The group American Dream 2.0, with a diverse group of individuals
overseeing the publication of a report
concerning financial aid, including Southern University System Pres. Ronald
Mason and National Urban League Pres. Marc Morial, formerly New Orleans mayor, lists
as its overall philosophy making policy where financial aid becomes a motivator
of success, not as a fertilizer cast about in the hope of student success
springing forth. That would create a fundamental change not just in this task,
but in the very operational ideology of public higher education.
The current
system began in 1970, first with the start of the Pell Grant program that
shovels unrestricted cash at students, which supplemented the recent dramatic
expansion of government-backed student lending, then complemented by court
decisions against intelligence testing for employment that made a college
degree the de facto credential needed
to work in higher-status/income occupations. In short, this created a boon for
higher education, a seller’s market that resulted in rapid expansion that has
continued to this day, and only encouraged when income restrictions were
dropped from federal student lending in 1992.
It also created every incentive to the price of higher education to go
sky high. Since 1985, average tuition
and fees for higher education has increased about six-fold, or more than
four times the rate of increase of prices in general. While universities
naturally added staff to accommodate increased enrollments – which increased in
that time span from 10.6
million to 21 million – the rate of tuition increase was three times the
doubling of enrollment.
Because it was a seller’s market and with cheap if not free government
money at all levels available to subsidize buyers, higher education found it
could raise tuition and fees with impunity, and gave it far more resources than
necessary to add additional capacity. This additional money began to work its
way into sparkling facilities and the addition of some ancillary to education, creation
of a variety of new programs beyond traditional core subjects with many not connected
to market-driven forces, vast expansion of staff and administrative positions, and
in lowering teaching loads and providing more benefits to faculty members
separate from the teaching function.
One of these was a sharply increased emphasis on research production as
the means by which to evaluate faculty performance. Driven by these abundant
resources and by the inherent difficulty in judging teaching outcomes in many
areas as a way to distinguish performances, this made for easier quantification
by which to judge faculty worth in hiring and promotion/tenure (but not in
discharge; unless you were caught with a live boy or dead girl and vice versa,
couldn’t speak English well, or committed a felony it was unlikely anyone ever
receiving tenure would be discharged, regardless of teaching ability or
research output).
The influential place that research output has in faculty review is not
without merit in many cases where it has practical import, meaning principally
in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines. But even
in these it has become overemphasized at the expense of teaching, as nonprofit
organizations and the private sector provide plenty of opportunities and
results in research and can more than carry the load for innovation in these
crucial areas.
As for other areas, the emphasis on research long ago superseded any
meaningfulness as a metric in judging overall faculty quality. Evidential that
it has assumed an unwarranted dominance comes from the fact that in the 1970-2005
period published research output in the area of the social sciences increased
on average 7 percent per year, implying an over ten-fold increase over that
span that cannot help but drift into minutiae, extreme tangents, re-explication
if not reinvention of the wheel countless times, and in pursuit of theory that strains
observations of common sense or face validity in the real world.
These are the places the cascade of money went, which vary from
tangentially to hardly affecting the quality of instruction. But recently times
may be changing, as college enrollment actually dipped
in 2011 in a contradictory climate. Typically, as American suffers through
a fifth year of negative economic growth to, at best, historically slow growth,
periods such as this typically grew college enrollments as people in an
inferior job market returned to school or extended their stays in it, both encouraged
by government subsidization of costs. Yet today they may no longer exhibit this
behavior, precisely because increasingly they are rejecting the option as too
little return for the cost involved, even when it is subsidized.
As the Pres. Barack Obama
economy continues to promise dimmer futures for all but those co-opted into its
ideology of increased government management of outcomes, the payoff from higher
education is seen as lower. And even if subsidized, students bear some costs
which only increase as does tuition and fees as their resources stagnate. To
sum, the government-inflated tuition levels, readily exploited by higher
education in a manner too often inconsistent with its primary responsibility of
educating in a quality manner, have created an unsustainable financing model
for higher education at its present level of consumption and the philosophy
that guides it.
Into this environment comes the group’s plan, which more specifically
proposes to limit financial aid programs only to the neediest students and to link
federal aid to degree completion. The former idea invites means-testing more forcefully
into the equation, while the latter involves paying grants, and for a minimum
of 15 hours per semester (higher education in most majors steadily has moved
towards a 120-hour standardization) rather than the current 12, only after the
completion of the semester, and with aid given to schools that meet some
minimum qualification in terms of completion rates in a defined time span.
To some degree, this agenda addresses an atmosphere that envisions no large
increases in government money coming in the form of aid and provides an avenue
of incentive to have higher education concentrate more on teaching, because it
is assumed that higher quality instruction and more of it, along with emphasis
on steering students into programs that they can complete and become employed
as a result of that completion, will boost completion statistics, which today
are not much above 50 percent. But it only goes halfway, which threatens that
it would end up doing little good.
In part, this is because the two main ideas cancel each other to some
degree. With the tying of grants to need, it intends to replace a potentially
falling source of revenue, federal government subsidization, with another
untapped one: families’ resources. This provides no incentive for universities
to steer resources more towards teaching and thereby miss on the increased
emphasis that could increase completion, contradicting the intent of the tying
of aid to outcome.
Perhaps tying even reduced government subsidization would be enough to
spur changes overall – if it were not possible for higher education to game the
system the recommendation would create. For the easiest way to boost completion
is to make completion easier, by lowering standards. While this could not be
done universally – some degrees tie to professions where they serve as crucial
preparation for licensing – a decline in standards in courses backing programs
of study that face no external judgment in relation to a defined career path easily
could happen, entirely subverting the intent of the reformers to have higher
completion with quality. Worse, it could cause universities to provide
incentives to place students in those areas that could be gamed, which are less
likely to produce graduates in areas with the greatest demands.
Thus, to tie genuinely financing mechanisms to outcomes, these reforms
must go further. Government could create a basic grant available to all who
meet a certain academic standard at the end of secondary education, based on
grades and standardized test scores, designed only to provide a basic tuition
level. All would receive this, but those who did better could qualify for more,
perhaps up to the current Pell Grant level ($5,500 maximum).
This would be a one-time deal. The remainder of financing would come
from loans in the manner the group envisions, i.e. their proceeds come only
after a successful term completion. Thus, the initial grant covers the first
term costs, and successful completion produces funds for the next. Only five
years worth are covered (with exceptions for programs that take longer to
complete, extraordinary extenuating circumstances, etc.).
Outcomes also would matter – but measured by success in finding
full-time employment. Schools would be required to track graduates, who would
indicate whether they are seeking work and their success in finding full-time
work (or full-time graduate student placement) and in what occupation. Institutions
that don’t meet a certain standard face sanctions in their abilities to draw
aid for students. This marketplace-driven evaluation reduces the ability of
schools to game the system, as the market’s thirst for quality and proper
supply of graduates to match labor demands will prevent erosion of standards.
As for Louisiana, to formulate a similar kind of regime, it would
provide minimal GO Grants on the basis of basic demonstrated achievement and
make it Taylor Opportunity
Program for Students a true scholarship program with graduated awards on
the basis of superior demonstrated achievement, based upon the cheapest tuition
levels in the state, with money awarded after successful semester completion.
The changing of award dates would go a long way to resolving a frequent
policy-maker complaint that some students with the award do poorly and then fail
to graduate, in effect wasting the money; this way, they get it only if
successful with incentive to keep going to completion.
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