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Spellings Campaign Runs Low on Time and Power to Persuade
By Paul Basken
Chicago
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has made another high-profile attempt to convince colleges that they risk painful government interventions if they don't improve the quality of their programs and help more students identify and afford them.
With just six months until Ms. Spellings leaves office, colleges seem increasingly willing to keep taking that risk.
The secretary delivered her latest public warning on the subject at a conference on Friday to mark the second anniversary of a report by her Commission on the Future of Higher Education.
The secretary's commission, resented by colleges as much for its style as its substance, recommended in September 2006 that institutions consider standardized tests and other methods for improving their educational quality and the confidence the public places in them.
Many colleges have in fact improved their self-assessment methods over the past two years. A few have even adopted standardized exams and publicized the results, and more are doing so.
But many of those were moving in that direction before the Spellings Commission began urging them to do so. And many others remain resistant, believing that federal demands for accountability threaten the individualism and innovation that has kept higher education among the shrinking number of endeavors in which America remains an admired global leader.
Standardization vs. Individualism
Even when working with a few dozen college leaders who chose to attend its conference, held in Chicago, the Education Department struggled to meet its goal of finding consensus on concrete additional steps that the colleges could take in the next 18 months.
The resulting to-do list, crafted during seven hours of department-led talks over two days, included directing more financial aid to low-income students and aligning curriculum from kindergarten through graduate school. Separate groups of conference participants, representing corporate and governmental leaders, backed similar goals. And like-minded groups of stakeholders produced similar recommendations a year ago on the commission report's first anniversary.
Yet many colleges still resist standardized tests out of a concern that their missions are too individualized to allow for meaningful national comparisons. Many continue to direct financial aid toward high-performing applicants rather than low-income candidates out of a desire to improve their image and ranking. And many are refusing to make a fuller public disclosure of their performance data, asserting privacy rights for both students and the institution.
The exercises in Chicago appeared to do little to respond to those colleges' concerns. "Transparency is vastly overrated as a solution," Daniel F. Chambliss, a sociology professor at Hamilton College, in New York, told a conference panel in one of the more candid admissions of the attitudes among his colleagues.
"What the public wants is to get a good education at a reasonable cost," said Mr. Chambliss, a member of the executive committee of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, one of the six regional accrediting agencies. "Rather than focusing our efforts on trying to somehow convince the public through various data strategies," he said, colleges should "just do a good job and let them figure it out."
That's not the data-driven approach favored by Ms. Spellings. Her under secretary in charge of higher education, Sara Martinez Tucker, nevertheless claimed progress.
Getting the Data Right
Education Department officials were trying in Chicago to get the educational, political, and business leaders in attendance to take more direct responsibility for meeting the commission's goals, Ms. Tucker, host of the conference, said in an interview. Even if some colleges remain resistant, the department wants to "shine the spotlight on those people who are doing it right," she said.
That definition of "right" remains under dispute. At the same time Ms. Tucker was leading the meeting in Chicago, a former colleague was back in Washington accusing the Spellings commission of relying on "misleading" statistics and outdated data to draw mistaken conclusions about the changes needed in higher education.
"There's a real disconnect between the data they're looking at and the conclusions they draw" about the quality of higher education, said Diane Auer Jones, who resigned in May as assistant secretary for postsecondary education. She made her remarks at a briefing on Friday for Congressional aides.
As an example, Ms. Jones cited the statistic—included in the commission's 2006 report—that only 60 percent of students who enter college graduate. While that could mean that colleges are failing to graduate enough students, it could also point to problems with the department's data-collection system, which counts only "first time, full-time" students, said Ms. Jones, now president of the Washington Campus, a consortium of university business schools.
The commission overstepped its authority by wading into a discussion of academic quality, Ms. Jones said. The Education Department's role, she argued, is to ensure that taxpayer funds, such as Pell Grants, are being spent wisely. It should not be trying to hold an institution to its own standards of achievement, she said.
The commission's recommendations suffer from "a naive view that if we could just publish test scores, parents could pick the cheapest school with the best test scores," Ms. Jones said. That view overlooks the fact that families weigh many factors when choosing a college, she said, and fails to address the root causes of rising costs—among them, excessive federal regulation and students' demands for amenities.
The Education Department itself could do more to help low-income students afford college by publicizing cases in which colleges reduce their own aid when students receive Pell Grants, freeing up money to subsidize wealthier applicants, Jon H. Oberg, a former department researcher, said in an interview.
Such diversions of Pell Grants, the main federal subsidy for low-income students, can be fought with data showing which colleges practice them, as they cannot "stand the light of day," Mr. Oberg said.
Simplifying Financial Aid
Ms. Tucker instead highlighted for the conference the ways in which the department could help students of all income categories gain access to federal student aid, proposing to shorten the government's standard aid-application form to nine questions from more than 100.
The commission had called for a shorter aid-application process, a goal that has long been hindered by data demands from individual states. Ms. Tucker's proposal seeks to overcome that by separating the application into two parts, allowing the department to give students and colleges their aid-eligibility figures earlier in the annual process.
Complicated governmental procedures also may be handicapping the Academic Competitiveness and National Smart Grant programs, two new federal initiatives intended to supplement Pell Grants for low-income students who take challenging coursework.
The department awarded roughly $430-million through the two grant programs in the 2006-7 year, well below the $790-million appropriated by Congress. Many institutions are "struggling with the process," especially when assisting first-generation college students, Stephen R. Sharkey, a professor of social science at Alverno College, told Ms. Spellings.
The secretary faulted high schools for not doing enough to prepare such students. "There is a rationing of rigor, of course work, that is embarrassing," she said.
Still Lagging in Science
The United States, meanwhile, is well behind schedule for a government-endorsed goal of doubling within 10 years the number of college graduates with science and engineering degrees, a business coalition reported last Tuesday.
It's not just the Education Department that is warning colleges they need to do more. Allies such as Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Republican of Tennessee who persuaded Ms. Spellings last year to back off her pursuit of standardized testing, have made clear in recent weeks that they also believe the public wants to see better results as the nation's economic health appears increasingly tied to its educational strength.
"I feel honor bound to remind you," the secretary told the conference on Friday, "that in the absence of continued leadership in education, others will step in. When public demand reaches critical mass, policy makers are compelled to act whether they're in the Congress or on state boards or in state legislatures."
Many in Congress backed Senator Alexander last year as he tried to limit federal oversight of higher education. This year, as lawmakers work to complete comprehensive legislation governing higher education, they are including dozens of new reporting requirements in such areas as tuition increases, transfer-of-credit policies, computer file sharing, meningitis outbreaks, fire safety, voter registration, and technology disposal.
Colleges, by their inaction, are forcing that type of heavy-handed response from Congress, Ms. Spellings told the conference. "I suspect their solutions," she said, "will likely not be as informed or sophisticated as what you would propose."
Kelly Field contributed to this report from Washington.
— Paul Basken
Chronicle of Higher Education
2008-07-21
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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