, including:
Making financial aid more flexible and adaptable. With more financial aid available, it’s critical to ensure the way aid is delivered meets the needs of today’s college students, who increasingly enroll part time and squeeze in classes online or at satellite campuses while working and raising families. We need to ensure aid can be drawn down for large and unanticipated costs, such as textbooks, child care, and housing, and is accessible year-round to create incentives for degree completion on a schedule that works best for all students.
Ensuring that national data includes all students. The College Scorecard, though not without its flaws, is an important first step in creating a system that’s more accountable and transparent for students. We need to build upon this framework to include all data that may be relevant to consumers. Most important, Congress and the secretary need to work together to make sure that all of today’s students are included in the data, not just those who are attending full time and are enrolled in college for the first time.
Expanding federal support for innovative approaches. A pathway exists for innovative programs to tap into federal financial aid, but the process in place is cumbersome and difficult to navigate for many institutions. Arne Duncan made clear the importance of ensuring programs that measure learning, rather than seat time, have access to financial aid. To go a step further, it’s key to examine ways to streamline access to aid for innovative programs, including competency-based programs, so that more students can benefit from them.
Such changes can’t be achieved through federal policy alone. Those working to create better outcomes for students — college faculty, staff, and institutional leaders, as well as advocacy organizations, think tanks, and philanthropic entities — must work together to advance change that will increase attainment, especially for the low-income, minority, and other underserved populations that will drive our social and economic prosperity in the 21st century.
But Arne Duncan’s legacy provides a powerful reminder of the difference strong leadership at the federal level can make. Today our higher-education system is a step closer to reflecting the needs of today’s increasingly diverse college students — and the changing meaning of “college” to include all types of postsecondary learning. We need to seize the momentum created through Duncan’s work and push on boldly to complete the unfinished business and ensure all students have the opportunity to excel.
Jamie Merisotis is president and chief executive of the Lumina Foundation and author of America Needs Talent: Attracting, Educating, and Deploying the 21st-Century Workforce (RosettaBooks, 2015).