Letters from Kay Kohl

A Blueprint for Higher Education

(UCEA InFocus, July 2006)
Kay Kohl, UCEA Executive Director and CEO

The draft report of the federal Commission charged with developing a blueprint for higher education in the 21st century declares that American prosperity depends on access to affordable education over the lifespan. This preliminary document does not seek to describe a national strategy for lifelong learning. Rather it suggests components of a desirable strategy. E-learning, credit transfer and certification, and restructured federal financial aid all are central to the Commission's vision of a higher education system that would enable workers to continuously upgrade their skills.

E-Learning

It is no surprise to see the Commission recommending that institutions "harness the power of information technology" to meet the educational needs of adult learners. Several experts who testified at Commission hearings during the past ten months have asserted that effective use of technology could enable colleges and universities to improve student learning and lower instructional costs. With higher education increasingly unaffordable for many individuals, the Commission has been especially receptive to suggestions of ways to maximize institutional resources. Part of information technology's appeal is that it can facilitate the sharing of educational resources among institutions and so improve productivity.

Credit Transfer

Rigid transfer policies are seen by the Commission as responsible for redundancy in higher education and thus for driving up educational costs. Often transfer policies make it difficult for individuals to apply credits previously earned at one institution to a certification or degree at another university. As most U.S. students now attend at least two institutions en route to a baccalaureate degree, student mobility is a key issue. The Commission would like to see states work with institutions on the establishment of rigorous and consistent standards for the transfer of credit among higher education institutions. Also, it is recommended that students be permitted "to acquire credits linked to skill certification that could lead to a degree." The hope is that if students can see a clear pathway to a degree, this will reduce time-to-degree and so lower costs.

Restructured Financial Aid

Ideally, the Commission would like to completely restructure federal financial aid, develop incentives for institutions to improve productivity and manage costs, and persuade states to make increased financial aid available for part-time learners. While that may be too ambitious an agenda for the short-term, the Commission is also likely to recommend smaller changes that could conceivably be implemented in the next couple of years. One proposal is to drastically simplify the federal aid form and "re-write regulations to provide the same benefits to non-traditional programs as to semester programs." Another proposal is to establish a privacy-protected student unit-record tracking system to follow the progress of each student in the country. This could provide policymakers with needed data about the dimensions of the nontraditional student population and the work of institutions serving this growing constituency.

While the broad outlines of the Commission's blueprint for American higher education can be discerned from the last preliminary draft, the document must still be seen as "a work in progress." The final report is due for release in mid-September. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has signaled that she has no intention of letting the report sit on a shelf. Her Department is planning a series of regional meetings with college leaders this fall to explore possibly using the federal government's "negotiated rule making" process in order to put in place some changes proposed by the Commission through regulation as opposed to legislation.