Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said this past weekend that she would support the Commission on the Future of Higher Education’s call for a significant increase in need-based financial aid, provided that colleges became more transparent and more cost-effective.
“Obviously, I hope that we will find ways to do more,” she said in an interview with the Austin American-Statesman following a meeting with community leaders in Austin, Tex. “And obviously, this is going to be a discussion that we’ll ultimately have with Congress.”
In the interview, Ms. Spellings also endorsed the use of testing to measure student learning and the creation of a national unit-record data system, both recommended by the commission. She said a unit-record database would help the government track part-time, returning, and cross-state transfer students. “What is important here is that we use information in a protected way to better manage the system and to aid parents and families,” she said. “And we’re not doing that now.”
The secretary has yet to receive the commission’s final report, which the panel approved last month (The Chronicle, September 1), but she has already announced that her agency would hold a series of regional public hearings to discuss how it might carry out some of the commission’s recommendations. Following the hearings, the department would begin a negotiated rule-making process to put in place the commission’s recommendations (The Chronicle, August 21) as well as changes contained in a deficit-reduction bill that was enacted six months ago (The Chronicle, February 2).
Until last weekend, Ms. Spellings had given few clues about which recommendations the department might consider as part of the negotiated rule making—a process by which federal agencies work with affected parties as regulations are drafted. She is expected to provide more details on September 26, when she holds a news conference outlining her plan for acting on the commission’s recommendations. However, she will not propose a specific increase in federal financial aid at that time, she said.
