January 9, 2009

Former Top Official at Education Dept. Criticizes How It Approached College Access

Washington — Diane Auer Jones, who resigned in May as the Education Department’s assistant secretary for postsecondary education, said today that she believed the department and Education Secretary Margaret Spelling’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education missed the mark in their discussions of college access.

Speaking as part of a panel discussion at the National Association of Scholars’ annual conference here, Ms. Jones said Ms. Spellings seemed focused on promoting the access of students to the college of their choice — a framing of the issue that put the focus on selective institutions that serve relatively few low- and middle-income Americans.

“If we really care about access, then we should do something about community colleges,” but not nearly enough additional federal money was spent in this area, Ms. Jones said. In her Education Department post — as well as in other positions she has held, as a National Science Foundation program officer and as a Congressional staff member dealing with research — she found that “there is no political bang for your buck when you fund community colleges,” mainly because they are viewed as state and local entities and their students are too busy to be much of a political force, she said.

On a related note, Ms. Jones — who is now president of the Washington Campus, a consortium of 16 university business schools — said she felt Secretary Spellings’s commission had placed too much of the blame for students’ academic difficulties on colleges and did not adequately consider students’ responsibility for their own educational success.

“We can’t beat colleges and universities up when retention rates are low and when people either fail or leave,” she said. Many students who struggle in college lack the preparation and discipline to be there, she said, but our society seems to assume that they belong in college nonetheless.

“Let’s find other options for the 18-year-olds who aren’t ready for college,” she said, suggesting that the country might be well served if the federal government did more to promote apprenticeships, community-service jobs, and other alternatives.

Echoing comments she made to The Chronicle in the weeks following her resignation, Ms. Jones said the Education Department had placed too much emphasis on job training provided by colleges, and not enough emphasis on liberal-arts education. “Higher education is not, and should not be, job training,” she said. “Job training should be extra.” —Peter Schmidt

Comments

1. Hooray for Ms Jones! She gets it!

   — GG    Jan 9, 03:50 PM    #

2. Finally! Somebody understands. Too bad she has left the Department.

   — Freida Jones    Jan 9, 03:59 PM    #

3. Wow….someone like this actually worked in the Bush administration? Barack Obama should lend her his ear.

   — scotteebee    Jan 9, 04:06 PM    #

4. The problem with an infusion of federal dollars into community colleges is that it sparks further long-term inflation in college costs. This provides short-term help with extended consequences down the road.

   — Thomas McGee    Jan 9, 04:09 PM    #

5. “Many students who struggle in college lack the preparation and discipline to be there, she said, but our society seems to assume that they belong in college nonetheless.”

   I could not agree more!

   — Kyle David    Jan 9, 04:11 PM    #

6. Let’s see, politicians tend to blame institutions for failure (in this case colleges) rather than the voter (in this case students)? Big surprise there. Look no further than the mortgage mess for its counterpart.

   — J. Ward    Jan 9, 04:13 PM    #

7. Financially, more should be done for community college students. For many first generation college and immigrant students, community colleges offer a realistic start to a better life. I work at a community college, after working years at a private four year university, and I’m amazed at the obstacles that these students face in their honest quest for a degree and a path to a better future. I’m equally amazed at how serious, hardworking,determined, and bright these students are and how they view CC as an affordable stepping stone to a 4 year degree. I say now more than ever we need to make as many post-secondary options as affordable as possible and this includes federal grants and low-interest loans to all who are serious about obtaining higher education.

   — jb    Jan 9, 04:27 PM    #

8. Although right on the money…it’s too bad Ms Jones didn’t have the chutzpa to speak up when she was in a position to influence the situation……….

   — Bob    Jan 9, 06:54 PM    #

9. And meanwhile, our state legislators and university administrators listened to Spellings, and departments are now being held accountable for the failure of students who are unprepared for the personal discipline required for college, are unprepared academically for college, and/or who are in college because mama and daddy said to go to college.

   — SA    Jan 9, 07:42 PM    #

10. Ms. Jones is a lady of incredible vision who understands what education on all levels is all about. She has an uncanny knack to see through politics, bureaucracy, and the established norms to appreciate what a well-rounded purposeful education is on all levels and how well the institutions are meeting the needs of students and society. She makes excuses for no one, but is extremely pragmatic and realistic in her approach.

    Diane Auer Jones will be a major voice in educational reform for a long time.

    Please applaud her efforts.

    — Rob    Jan 11, 06:45 PM    #

11. #7 – I disagree. While it is true that money has been spent, too many times it has been in the form of program expansion and facilities. The real issue at most CC’s is that the faculty there are rarely trained at the level necessary to prepare those students who are going to transfer. In most cases, those students are local (often making that transfer less attractive or impossible), they are underprepared (which makes the same retention issues we deal with at the four-year college level even more difficult), and they need extensive remedial training to improve their performance to the level of the four-year college to which they aspire. So, if you really want to improve those stats, spend money developing contact-time-intensive programs aimed at jump-starting student performance. That takes money for more faculty (a luxury few CC’s have), it takes faculty specially trained in improving student performance (not just four-year or industrially skilled faculty), and it takes higher salaries to attract innovators who would otherwise go to the four-years. And lastly, it will take a shift in mindset among the rest of us who are in the four-year colleges to stop looking at those schools and their students as second-tier.

    — Robert    Jan 11, 11:13 PM    #

12. It seems that Diane is quoted in every single issue of the Chronicle these days. She left ED in May. It’s time for her to stop milking her association with the Department and move on. She certainly never said any of this when she was there. Since she left the Department under a cloud, one has to question the motivation for her sudden concern regarding these issues. Will she still be obsessed with getting her jabs in after the adminstration changes and Spellings is no longer the Secretary?

    — Rachael Shultz    Jan 12, 09:28 AM    #

13. Rachel, if you are going to complain that Diane is “milking her association with the Department,” wouldn’t it be appropriate for you to note in your comment that you work in the department? It puts your comment in a slightly different light.

    Diane left under no cloud, and you should be ashamed for saying so. The administration has been dead wrong on higher ed since Sally Stroup left, and in hindsight, it’s accomplishments since that time will be viewed as negligible.

    — Former appointee who respects Diane    Jan 12, 01:41 PM    #

14. Some of us at the Department know that Diane left because she was trying to speak up and lead reasonable dialogues from within, but was being kept from doing so by others who viewed the Commission report as the sanctioned play book. We know that she did speak up within the organization, she did work hard on behalf of higher education, and she challenged others to look beyond the surface for answers. And she paid dearly for doing so. It is easy to make assumptions from the outside about what someone did or didn’t do, but this time I would encourage you to talk to her former staff to learn more about Diane’s efforts on behalf of higher education.

    — Real Data    Jan 13, 11:07 AM    #

15. Rachel Shultz is way out of bounds in her criticisms of Diane Auer Jones. Having been aware of her professional accomplishment back to her community college days, Ms. Jones is focused on two things: improving the quality of insturction on all levels and making the system work and be more available to students and families struggling to deal with the cost of a college education.

    She left the Dept. under no cloud, instead she revealed the foggy judgment of many within the department who just don’t get it when it comes to the real purpose of a colllege education trying to reduce the pursuit of knowledge to being little more than vocational education.

    For every student who has benefitted from a solid liberal arts program or intends to do so in the future, Diane Auer Jones was insightful and courageous to raise her concerns regarding what the Dept of Ed was doing.

    She will continue to speak forcefully on issues on which she has the insight to address.

    You’re dealing with a person with a life-long passion for learning who is about as apolitical as they come.

    It’s little wonder her services have been in such high demand from Princeton to the White House.

    — former educator    Jan 13, 08:22 PM    #

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