Washington
In a widely anticipated speech today, the U.S. secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, will lay out an “action plan” for higher education that will call for the creation of a controversial database to track students’ academic progress, increased spending on need-based student aid, and more accountability for colleges, particularly on rising costs.
The speech, to be given at the National Press Club here, comes in response to a report submitted last week by the Secretary’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education. That report, which called for sweeping changes in American higher education, included dozens of recommendations for the Education Department, as well as for Congress, states, and institutions (The Chronicle, September 1).
Secretary Spellings provided a preview of the speech in an interview with The Chronicle in her office on Monday. She said she was acting quickly on a few of the report’s recommendations, centered mostly on the tracking database, student aid, and accountability, because “time is of the essence.”
“There is an urgency here,” she said in the interview. “The academy is underestimating the American public -- the anxiety and urgency about this. We have sold the dream of college ... and more and more, it’s unattainable.”
At times during the interview, Ms. Spellings seemed exasperated by the response of higher-education officials to the report’s recommendations. She expressed disappointment at private colleges for opposing the student-tracking database. She mentioned several times how “expensive” colleges are, particularly private ones like Davidson College, which her daughter attends.
And she said the time had come for higher education to provide the same information to consumers that parents receive for their children’s elementary and secondary schools as a result of the No Child Left Behind Act.
“We have empowered our system with that information, and we have empowered our parents with that information, and it’s serving kids better,” she said in the interview. “So I guess I’m wondering, as the secretary of education, if that’s good enough for third graders, why shouldn’t we have that kind of understanding about [higher education].”
Summaries of Secretary Spellings’s key points follow:
Unit-Record Database
While the secretary’s speech will offer few details about the proposed database, Ms. Spellings said on Monday that she would seek federal funds to test a prototype that is under development in the Education Department’s research division. That prototype would use student identification numbers, rather than Social Security numbers, to link students anonymously with their transcripts (The Chronicle, September 21).
“The purpose here is to figure out how to have better information, better understanding about higher education in America as a consumer good,” she said.
The Education Department first proposed the creation of such a database, known as a “unit record” system, in 2004, saying it would allow the department to measure a college’s performance more accurately by generating better information about retention and graduation rates and by enabling the department, for the first time, to track the academic progress of transfer students (The Chronicle, November 26, 2004).
But the plan was roundly rejected by members of Congress from both parties, including U.S. Rep. John A. Boehner, an Ohio Republican who was then chairman of the House education committee and is now its majority leader (The Chronicle, June 17, 2005). Along with lobbyists for private colleges, and leaders of privacy-rights groups, Congressional leaders warned of the risk to student privacy posed by a system that would rely on Social Security numbers (The Chronicle, May 6, 2005).
Asked in the interview how she would overcome the opposition that derailed the unit-record plan two years ago, Ms. Spellings said she would try to better explain to Congress how the system would work. She will also remind lawmakers that “except for the private colleges, the higher-education community is for this,” she said.
“Lots of folks in the public systems that I’m aware of ... are crying for this ability to go to their state legislatures and make the case for resources,” she said. “They are crippled by the lack of information as well.”
She added that information from the database would be used to revamp the department’s existing college-search Web site, the College Opportunities Online Locator, to make it more user-friendly. The redesign would enable students and parents to rank colleges based on variables of their choosing, as the commission proposed in its report.
Student Aid
In her speech, Ms. Spellings will declare that “we must increase need-based aid.” But she will stop short of endorsing the commission’s proposal to increase the average Pell Grant award to cover 70 percent of the average in-state tuition, and she will stress that more money is only part of the solution.
“There are still too many who will say ... ‘just give us more money,’” she will say. “Money is important. But we’re going to keep chasing our tail on price until we realize that a good deal of the solution comes down to information.”
While Ms. Spellings will not place any conditions on the new aid, she did note in the interview that the commission has proposed linking any increase in federal aid to colleges’ efforts to contain costs and curb tuition increases.
“There’s kind of a quid pro quo in the commission’s recommendation as something for something, not something for nothing,” she said in the interview. “I know that many in the higher-education community would like more free money and butt out. But that’s not what the commission has recommended.”
To illustrate how sharply college costs are rising, she held up a graph that compared inflation in the higher-education sector with inflation in the other areas. The spike for higher-education was dramatically higher.
College costs, she said pointedly, “are outpacing every other indicator.”
In her speech, Ms. Spellings will also argue that the “entire financial-aid system is in urgent need of reform.” She will announce that the department will streamline the federal financial-aid process, cutting the application time in half and notifying students of their aid eligibility earlier than the spring of their senior year in high school to help families plan.
“I look forward to teaming up with Congress again to improve the financial-aid process,” she will say.
Accountability
In other parts of her speech, Ms. Spellings will reiterate her support for expanding accountability testing to high schools and propose that Congress provide matching funds to colleges, universities, and states that collect and publicly report student “learning outcomes.”
The commission’s report calls on colleges to measure how much students learn using tools like the Collegiate Learning Assessment and the Measure of Academic Proficiency and Progress. It also recommends that the federal government provide incentives for states, higher-education associations, and university systems to develop interoperable accountability systems.
The secretary will also announce plans to convene accreditors in November “to move toward measures that place more emphasis on learning.”
Ms. Spellings has already taken some steps to put the commission’s recommendations into effect. Just over a week after the commission voted in mid-August to approve the final report, she announced that her agency would hold a series of regional public hearings, starting this month, to discuss how it might adopt some of the commission’s recommendations administratively.
Following those hearings, the department would begin using the negotiated rule-making process to carry out the commission’s recommendations, as well as changes contained in a deficit-reduction bill that cleared Congress in February. In negotiated rule making, federal agencies work with affected parties as rules are drafted.
Background articles from The Chronicle: