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Doug Lederman (2006), in his cogent Inside Higher Ed article "A
Near-Final Report?" writes [bracketed by lines "LLLLLLLLL. . . ."; my
inserts at ". . . [.....] . . .":
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The Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher
Education . . . .[see listing of reports at IHE (2006)]. . . released
the next iteration of its report Thursday. . . [COFHE (2006] . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The new draft finds the commission treading largely the same path
that it started on with the second draft . . . [Lederman (2006b)]. . .
, in which its members sanded down some of the sharpest-edged
criticisms about higher education contained in the staff-written
first draft . . . [Lederman (2006c)]. . . and added praise about the
importance of higher education and context about such things as
declining state financial support for colleges.
In Draft No. 3 . . . [COFHE (2006] . . . higher education's
"unseemly" complacency about its future becomes its "unwarranted"
complacency. "Glaring deficiencies" mutates into "unfulfilled
promise." Gone is the suggestion that colleges shun transparency and
precise data about their own practices and make "no serious effort to
examine their effectiveness" in what students learn. And added to the
mix are stronger statements about how need-based financial aid has
not kept pace with students' costs, multiple mentions of the
centrality of community colleges, and acknowledgement that colleges
and accreditors have actually paid more attention to gauging student
learning.
Despite the slightly softer "tone" of the new draft, however, it
still packs a punch and offers a toughly worded, urgent assessment
about the state of higher education and what needs to be done to
improve it. "This commission believes U.S. higher education needs to
improve in dramatic ways," the report's preamble says. "Among the
vast and varied institutions that make up U.S. higher education, we
have found much to applaud, but also much that requires urgent
reform."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Those who have been most critical, like the National Association of
Independent Colleges and Universities. . . [NAICU (2006)] . . .,
which represents private nonprofit colleges, are unlikely to be
assuaged; the new report, like its predecessors, continues to call,
among other things, for streamlining the federal aid programs,
holding tuition increases to growth in median family income (though
not "price controls," the commission insists in this draft), and a
national database of student academic records ("privacy protected"
and using "non-identifiable" data, the panel's report insists). The
private colleges severely dislike all of those ideas.
In the last week, two other major associations of research
institutions, the Association of American Universities . . . [AAU
(2006)]. . . and the National Association of State Universities and
Land-Grant Colleges . . . .[NASULGC (2006)]. . ., have issued
assessments of the commission's second draft that criticize some
fundamental elements of the panel's approach and pick apart many of
its specific recommendations. Those groups have focused their
concerns on the fact that the commission virtually ignores graduate
and professional education, oversimplifies the interplay of cost,
price and higher education finance, and calls for mandatory, rather
than voluntary, accountability systems at the state level. None of
those things has changed significantly in the third draft.
But even before the third draft was released, at least one major
higher education group has more or less thrown its support behind the
overall thrust of the commission's themes and recommendations, a move
that seems likely to alter the political environment for the panel's
work.
In a speech last month to the State Higher Education Executive
Officers, Constantine W. (Deno) Curris, president of the American
Association of State Colleges and Universities. . .
[<http://www.aascu.org/>]. . . , which represents 400 public
institutions, largely praised the commission's then-just released
second draft. While he acknowledged that the report's early drafts
contained language that offended many college officials, he said
higher education leaders had signaled that "we seem to be more
concerned with tone than recommendations."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Lederman's (2006a) entire report, well worth reading in its entirety,
is at <http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/08/04/commission>. Those
who wish to contribute to the spirited reader commentary may do so at
the forum provided at the end of his article. .
IHE. 2006. Inside Higher Ed, "In Focus: The Spellings Commission,"
July, online at <http://insidehighered.com/news/focus/commission>:
"Since September 2005, the Secretary of Education's Commission on the
Future of Higher Education has generated enormous discussion about
the role and performance of higher education in the United States.
This page brings together Inside Higher Ed's coverage of the
commission, as well as other relevant information about the panel."
NAICU. 2006. National Association of Independent Colleges and
Universities <http://www.naicu.edu/>, "American Public Gives Low
Marks to Proposed
Federal Database of College Students," 6 July, online at
<http://www.naicu.edu/news/index.shtm>.
NASULGC. 2006. National Association of State Universities and
Land-Grant Colleges, letter of 29 July by NASULGC President Peter
McPherson to the Chairman and Members of the Commission on the Future
of Higher Education, online at
<http://www.nasulgc.org/CAA/NASULGC_CommissionLetter.pdf> (240 kB).