0 Arne Duncan's Got it All Wrong, Again

I'm just back from Washington DC and now unhappily certain that President Obama is headed in the wrong direction with his efforts to get a handle on college costs.  The winds have shifted and Arne Duncan has taken the lead on the planning-- and well, you know what that means.  We're going to get yet another quasi-market solution that fails to grapple with the real problems and destroys any hope for a good result.

Here's the thing:

The current financial system hinges on the actions of students, prioritizing their consumer choice in the hopes that those choices will be well made.  It assumes that any problems with schools will be resolved by students turning away from them.  But this assumption is deeply flawed, not only because students do not (and cannot, and will not) make informed choices, but also because a segment of selective schools (and states) have manipulated aid policy for so long that the incentives are now distorted and they can do whatever they wish. And what they want is to maximize their own interests, which are rarely aligned with those of their students. So the problem, in other words, is really the behavior of schools and states.  Yes, students and families are an issue too, but their lack of information is just a fraction of the overall college cost problem.

Creating a ratings system for all of the nation's colleges and universities will do absolutely nothing about institutional and state behavior because:

• Student choice is often highly constrained by finances, family, and geography -- you can declare a local community college "bad" but students have no choice but to attend it anyway, and if it closes nowhere else public to go (remember, there are far fewer community colleges than k-12 schools, and for-profit institutions who'd jump at the chance to fill in for the missing community college). We already have a ranking of community colleges, thanks to Kevin Carey, and no one is making use of them.

• Schools simply won't care -- good luck making ratings the elites will take more seriously than US News, and for the others, they know their consumers and count on the fact they have no other good options

• States won't view the ratings as their problem

Frankly, it is laughable to suggest that a college ratings system will be "consumer protection" from the college cost crisis we now face.  Instead, just like Arne's war on teachers (rather than poverty and segregation) it is an enormous waste of taxpayer resources and destined for failure. Just look at the Scorecard and the Navigator-- they aren't used or demonstrably effective at all.

This kind of nonsense has to stop. President Obama had it right when he said he'd tie Title IV financial aid to institutional performance. The next step was not to turn to Arne, but rather his experts who've crafted nuanced accountability systems with anti-creaming provisions. We've tried the voucher approach to financial aid-- it's time to get serious.  

When Title IV began, there were relatively few seats in higher education in the public sector and relatively few students. Today there's enormous capacity in the public sector and tons of students.   We can't afford to make every current institution Title IV eligible, and the ones that should re-compete for their eligibility are the ones who have created the current crisis: 

(a) the selective, elite private non-profits whose admissions criteria mean they do not serve any kind of public good while they establish "standards" for college quality that are conflated with great expense, and 

(b) the for-profit institutions that set their tuition according the availability of federal aid.  

If you reign in those two players, the rest will begin to fall in line.

President Obama needs a do-over. He made a mistake.  Pull back on the wasteful ratings plan, and instead say "let's do this thing right."  Prioritize putting public resources into public institutions of higher education.  Fund them and their students well, for once.  Time to degree will go down, and quality of instruction will rise.  Next, create accountability metrics intended to lower costs and open access at the private non-profits (else cut them out of Title IV), and to lower costs and increase completion rates at the for-profits (again, or else they're out).  

Such a plan will not require massive behavioral changes on the part of millions of college students or require big informational campaigns.  It will not leave students to attend colleges designated "bad" or have no local option at all-- the community colleges will remain and do their jobs better by having a decent amount of money to spend.  What it will do is focus squarely on the problem at hand, and go straight at it.

There, now get to work.

  *****

But really, who am I kidding?  Arne and his big money men in Congress (mainly grads of private colleges and universities) will never let this happen. They'll ensure we get a ratings system that protects no one,  least of all the students. There's simply too much money to be made.

Senator Warren, Director Cordray --- are you listening?

0 Three Radical Ideas for Improving (not Reforming) Higher Education

While watching the annual Gates Postsecondary Education Convening from afar via twitter, I am struck by the apparent absence of discussion about several core underlying issues keeping more students from succeeding in earning college degrees.

We cannot increase the success of undergraduates from disadvantaged backgrounds without ensuring that they are safe, healthy, and ready to learn. Food insecurity is a growing problem in higher education, as revealed by institutional surveys, and hopefully soon tracked by national data (I'm working on it).

Idea #1:  Institute a free/reduced price breakfast and lunch program at all public colleges and universities where at least 1 in 3 students receives a Pell Grant. 

Far too many of today's faculty are ill-equipped to teach the students of tomorrow.  The focus on research has trumped the emphasis on high-quality teaching even at institutions with no research mission.

Idea #2: Make teaching a priority in public higher education. 

a. Require that all new hires have teaching experience of some kind.

b. Require a pedagogical talk in the hiring process.

c. Require bi-annual professional development credits.

There is a well-known and very basic resource problem in higher education. The fewest dollars flow to the neediest students.  Per student spending of about $6000 in community colleges is a travesty.

Idea #3: Focus funding where it can do the most good. Require that all states receiving any Title IV financial aid maintain adequate per-student spending at their community colleges.  Based this on appropriate adequacy funding studies done by state.


None of these answers involve technology, I know. None speak to "quality" because I do not think the evidence on declining quality is solid-- the demographic changes in higher education have collided with the redefining process, and thus it is far from clear that reformers are saying anything more than "these students" aren't as good as yesterday's.

Without three these reforms in place, I don't think the technological solutions constitute anything more than tinkering towards utopia, and any efforts to cut costs could do more harm than good.

0 Reality Check: Obama is Standing for Students

Since when did an effort to ensure that students receive a high-quality affordable education in exchange for their financial aid become unconstitutional micromanagement of colleges and universities?

This is where the rubber hits the road, folks. Where the needs of a particularly elite form of academia comes into conflict with the average student's right to an affordable public education. And apparently it's about to get ugly. 

Don't believe the hype. President Obama is not attacking faculty, he is not seeking to destroy public colleges and universities which are the workhorses of higher education, and for pete's sake he is not proposing a pseudo-NCLB for higher education.

The President's main goal is simple:  After decades of hoping that students could hold institutions of higher education and states responsible for providing a high-quality, affordable college experience that leads to degrees, he's calling the nation's attention to the fact that the market isn't working on its own and some really serious regulation is needed.  The federal government is a major financial player in higher education, far more so than in k-12, and it has a responsibility to ensure that the schools it funds do right by their students.  

Despite their loud claims to the contrary, many schools are not currently doing right by their students. Some of them are setting prices so as to absorb all available financial aid and providing students with few supports and long-shots at completing degrees. Others are taking advantage of the availability of student loans to charge the middle-class sky high prices while hiding behind "admissions standards" to leave the majority of students from the 99% out in the cold.  In addition, there are a lot of federal dollars spent unnecessarily, supplanting resources from institutional endowments. Finally, there are plenty of childish states, pulling back on their investments when the federal government provides support. 

All of that should be stopped by holding colleges, universities, and states to the standards that we now hold students.  The problems we face in higher education today are largely due to the behaviors of those institutional actors--not students.  The federal government must use the strings associated with Title IV to ensure that college administrators, boards, and state legislatures behave themselves and let the students and faculty get back to the hard work of education.

That's the goal. It's where Obama is headed, if you'll just give him a chance to get there.

And when he does: NO, this will not make student aid more complicated.  Instead of rules for millions of students we can have a much smaller set of rules for the few thousand institutions. Done right, this will not punish students for the acts of their states and institutions. It will not further push education towards earnings and away from learning.  It should do the opposite-- it focuses on the actual problem-- schools that claim to educate students while merely sifting and winnowing out the ones it doesn't want, schools that recruit students only to leave them behind once checks are signed. It helps direct students towards the states and institutions where their aid will be used well.  It helps ensure that students get degrees--which is the very least they deserve (and come on, don't tell me that in your day you really earned your degree...).

Suggesting the opposite-- suggesting that this effort will hurt students-- is a red herring. It's a line tossed about by privileged elites who have claimed to serve America's middle class while restricting enrollment through selective admissions, and promoting rhetoric that allows some elite colleges to stand on high above their peers, endlessly wealthy and exerting strong influence, helping to push millions of Americans into debt. 

Beware of these scare tactics. The President isn't going to cut students' Pell dollars. He's never going to assign letters grades to each colleges and university.  He's not bringing in standardized tests or value-added modeling for professors, or giving colleges incentives to get rid of teacher tenure or privatize.

Unfortunately, he's also not about to make college--or at least community college-- free.  Now there's something worth critiquing him for.

Sure, the President did make some errors in his plans. He should never have likened this effort to the ridiculous College Scorecard or called them "ratings"-- that trivialized the approach.  He should have challenged schools to improve to certain standards before the move to link aid to institutional performance rolls out.  Race to the Top should never have been a part of this at all, since doing this fast has never been a good way to bring about quality change. He should never have mentioned MOOCs or other such untested approaches to cutting costs, and in fact, he needn't have mentioned specific practices for cost-cutting at all.  That can and should be left up to the institutions to deal with-- he simply needs to tell them what goal posts to aim for and what the rules of engagement are.   For example, he should have reiterated the importance of educators to education, and assured the faculty of their very real place in affordable higher education. He should have placed much more emphasis on the importance of public institutions and the role that states must play in adequately funding them if those states want to get any Title IV funds for their private or profit schools.   

Shoulda, woulda, coulda.  The fact is that the current financial aid system has benefitted colleges and universities-- and states-- far more than students for a very long time, and President Obama is finally going to try to do something about it.  Did he get the plan exactly right on this initial roll out?  Nope. Will it be accomplished in the next few years? No way.   But that isn't and wasn't the point.  He is standing up for students and families and telling higher education administrators and states that they must get some skin in the game-- or get out of Title IV.   It's about damn time. 

0 What We Need to Hear from the President

Reviewing the range of responses to President Obama's plan to reduce college costs, and the questions that are being raised on Twitter, it seems important that the Administration clarify a few things sooner rather than later.

1. This effort to reduce college costs is a first step and thus it is not intended to solve all problems.  The President should say something more specific about the ultimate goal and what it would look like in practice. Are we working towards a free community college education? Are we trying to close achievement gaps?  What is the intended outcome down the road?

2. This is not NCLB for higher education.  The President needs to assure the public that he is not calling for standardized testing, the end of professorial tenure, or a focus on specific fields or majors.  He is trying to help more Americans access the quality post secondary education they seek, not water down quality or redefine what matters.

3. This is an effort to protect public higher education, not destroy it.  This needs to be said loud and clear, and the President's commitment to community colleges in particular must be emphasized.  Too many community college leaders are distressed at the roll-out of these plans, and I did not think that was intended.

4. This is also not an attempt to end for-profit or private higher education.  The purpose is to ensure that Title IV is spent in ways that support national needs, not to define the entire range of opportunities that can exist.  It is certainly possible to support private and for-profit educational providers without insisting that the federal government should also subsidize them.

5.  The President is not insisting that everyone must go to college-- he is  trying to help make the American Dream a reality by decoupling family income from educational opportunities.

Now, if I'm correct that these are all statements the President and his Administration can agree with, let's move on to figuring out how to take aim at the underlying inefficiencies in the current financial aid system using institutional accountability.

I think it would be a mistake to subject all institutions to metrics anytime in the near future. Most colleges and universities are good actors, keeping college costs down as long as states do their part. What we need to do as a starting point is to get a handle on (a) the bad actors and (b) federal investments that are ineffective and unnecessary.

Which schools fall into those categories? Here's a start.

BAD ACTORS

1. Institutions whose primary revenue source is Title IV.  Let's say those who get at least 75% of funding from Pell and/or student loans, for example.  These schools aren't operating based on market demand but rather are propped up by federal aid.

2. Institutions with selective admissions (say less than 75% admitted) and low average graduation rates (less than 50% over 5 years).

INEFFECTIVE, UNNECESSARY INVESTMENTS

1. Institutions with large endowments per student.

2. Institutions serving very few Pell recipients (regardless of whether this is due to admissions practices, costs, or a decision to simply be small).


If we could ensure that federal student aid no longer supported these schools, we would see fewer students attend these schools, their prices would likely fall (or they would close), and/or at minimum we'd save money that could be spent elsewhere.

If that were the first stage, then the Department of Education could begin by publishing these lists of problematic schools, issuing a warning that they have three years to get off the list or lose Title IV.


The other big issue is how to get states back to the table.  There could be a separate list of states that are put on probation based on a failure to match federal investments in higher education with state investments.  All colleges and universities in those states should be put at risk of losing Title IV-- including the privates and for-profits-- and given 5 years to address the problems.

None of this is perfect, of course, but they get us thinking about a more targeted, incremental approach to reform.  What do you think? What would you include?

0 Mr. President: Don’t Cave to the Higher-Education Lobby

Cross-posted from the Chronicle of Higher Ed.
 
Over all, I’m a fan of President Obama’s proposal to rate colleges and link the results to financial aid. The plan is to give students attending institutions rated high—on such measures as tuition and graduation rates, debt and earnings of graduates, and the percentage of low-income students enrolled—larger grants, as well as lower-interest loans. The proposal ends the “tinkering” that most higher-education reform has pursued; it aims squarely at the main drivers of college costs: private and for-profit institutions (and their happy followers, the elite public flagships) and states.

That is the approach my colleagues and I argued for in a recent paper for the American Enterprise Institute. “Recent national opinion polls indicate that 74 percent of Americans believe that higher education is unaffordable, and 92 percent of college presidents agree,” we noted. “While analysts have offered several potential explanations for this perception, one has not garnered much attention: The lack of perceived affordability may stem from the financial aid system’s strong focus on the behaviors of ‘student-consumers’ rather than education providers.” Several recent policy papers from HCM Strategists, Education Trust, New America, and others have taken a similar line.

Instead of merely tying accountability to campus aid (a paltry sum), this time Obama seems to be talking about all of the programs authorized under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, such as Pell Grants, federal Supplemental Educational Grants, Perkins Loans, and Federal Subsidized and Unsubsidized Direct Loans. He’d better be, since if he simply aims at the Pell Grant, he’ll be taking on the only need-based entitlement program that does heavy lifting. Colleges that won’t commit to providing accessible, affordable, high-quality postsecondary education should not be receiving federal Title IV funds, period.

The devil, as always, is in the details. I’m very, very wary of poorly designed accountability metrics. In elementary and secondary education, these have been a disaster, because they aim at teachers (whose performance is as much a symptom of context as a cause of outcomes), they focus on standardized tests associated with a narrow set of educational intentions, and they are focused only on public schools. That’s absurd. In contrast, higher-education accountability should be aimed at decision makers (administrators and states); and measures like how many students complete programs and degrees should be directed at all institutions receiving Title IV via their students. Don’t forget that American higher education is dominated in its rhetoric and the “standards” it sets by private institutions, which have knowingly helped the public false equate cost with quality and selectivity with “good schooling.” Clearly a different metric is required.

Obama needs to unmask the devil here, ripping off the shield behind which institutions hide. If expensive schools are so “worthwhile,” then they should be able to admit the kinds of students that public universities admit, rather than creaming off the top. If their expenses are so merited, we should see bigger gains at private elites than at we do at less-expensive institutions, not just higher graduation rates. None of that is happening now.

Obama needs to call out the bad actors in public higher education too—those institutions that fancy themselves private and, in doing so, discourage social mobility for those who need it most. His decision to stand at a New York State public institution today rather than at the quasi-private University of Michigan at Ann Arbor is a good one. He is standing to protect those comprehensive state public universities and their students.

Now, what I’m unimpressed by is that Obama felt the need to take a sideswipe at Pell recipients when releasing his plans. Why is he suggesting that we need to stretch out the disbursement of Pell Grants across the semester when there is not a shred of evidence to suggest that this is necessary, effective, or even possible for colleges to do without raising costs? I can think of just one source of this idea, a project dubbed “Aid Like a Paycheck” from the Institute for College Access and Success and MDRC, a research group. It’s really sad if Obama has been pitched this idea based on two small case studies at two exceptional California community colleges.

Look at Twitter today. Students are desperate for their “FAFSA dollars” to arrive so they can pay their bills. College costs must be paid upfront, so aid must be awarded that way too. Financial-aid officers have enough on their plates already; they don’t need to deal with multiple payments. And, most important, the mythical Pell recipients who supposedly take their aid and transfer only to get a second Pell are about as real as President Reagan’s  welfare queens in limos. You don’t need to drink that Kool-Aid and attack poor students, Mr. President: Take on the hard work of getting American higher education focused on the needs of students rather than the needs of institutions.

You can do it, and we Americans will back you every step of the way, as long as you do not cave to the private higher-education lobby. Do that, and this was all for nothing.

0 Obama's 2nd Term: NOW is the Time

" Mitt Romney will LOSE this election," says CNN....

We worked hard for this moment. Now, let's make it worthwhile.

Agenda #1:  This is not a post-racial era. This is a highly racist era. It's time to deal with it.

Agenda #2:  Education is not a business, and teachers are not mid-level managers.  Treat them like their partners in raising the nation's children. They deserve it.

Agenda #3:  Families can't succeed if they can't work. Raise taxes dramatically on the Romneys of the world and provide tax breaks only if they create significant numbers of good jobs paying living wages to Americans.

Agenda #4: End housing segregation, now. Poverty isn't quite so detrimental when it isn't concentrated.

Agenda #5: Make college affordable by recognizing our democracy's need for postsecondary education. Two quality years for free-- minimum. Now.

That's just a start.  ON.

0 Food for Thought

Last Saturday night my family attended a benefit concert for Haiti Allies, a local program that has been worked in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere for over 20 years.

One of the volunteers relayed a story that I cannot simply to stop turning over in my mind.

On a recent visit, he cut the hair of a local man, and while doing so the man stopped him and say "Hey, are you rich?"  To which my fellow Madisonian replied, "I don't know. What's rich?"

"Do you eat every day?" the man asked

"Yes I do."

"Well then," the man from Haiti replied, "you're rich. If you eat every day, you are rich." 

As America struggles in political turmoil over how to regain its "economic footing" and we observe the 11th anniversary of September 11, a date on which some of the world's people expressed clear hatred of who we are, this is a conversation I think we must seriously consider.

0 Back to School

Today our son entered public school. The first day of kindergarten was the theme of my Facebook news feed, as dozens of my fellow moms and dads sent their kids off on yellow buses, lunches packed, shoes carefully tied. I felt a part of that moment, but I was conscious of an additional layer to the experience in my home, where my husband and I spend so much time consciously agitating for the preservation of public education.

Until today, Conor attended the Madison Waldorf School.  We enrolled him there partly because of a lack of a public preschool option, of course, but also because we felt that what he'd most benefit from was what Paul Tough calls in his wonderful new book How Children Succeed "character education" -- lessons in perseverance and generosity, grit and compassion. For three years we watched him flourish in this setting, where the 3 R's were ignored in favor of spirited play, outdoor romps, and fervent social interactions.  He developed into a wonderful child, taught to love and care for his classmates, discouraged from righteous competition and commercial desires, and nurtured whole-heartedly by the best teacher I've ever experienced in real life: Itzel Butcher.

The truth is, the experience at Waldorf was so good, and Itzel so talented, that last spring I wavered on what to do, sometimes leaning towards keeping Conor there, avoiding what I feared public schools had become-- dull prisons focused on tracing letters, staring at smart boards, and moving in lock step from room to room.

But it didn't take me long before I realized not only the irrationality of my fears, but the sheer hypocrisy they hinted at.  Did I really think that being a good citizen would result in my being a bad parent? How could I possibly consider a private school for my child unless I really believed the public schools were awful? The question, I came to realize, was not whether Conor might be somewhat better off at Waldorf, but whether I believed that the public schools would offer him a sufficiently good education that he would be absolutely fine-- and that with our actions, we could help buttress the nation's public schools. What did I really believe? Could I match my conscience with my actions?  Yes. Of course I believe in the public schools-- if they were not offering a good education, I would not be vehemently defending them.  This really wasn't a dilemma.

I write this while watching Deval Patrick tear it up at the Democratic National Convention. His passionate plea for liberals to grow a backbone and stand up for what we believe -- to stand up for public education-- is heard in our home. We act personally, locally for what we believe is good public policy for all of the nation's children.  And the fact is, that is the kind of character we most want our son to possess.

The good news is that today Conor had a wonderful time at school.  He was a bit scared at the moment he climbed onto the school bus, but returned home with a terrific report.  Just watch, and see for yourself.  We can't stop smiling.




Postscript: Read Adam Swift's "How Not to Be A Hypocrite." It's worth the effort to wade through the philosophy.  And ponder this additional sociological critique-- it is admittedly far harder if your household is less economically secure than ours, and thus much more concerned with downward mobility. It's my privilege to be confident that my son will be fine in nearly every circumstance, as I do not worry often about losing my job or our home, nor do I fear (often) for his safety.  My privileges do make this back-to-school moment easier, and I realize it.

0 Things That Make Me Go Hmm....(Part 2)

Hot off the presses, recent news that has me scratching my head, or otherwise up in arms...

(1) Raising tuition in expensive cities in the midst of an economic crisis. Yep, that's what CUNY thinks is the right thing to do. Hat tip to Tom Hilliard, who pointed me to this incredible inane comment from a CUNY administrator: "What's really driving some of the issues here is the concern about debt and debt upon graduation, and our students as a whole take out little debt, for obvious reasons. The tuition's affordable for those who can pay." Um, yeah.

(2) The White House wades into the quagmire of university admissions, promoting creative thinking on how to achieve diversity. In one sense, just in time, since it sure looks like the Supreme Court is going to end the use of race in admissions by June. On the other hand, I wish the Administration would issue some cautions about how criteria like first-generation status and high school attended are hardly clean proxies for race. Plenty of folks want to do something less controversial, which socioeconomic diversity proxies will accomplish, but they can't and shouldn't pretend the outcomes achieved will be the same.

(3) Jerry Sandusky is innocent? So he says. "I didn't do those things. I'm not the monster I've been made out to be. I didn't engage in sexual activities with those kids." Others told me similar things during a recent trip to Penn State. I don't know, call me naive but I'm inclined to believe the testimony of the 8 or more adults who say they were raped, over the guy who likes to call anal sex "horseplay." I don't care what his "motives" were-- I care what his ACTIONS were. And by the way, does he sound drugged or drunk to anyone else?