Plenty of Ideas About Student Aid, but No Road Map

Proposals on access lack specificity, students and college officials complain

Related materials

List: Recommendations: helping students

Article: Uncertainty Greets Report on Colleges by U.S. Panel

Article: Preamble to the Final Draft Report of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education

Article: Controversial Proposal on Accreditation Fails to Make Panel's Final Report

Article: Lengthy Fights Are Expected Over Measures on Accountability

Article: Commission Calls Colleges 'Self-Satisfied' and 'Risk Averse'

Article: Q&A: David Ward Explains Why He Didn't Sign Commission's Report

Opinion: The Spellings Report, 'Warts and All'

Opinion: Underinvesting in the Future

Opinion: Both Lamp and Mirror

Opinion: Science and Math Take Money

Opinion: Give Us the Tools

Opinion: More Than Competition

Colloquy: Read the transcript of a live, online discussion with Charles Miller, chairman of the federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education

Article tools

Printer friendly	E-mail article	Subscribe	Order reprints
	Discuss any Chronicle article in our forums
Latest Headlines U. of Delaware Approves New Diversity Discussions for Students The new, voluntary program will replace one tossed out last fall after coming under criticism as "thought reform." In Tight Employment Market, Career Services Gain Clout Borrowers' Uncertainty Has Colleges in Quandary How It Does It: The RIAA Explains How It Catches Alleged Music Pirates State High-School Exit Tests Do Not Improve Academic Achievement, Study Finds Commentary Business Students Should Learn More About Science

By STEPHEN BURD

In its final draft report, the Commission on the Future of Higher Education calls for restructuring student aid, simplifying the application form for federal aid, and curbing the growth of college costs and prices. But the panel provides few details of how to achieve those aims.

Lobbyists for colleges and students — and even some commission members — say the lack of specificity will make it difficult for policy makers to carry out the report's recommendations.

Even the most concrete proposal — to significantly expand the Pell Grant program — leaves the lobbyists scratching their heads.

The plan calls for the government to raise the purchasing power of the typical Pell Grant to cover 70 percent of the average in-state tuition at public four-year colleges over the next five years. Today the average award, of about $2,500, covers only 48 percent of the costs, according to the panel. The proposal would be paid for, in part, by consolidating federal aid programs.

But which programs does the commission believe are expendable? And how much of the increase would be paid for by eliminating programs and how much by adding additional federal dollars?

Without such details, the United States Student Association cannot support the plan, says Rebecca Thompson, legislative director of the advocacy group. "Increasing access and making college more affordable is something that we fight for every day," she says. "So we agree with the general principles of the report. But because it lacks specifics, we don't know how it would play out for students."

According to several commission members, the lack of specificity in the proposals was intentional. The panel wanted to leave options open and avoid conflict among members with differing views.

In addition, the commissioners say they didn't have the expertise to be prescriptive, particularly when it came to proposing changes in student-aid policy. "We were vague because the system is so complex," says Charlene R. Nunley, president of Montgomery College, in Maryland. "There was no way, in the short time we had, that we could be specific in recommending how to make it better."

Ms. Nunley acknowledges that the ambiguity will make it difficult to build support for the recommendations, particularly among groups representing colleges and students. "The lack of specificity makes it hard to know what the impact will be," she says. "I can understand why they would be concerned, and why they care very much in what direction this is all heading."

Some other commissioners worry that the shortage of details weakens the report's call for change.

"It's a little too vague," says Richard K. Vedder, an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor of economics at Ohio University. "A lot of the statements could be read as platitudes."

Containing Costs

When looking to place blame for "the seemingly inexorable increase in college costs," the commission points directly to college leaders.

The initial draft report, released in June, was particularly blunt. "In our view," the panel wrote, "affordability is directly affected by the failure of postsecondary institutions to take aggressive steps to improve institutional efficiency and productivity."

Colleges "have little incentive to control costs," the report said. "On the contrary, for many institutions the path to prestige involves spending more money, whether on costly laboratories or lavish student dorms, an academic arms race that often doesn't serve the public interest."

After the outcry that accompanied the release of that draft, the commission's leaders softened their tone, adding a section on the economic and social benefits of higher education to individuals and society. In addition, at the urging of the collegiate members of the panel, later drafts point out that cuts in state financial support have contributed to rising tuition.

Despite those changes, the final draft doesn't pull its punches. Among its findings are that colleges "have few incentives to contain costs because prestige is often measured by resources."

Still, some commission members say the panel's recommendations for making higher education more affordable are weak and unlikely to have much effect. "We beat our chests, and then we punted," says Robert M. Zemsky, chairman of the Learning Alliance for Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania.

The commission calls for the federal government and states to provide incentives for colleges to reduce their costs, and it urges colleges to set and meet goals for improving their productivity and efficiency.

In its initial draft, the commission had said that colleges should not be able to raise their tuition faster than the growth in family income. "A bottom line for college performance" was needed, the draft said, so that students, their families, and policy makers could judge the success of institutions in containing their costs.

The final draft emphasizes that while the commission supports tying growth in college tuition to growth in median family income, it "opposes the imposition of price controls."

Despite that concession, many college leaders and lobbyists are unhappy that the panel even suggests a family-income benchmark for college tuition. "I know of no other sector — certainly no other labor-intensive sector — that uses such a standard," David Ward, president of the American Council on Education, wrote to the association's members in July. "Obviously this standard makes no sense."

But some higher-education analysts say the comparison of college prices to family income is perfectly appropriate, because it speaks to the concern that higher education is becoming increasingly unaffordable. The resistance of the college groups "puts them in a bad light," says Patrick M. Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, who is a consultant to the commission.

"It makes it seem like they want to make policy in a way that's oblivious to the financial circumstances of students and their families," he says.

College leaders also fault the commission for letting state policy makers off the hook. Growth in the cost of attendance has been highest at public colleges, argue higher-education officials, because states have significantly reduced the share of spending devoted to higher education over the past decade. In fact, college officials note that in nearly two-thirds of the states, decisions about tuition rates are made not by the institutions themselves but by legislatures and statewide higher-education boards.

"I don't think the report acknowledges the reality that the public sector has disinvested in higher education in recent years," says Lawrence S. Bacow, president of Tufts University.

Questions About Access

When Education Secretary Margaret Spellings announced a year ago that she was forming a commission to devise a "comprehensive national strategy" for higher education's future, college leaders and lobbyists worried that the panel's leaders would not recognize the central goal of federal policy in this area: providing student aid to keep the doors of college open to even the most needy students.

After all, much of the talk surrounding the commission focused on whether it would require colleges to test their students as a condition of receiving federal student aid.

Charles Miller, the commission's chairman, seemed to confirm the advocates' worst fears when he repeatedly said, at public meetings and in news reports, that he wanted to "nuke" the federal student-aid system. The initial draft report further fanned the flames in calling the government's financial-aid programs "convoluted, complex, and counterproductive."

As a result, many college officials were shocked but pleased that the commission, in its final draft report, called for expanding the purchasing power of the Pell Grant program.

Most of the commissioners give former North Carolina Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. credit for his persistence in pressing Mr. Miller to include a proposal calling for increasing federal spending on the program. Earlier versions hadn't mentioned Pell at all, or had suggested that any increase would have to be entirely offset by savings the government would derive from consolidating other federal student-aid programs.

"I get the impression that we are just talking about targeting what we've already got more effectively and refocusing what we've got," Mr. Hunt said at a meeting in May. "Folks, we've got to spend more."

It was politically naïve, he said, to call for eliminating tuition tax credits, as some on the panel had proposed, in order to increase spending on Pell Grants. "If you think that you are going to go out there and take these tax credits away from middle-class families, you ought to re-enroll in Politics 101," he said.

College lobbyists were gratified that the commission followed Mr. Hunt's lead and recommends additional spending in its final report. But they remain unhappy that the panel continues to call for consolidating other federal aid programs. They fear that the report will encourage lawmakers to take aim at the Perkins Loan and Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant programs, which are intended to supplement Pell Grants for low-income students and to provide aid for middle-class students who just miss the cutoff for the grants.

"We shouldn't be robbing Peter to pay Paul," says David L. Warren, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. "The problem is not with the design of the aid programs. The problem is that we have not had an increase in the funding of these programs in the last five years."

Ms. Nunley, the commission member who is president of Montgomery College, says those decisions are above the panel members' paygrade. She suggests that the Education Department convene a new panel to determine how best to restructure the financial-aid programs and simplify the application form.

Whether Ms. Spellings agrees should become clear by mid-September, when she has promised to begin discussing how the department plans to follow up on the commission's recommendations.