ACTA's Must-Reads

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College Tuition Now a Bargain?

Do the giddy headlines in the Washington Post ("Net cost of college tuition and fees lower than in 2005, report says") and the Chronicle of Higher Education ("Federal Grant Aid Jumps as College Prices Go Up Again") really signal good news? In the last year, tuition and fees rose 7.9% at public institutions for instate students and 4.5% at private nonprofit colleges. The offset is that grants to students, led by this year's $10 billion increase in Pell funding and other federal increases in support, rose 22%. Since total grant aid to students is up on average $1,073 per student over the last year, the net average cost is down. Sandy Baum, co-author of the College Board studies behind the news, is euphoric: "It certainly puts those rising prices into perspective."

But does it? Policymakers have shifted the lion's share of higher ed cost from private dollars to taxpayer dollars. And for one-third or so of students who do not qualify for financial aid, rising price is rising cost, increasingly crushing to family budgets and student ambitions.

The United States spends more per post-secondary student than any other OECD nation does. We pay twice the average and thousands of dollars more per year than the next biggest spenders budgets (Switzerland and Canada).

Whether the check is drawn from a family's bank account or the U.S. Treasury, it came from families. If the effect of federal student aid is an upward spiral of spending and tuition increases, then there's no cause to celebrate.

Posted by Michael Poliakoff on October 28, 2010 at 03:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

WhatWillTheyLearn.com Hits 100,000!

This week marked a milestone for ACTA's one-of-a-kind online college guide, WhatWillTheyLearn.com: 100,000 visits!

As you will recall, ACTA launched a vastly expanded website in mid-August, amidst great media fanfare. Students, parents and the public are paying attention, and we've got 100,000 visits to show it!

80,000 of those visitors were new visitors, meaning it's not the same people coming back again and again, but thousands of parents, students, guidance counselors, alumni and donors across the country logging on to see if the schools they care about are covering the fundamentals. We've heard from schools that have resolved to strengthen their core and achieve a better rating, and we've heard from many high school guidance counselors who recommend this powerful tool to college bound students -- exactly the outcomes we had hoped for.

The average visitor clicks through to nine different pages -- enough to comparison-shop among several schools. After two months, new visitors are still coming, at a rate of nearly 200 per day.

Where do our visitors come from? Capitals! The greatest number of visitors come from Washington, DC; perhaps The Higher Ed Establishment at One Dupont Circle is amazed that one group -- ACTA -- does believe in standards. Policymakers seem to be amazed as well: we've also had many visitors from Sacramento, Austin, Nashville and Richmond.

And while 97% of our visitors come from the United States, it's worth pointing out that we've had visits from 130 countries and territories, including Nepal, Botswana, and Fiji. It seems everybody is interested in finding out What Will They Learn?

Posted by Eric Markley on October 28, 2010 at 02:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Latest from CHEA

Dear Children - Gather round. I am going to tell you about accreditation. IT MATTERS!

Are you kidding me? Yes, that's the latest message for students and parents from the Council for Higher Education Accreditation in a new brochure, Ask Before You Decide: Accreditation Matters.

If the title weren't bad enough, the text verges on fraudulent. CHEA would have students and their families believe that accreditation is a "very hard test," that it ensures students have reliable information about "the odds of getting a job in your area when you finish school." According to this brochure, accreditation means that "schools and programs tell the truth about everything that you need to know about your education."

Excuse me. CHEA -- Don't distract students with misinformation. If you truly believe in transparency and accountability, isn't it time to admit that accreditation currently represents the lowest common denominator? Virtually everyone passes this test, as this excellent article by Kevin Carey notes.

There may come a day when accreditation is a hard test -- one that actually means something. But that day hasn't arrived and it's not fair to students or their families to suggest otherwise.

Posted by Anne D. Neal on October 28, 2010 at 11:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Solving the Cost Crunch

The crisis of affordability and quality in American higher education is deep, but American ingenuity is up to the challenge. As California reels from a 32% tuition increase in the UCAL system, the CA Legislative Analyst's Office released on October 25, 2010 a forward thinking report called "Using Distance Education to Increase College Access and Efficiency." While recognizing that high-quality distance education is not inexpensive, the report notes its potential for enhanced student access and cost savings. Distance education needs quality instructors and technology, but it eliminates the need for capital infrastructure (parking lots, classroom buildings), and it encourages collaborations between institutions, reducing the need for duplicative programs. High tech collaboration means, in the words of the report, "'virtual' academic departments that are taught by faculty from more than one campus." In other words, students can access quality academic programs without needing a full complement of professors in every subject at every university. The report gives some examples of such collaborations, already up and running. To glimpse the power of such programs for yourself, visit the OpenLearningInitiative. Then visit almost any state university system today, where you are likely to find nearly as many education schools, business schools, engineering schools, etc., as there are campuses- often competing with another and wasting taxpayer dollars. You are also likely to see university leadership seeking new buildings, often at state expense: the Society for College and University Planning reports that between 1974 and 2009, the amount of space per student in higher education nearly tripled. New academic programs and new buildings might be shiny trophies for an institution, but have space needs really tripled in the last thirty years, or could some of that money have been used elsewhere? ACTA has delivered this message in governor's conferences in Indiana and South Carolina and in "Cost Cutting: A Trustee's Guide to Tough Economic Times." Bravo to the California's Legislative Analyst's Office for this new report that offers timely advice to the state and the nation.

Posted by Michael Poliakoff on October 27, 2010 at 02:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Buckeye Blues?

Inside Higher Ed reports that Governor Strickland's reforms of Ohio's higher education system have become an issue in the gubernatorial election. Notably, he is the first Ohio Governor able to appoint the Chancellor of the state’s university system. In taking on this authority as governor, following new legislation he encouraged, Strickland has acted appropriately. As ACTA President Anne D. Neal wrote in 2007, the governor's ability to appoint a chancellor allows the state's highest elected official to reform higher education in a way that Ohio's board had been unable - or unwilling - to do. Like big city mayors who appoint their K-12 chancellors, the governor is empowered to effect real changes - and he is accountable to the public.

And reform? We think Ohio is on the right path, rewarding educational achievement, as opposed to simply appropriating and spending tax dollars and calling more money "better." There's more work to be done - of the 13 Ohio public university curricula ACTA surveyed in our What Will They Learn? report, only 4 got a B, and none got an A - and we hope that no matter who wins the Governor's mansion, the vital work of reforming Ohio education will continue.

Posted by Michael Pomeranz on October 27, 2010 at 11:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Louisiana Students Target Administrative Bloat

When Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal asked on Facebook for higher education cost-cutting solutions, we heard again the call to control administrative spending, this time from students. To quote Jane Buck, former president of the AAUP, top executive salaries are appalling and "unseemly," especially at a time when financial woes severely limit students' access to higher education. And as education policy analyst Jay Greene recently reported, between 1993 and 2007, "Inflation-adjusted spending on administration per student increased by 61 percent during the same period, while instructional spending per student rose 39 percent." Indeed, ACTA's state report cards have had to issue far too many "Fs" to public colleges and universities for administrative spending that outstrips spending on student instruction. When ACTA president Anne Neal addressed the Louisiana Postsecondary Education Review Commission last December, the first topic she addressed was administrative growth at the state’s public universities. Students, who bear the brunt of wasteful higher education spending in their tuition bills, now add an important voice to the call for higher education cost control.

Posted by Michael Poliakoff on October 26, 2010 at 06:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Rising Costs, Hidden Fees

Readers of this morning's Washington Post were treated to a smart story about hidden costs at colleges and universities: athletic fees. "Athletic fees are a large - and occasionally hidden - cost of public higher education in Virginia and Maryland," Daniel de Vise writes. The piece details how some universities report (or fail to report) these costs. Read the whole article.

$2000+ dollars for athletics is hard enough on students and their families, especially in this economy; that it's sometimes kept secret is unfortunately an enduring problem. Too many college administrators behave as if they have a right to your money and no obligation to tell you where it's going. It shouldn't take an investigative journalist to tell you how much students are charged and what programs the charges support. Colleges ought to be completely transparent about their fee structures so that students, parents, taxpayers, and donors know what they're funding. Boards of Trustees, especially at public universities, need to review institutional cost and effectiveness frequently; ACTA outlines key metrics in our state report cards, such as instructional vs. administrative spending , trends in in-state undergraduate tuition and fees, and performance as a criterion for funding. If the college administrations aren't immediately forthcoming, trustees should ensure that they do lay out all the facts – before the Washington Post gets on the case.

Posted by Michael Pomeranz on October 25, 2010 at 02:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New College uses WhatWillTheyLearn.com to Design Core Curriculum

WhatWillTheyLearn.com was created as a tool for assessing the curricula of colleges and universities already in operation. One new school, however, is using it as a foundation for creating a general education program from scratch.

St. Katherine College is a liberal arts and sciences college located in San Diego which will commence classes in Fall 2011. It will be the first and only college in the United States affiliated with the Orthodox Christian tradition.

St. Katherine has announced that their core curriculum will be specifically designed to incorporate the seven core subjects What Will They Learn? recommends every school require: Composition, Literature, Foreign Language, U.S. Government or History, Economics, Mathematics and Natural Science. The subjects will all be covered as part of a two-year long integrative core required of all students.

ACTA and What Will They Learn? continue to shape American higher education, affording more students a strong core curriculum.

Posted by Eric Markley on October 25, 2010 at 09:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

In Memoriam - Robert Sprinkel

ACTA is sad to note the passing of Robert Sprinkel. A long-time friend, Sprinkel graduated from Stanford and from the Harvard Business School. A devoted Harvard alumnus, he strongly supported independent campaigns for the Board of Overseers of that school. In addition to his attention to governance, Sprinkel threw his energy into curricular reform.

Sprinkel was President of Leaders for Liberty, a group aiming to reform education - or the lack thereof - about the history of the Cold War. He regarded the teaching of American history, and of the Cold War in particular, as essential to a proper liberal arts education in America. In his own words: "I felt that young people were not being exposed to the values that led to the remarkable peaceable ending of the Cold War." A student of the works of Vaclav Havel and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Sprinkel asked important questions: "What kinds of moral and political compromises are appropriate and necessary to defend free institutions? Indeed what does freedom mean? What role does political leadership play in changing the world? Can ordinary citizens alter their societies? How do writers and artists influence public opinion?" He fought not only to answer these questions himself but to structure American education so that undergraduates had the opportunity to consider, to debate, and ultimately to try to respond to them. For his commitment to the cause of education for liberty and for his friendship, he will be missed.

Posted by Anne D. Neal on October 22, 2010 at 02:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A New Movement for Accreditation Reform? Part I

Readers will find of interest the Center for College Affordability and Productivity's smart analysis of higher education accreditation, The Inmates Running the Asylum? In all honesty, they've clearly read ACTA's work. Drawing on ACTA materials Can College Accreditation Live Up To Its Promise? and "Why Accreditation Doesn't Work and What Policymakers Can Do About It," as well as Anne Neal's "Dis-Accreditation" in Academic Questions (no link), Andrew Gillen, Daniel L. Bennett, and Richard Vedder convincingly argue for accreditation reform.

Vedder et al. quickly and cleverly divide the history of college accreditation into four eras: voluntary system, quality improvement, quality assurance, assessment movement. Mostly, though, they focus "on evaluating the performance of the current system and evaluating possible reforms." Their verdict? The current system is secretive to the public, unhelpful to colleges, and monopolistic to competitors. Given "legitimate concerns about the quality of higher education" and the likelihood of continued federal support for higher education, America needs indications of higher educational quality, and would benefit from those based on outcomes (i.e., student learning), as opposed to the inputs (square foot of educational space, for example) that the current accreditors use. Vedder et al. also helpfully point out a major weakness in the information accreditors provide: a binary system communicates virtually no information about a school to the public.

Is Congress listening? The federal government can do far more to protect the public interest than it now does, while promoting transparency and institutional autonomy. We’ll have more on this in future blogs.

Posted by Michael Pomeranz on October 22, 2010 at 02:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Right Start for Brooklyn's Freshmen

Important conversations are underway at Brooklyn College in the wake of the College's highly controversial decision to assign Moustafa Bayoumi's How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in Americaas common reading for all freshmen. Brooklyn College professor KC Johnson, as well as many from outside the school, objected to the text as inflammatory and containing questionable assertions of fact. The English Department, which selected the book (and which is the academic home of Moustafa Bayoumi) has defended the choice. ACTA wrote recently to CUNY leadership about this issue, observing that Brooklyn College, which is renowned for its Core curriculum, can readily transcend this unfortunate episode and establish an exemplary common reading program. Brooklyn College's president, Karen Gould, has informed us that the Provost's Office, in collaboration with the faculty, is now reviewing the program's goals and holding discussions on the selection process for the reading(s) next academic year. President Gould also confirmed her admiration for Brooklyn's strong Core. ACTA is very happy to learn of these important developments.

ACTA has long applauded the idea of assigning common reading to freshmen. Students need to experience the benefits of learning in a community, and common readings are an excellent step in that direction. It would be sad if the outrage over the assignment of this particular book led schools to back away from the idea of common texts.

Indeed, Brooklyn College's error, in our view, was that they did not go far enough and they left the planning of this College-wide program to a small and non-representative group of its faculty. Students would have been better served by a much more comprehensive freshman reading program, with multiple texts reflecting a variety of perspectives and topics. Numerous colleges already do so, and ACTA has recommended the practice in our publication, Protecting the Free Exchange of Ideas. One such program in Colorado, for example, challenged students, "to join with the college community in addressing the question of what your responsibilities are as a citizen of a free society" based on readings that ranged from Plato to Martin Luther King. We wish Brooklyn College, one of only 17 institutions nationwide that received ACTA's "A" rating for its core curriculum, success in crafting a Common Reading commensurate with its high academic standards.

Posted by Eric Markley on October 15, 2010 at 09:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A student asking the right question

Too often, when higher education reform is discussed, students stay out of the conversation. This is unfortunate because when universities waste money, students are the ones who quite literally pay the price. Too often, students are insulated from the reality of high tuition because their schooling is financed by student loans. Those numbers in the balance book may not seem "real" to students when they take out loans -- though they assuredly will be when it comes time to pay the loans off.

Thankfully, University of South Carolina student Trevor Lightbody is an exception. Reporting on the South Carolina education summit, Lightbody notes the massive tuition increases in that state, and the fact that much of that spending went to administration, not teaching. He concludes, "It is easy for university leaders and trustees to be sidetracked, focusing more on competing with other universities to have the most up-to-date research facilities or most-published faculty, but why not be the best at producing educated and culturally aware graduates?"

Good question, Trevor.

Posted by Eric Markley on October 15, 2010 at 09:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A lesson on the importance of trustee authority

What happens when trustees relinquish the basic responsibilities of trusteeship? Sometimes the attorney general comes calling.

In January 2007, the Connecticut State University System's Board of Trustees voted to delegate important decision-making authority about personnel to its Executive Committee. More than two years later, the Executive Committee amended the system's HR policies. It gave the chancellor of CSUS authority to "non-continue" any university president without cause, if he had the consent of the Chairman of the Board and reported back to the Executive Committee. Chancellor David Carter used his new powers in November 2009 to tell Southern Connecticut State University President Cheryl Norton that she would be "non-continued" shortly. On December 9, one day before the full board could have discussed and reversed the decision, Norton agreed to resign in a highly secretive separation agreement. In the succeeding months, details trickled out and criticisms grew. Two trustees called for the board to revisit its delegation and to practice greater transparency.

Now, the Hartford Courant reports that state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has found the CSUS Board of Trustees to be in violation of state law. The law says that the authority to hire and fire presidents is vested solely in the full Board of Trustees, not the Executive Committee. Although Norton's departure is not affected by this opinion since she resigned, the board voted on September 23, 2010 to reclaim its authority in these matters. It has also established an ad-hoc committee to revise the controversial HR policy.

This should be a cautionary tale for every governing board to be vigilant about the authority vested in them, something that we raised a number of times before. Trustees need to ensure that their committees report back to them on matters of importance. Furthermore, they need to pay close attention to potential encroachments on their lawful power by the "executive branch" of the systems they supervise. Boards are not simply rubber-stamping bodies. Their full authority and sovereignty must be upheld -- first and foremost by themselves.

Posted by Tom Bako on October 14, 2010 at 04:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

How much does it cost to drop out?

"Transparency is the first step to accountability." This is the driving idea behind a new report from the American Institutes for Research about the costs of dropping out of college. But this report doesn't focus on the costs to students. It doesn't try to calculate the costs of loan debt, lost time in the workforce, and the emotional toll of not graduating. Instead, the report focuses on the costs to taxpayers.

Taxpayers are paying billions of dollars every year in state appropriations to public universities and state and federal grants to students. However, 30 percent of students don't make it past their first year of college. This is a huge cost, and it begs the question why colleges aren't being held accountable for these losses. Trustees, policymakers, and taxpayers need to start demanding better results for their money.

Posted by Heather Lakemacher on October 13, 2010 at 03:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Hamilton's Assault on Dignity and Freedom, Part II

Hamilton College mandated last month that certain students attend a rape prevention session called "She Fears You." The session claims to "[lower] participants' rape myth acceptance and increase[e] their understanding of what constitutes rape". The students who were required to attend had done nothing to indicate that they accept rape myths or that they had a poor understanding of what constitutes rape. Neither had they been accused of raping, sexually assaulting, or sexually harassing anyone. They simply had the misfortune of being first-year, male students.

Certainly, ending rape and sexual assault are urgently important goals. But to tell young men who have been on campus for only a month that they need "to be active in changing the rape culture on campus" implies that their mere presence is part of the problem. I can't help but find that insulting to the young men I know--the ones who I played ultimate Frisbee with, the one who decorated my locker with streamers for my 16th birthday, the one who picked me up for the prom in a powder blue tux, the one who drove a half-hour at 5:00 am to leave flowers on my car. But at Hamilton, these young men would have been told that they were "perceived as potential rapists" who were not "capable of entering caring and emotion-based relationships."

As ACTA argued in Protecting the Free Exchange of Ideas, trustees are the legal guardians of the university and are responsible for ensuring a culture that welcomes freedom of conscience and principled beliefs. Sadly, this is not the first time that ACTA has found major assaults on such freedom. If Hamilton's trustees are serious about upholding freedom of thought and conscience as central to a university community, then they need to do much more than just trust that everything is in order.

Posted by Heather Lakemacher on October 13, 2010 at 03:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Hamilton's Assault on Dignity and Freedom, Part I

Recently ACTA wrote a letter to the Hamilton Board of Trustees, asking for its intervention in an issue of academic freedom. An outstanding young professor of history, Christopher Hill—also a well-known libertarian—was cut from consideration for a tenure-track position in the very earliest stages of the search.

When a distinguished senior professor of history, Robert Paquette, using public and non-privileged information, openly protested the apparent prejudice of the search, Hamilton's dean, Joseph Urgo (now President of St. Mary's College of Maryland) forbade Paquette's future service on search committees until his department vouched for his good behavior. Given the History Department's conduct of the search involving Professor Hill, one can reasonably expect them to vouch for Professor Paquette about the same time Hell freezes over.

ACTA asked the Hamilton Board to review this sorry affair, noting how badly it reflects upon the college and the damage it does to intellectual diversity on campus. Significantly, the issue and ACTA's correspondence received substantial coverage in Hamilton's newspaper, The Spectator on September 30. Yet for all of that, ACTA received but a four-line response from Hamilton's Board Chair, which assured us of the Board's confidence in the "principled and appropriate" actions of the History Department in its review of candidates ... and "its long standing commitment to academic freedom."

As ACTA awaits evidence of actions to support this bold claim, there is a distressing new issue that threatens freedom of thought and conscience at Hamilton. This time it is aimed specifically at all male freshman students. Please read the following, "Hamilton's Assault on Dignity and Freedom, Part II," by Heather Lakemacher.

Posted by Michael Poliakoff on October 13, 2010 at 11:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Take the money and run ... and still no ROTC

The amount of money that Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia and the University of Chicago receive in grants and contracts from the federal government each year, over and above federal scholarship money that their students bring, is in the billions. Harvard alone received $558.7 million last year. Yet regarding 10 U.S.C. 983, popularly known as the Solomon Amendment, the response of these institutions to the provisions of the law is less than robust—it might even be called non-compliance: No funds described in subsection (d)(1) may be provided by contract or by grant to an institution of higher education (including any subelement of such institution) if the Secretary of Defense determines that that institution (or any subelement of that institution) has a policy or practice (regardless of when implemented) that either prohibits, or in effect prevents - (1) the Secretary of a military department from maintaining, establishing, or operating a unit of the Senior Reserve Officer Training Corps...at that institution. Harvard President Drew Faust recently announced that she would like to "regularize our relationship" with the military. She contended, however, that Harvard's exclusion of ROTC (which actually dates back to 1969—long before gays in the military was a political issue) is "entirely linked to 'don't ask, don't tell.'" But as ACTA president Anne Neal made clear in her recent presentation at Columbia University's Service & Society Conference, the existence of DADT is not a reason for trustees to sit still. Now is the time for trustees to recognize ROTC as an on-campus student activity—even while disagreeing with current policy concerning gays in the military—and then to ask faculty and administrators to study and report on how the integration of ROTC into academic life might best be accomplished. Despite recent progress that the Secretary of Defense acknowledges, the damage to military presence on these elite campuses has been very real, and their accommodations of ROTC insufficient. Stanford students, for example, who wish to participate in ROTC have only the option of a hellacious commute to Santa Clara. Not surprisingly their participation is minimal. ACTA's message to higher education concerning ROTC has been clear and consistent: ROTC is an invaluable opportunity for students and it needs to be restored quickly and fully to its proper place on campus. http://www.goacta.org/press/PressReleases/2008PressReleases/08-10-07PR.cfm; http://goacta.org/print.cfm?page=/press/PressReleases/2010PressReleases/10-03-26PR.cfm

Posted by Michael Poliakoff on October 12, 2010 at 04:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

$3.97 billion

That's the amount that colleges in the U.S. spend each year on freshmen who drop out. And it's just one of many disturbing statistics that are now available at http://collegemeasures.org.

College Measures is a new website that takes information from IPEDS (a federal database) and makes it usable for the average person. Do you want to know how many students at your alma mater default on their loans? It's there. What percentage of students actually graduate from your state's public universities? It's there. How much does your state spend to educate each student? And how does that compare to other states? It's all there.

Trustees and policymakers--not to mention the general public--should jump at this new source of transparent data.

Posted by Heather Lakemacher on October 08, 2010 at 04:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Teaching License

The War of 1812 gets overlooked a lot; you can find lots of Civil War re-enactors, World War II buffs, and Revolutionary War aficionados, but the war that brought us our national anthem sometimes seems to get lost in the shuffle. Kudos, then, to the state of Maryland for offering new War of 1812 bicentennial license plates. It's a nice little way to make people aware of a "Key" event in US history (if you'll excuse the pun).

Of course, we have to think that maybe a better way of teaching US history might be, well ... teaching US history. WhatWillTheyLearn.com studied nine state-run colleges and universities as well as seven private institutions of higher learning in Maryland, and found that only two of those sixteen require their students to take a class in US Government or History. Especially in a state as history-rich as Maryland (whose nickname of "Old Line State" was bestowed by none other than George Washington), that kind of institutional indifference is appalling.

While it's nice to see attention paid to America's history in the university parking lots, it'd be a lot nicer to see more of it in the classrooms.

Posted by Eric Markley on October 06, 2010 at 12:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack