Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill are likely to keep an intense focus on higher-education issues this year as they consider how the federal government should deal with rapid changes in the technology and economics of colleges, senior Congressional staff members representing both parties said on Tuesday at the annual meeting of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation.
Speaking to a packed conference room of attendees, Amy Jones, education-policy adviser and senior counsel to the House of Representatives’ education committee, said Rep. Virginia Foxx, a Republican of North Carolina, would be “very hands-on” in leading the panel’s subcommittee on higher education.
Republicans are concerned about the amount of higher-education regulation that the Education Department has put in place during President Obama’s first term, said Ms. Jones. “A lot of campuses tell us the federal red tape is a problem,” she said. So far, however, the colleges have been reluctant to specify which regulations should be changed or abolished, she said.
Democrats in the Senate plan to keep an eye on consumer-protection issues in order to shield students from predatory institutions and make sure that they are getting an affordable and high-quality education, said Spiros Protopsaltis, senior education-policy adviser to the Senate’s education committee.
To keep tuition costs under control, states need to begin reinvesting in higher education after years of budget cuts, he said, and colleges need to “prioritize affordability.”
Both parties will also continue their examination of regional and national accreditation, which is required for colleges to be eligible to receive federal financial aid, said the Congressional staff members.
Members on both sides of the aisle have taken a skeptical view of accreditation in recent years, with some Democrats charging that the process is too lax to prevent fraud by for-profit colleges and some Republicans saying accreditation is stifling innovation.
Reauthorization Rumbles
But don’t expect to see Congress act during this term to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, which expires at the end of 2013, the staff members said. Instead, both sides will be sharpening their arguments for a reauthorization debate that will begin in 2014 at the earliest.
The last reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, the law that governs most federal student-aid programs, was approved in 2008, five years after the previous measure expired.
The parties disagree on several key issues that could affect accreditation, including whether colleges should be required to collect and report data on the academic progress of individual students. Both parties are interested in reporting more data on higher education, but some lawmakers have opposed collecting individual academic records by the federal government, citing privacy concerns. The current Higher Education Act prohibits such a system, under an amendment that was sponsored by Representative Foxx.
A 2005 proposal by the department’s National Center for Education Statistics to create such a system was seen as tantamount to stamping “bar codes on student’s heads,” Ms. Jones said.
Mr. Protopsaltis countered that collecting data on individual elementary and secondary students was the one thing that nearly everyone agreed was successful about No Child Left Behind, as the signature education law of President George W. Bush is known. The federal government spends far more money on higher education than on elementary and secondary education, but collects just a fraction of the data on colleges, he said.
In addition, students and parents would be aided in their college choices if institutions had to create a basic dashboard of information on their overall performance, Mr. Protopsaltis said.
“The idea of getting more information on how students are doing, we think, is a very good thing,” he said.
What to Do About MOOCs?
Though not discussed extensively by the Congressional representatives, the spread of competency-based education and the growing enthusiasm for massive open online courses, or MOOCs, are also looming concerns for accreditors.
With pressure on colleges to make higher education more affordable, several institutions are offering free online courses. But the question of how to award academic credit for those courses, or even a credential, will have to be dealt with by accreditors, said Andrew Ng, a founder of the company Coursera, who spoke at a luncheon during the conference.
One possible solution to that problem could come from expanding competency-based education, said Paul LeBlanc, president of Southern New Hampshire University. Mr. LeBlanc’s university plans to offer an associate degree to students who can pass a series of assessments to earn credits without requiring them to attend classes. The model is similar to the ones in use by Western Governors University and Excelsior University, and being designed by Northern Arizona University and the University of Wisconsin system.
Mr. LeBlanc said the competency-based model could be the way to offer MOOCs as part of a degree program. But it raises complex questions about the role of faculty members and the separation of teaching and assessment, among other things.
“This is a fundamental change,” he said, “that accreditation is not prepared for.”
Kelly Field contributed to this article.
