Thinking and Linking by Joanne Jacobs
Stop Sallie Mae’s unemployment penalty demands a Change petition.
Federal financial aid is geared to full-time, degree-seeking students, complained Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s audience at Tallahassee Community College. Colleges can’t train 2 million skilled workers without aid for people seeking short-term job training or part-timers who need literacy or English classes to qualify for a job.
College leaders don’t like President Obama’s tuition-control plan, reports AP. In his State of the Union speech, the president threatened to cut some forms of federal aid to students at colleges that raise tuition or fail to provide “good value.”
Fuzzy math, Illinois State University’s president called it.
“Political theater of the worst sort,” said the University of Washington’s head.
States have reduced higher education funding, forcing public colleges and universities to raise tuition, university presidents say.
Under the president’s proposal, colleges would be judged on “responsible tuition policy,” either by “offering relatively lower net tuition prices” or “restraining tuition growth,” reports College Inc. In addition, the Education Department would evaluate how well colleges prepare graduates to get jobs and repay student loans, and their performance in enrolling and graduating low-income students.
The aid that colleges stand to lose under the president’s plan is not the Pell grant, the largest source of federal funds to students, but rather a package of “campus-based” programs that the federal government delivers to colleges. They are Federal Work Study, an initiative that subsidizes the expenses of campus jobs for needy students at 3,400 colleges; Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, a supplement to the Pell grant that awards needy students $100 to $4,000 a year; and the Perkins loan program, which delivers low-interest loans to students.
Obama is proposing to expand all three programs to the tune of about $10 billion — enhancing the Perkins program from $1 billion to $8 billion and augmenting Work Study and Opportunity Grants by a combined $2 billion.
While some believe higher education funding should be tied to performance, Obama’s proposal would deny aid to needy students, critics charge. “Ultimately, who you are punishing with this is the students,” said Haley Chitty, spokesman for the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. “They’re the ones who get this aid.”
“For a growing number of students, entering the lucrative college-educated realms of the economy is like being smuggled across the border—you can get to the promised land if you try hard enough, but you arrive in a state of indentured servitude to the shady operators who overcharged you for the trip.” So writes Ed Sector’s Kevin Carey, who offers A Radical Solution For America’s Worsening College Tuition Bubble. The only way to control college costs is to introduce competition, Carey writes.
New providers of higher education could be made “eligible for payment via Pell grants, federal loans, or other current and imagined federal aid systems if they agree to a few baseline conditions,” such as price regulation and transparency. “They would be required to provide public information about how much their students learn, and have their access to federal aid rescinded if students are not learning enough.”
. . . a pair of well-known Stanford professors are currently teaching an Artificial Intelligence course to about 200 Stanford students—and more than twenty thousand students around the world, online. The non-Stanford students won’t receive credits from Stanford, but they will receive official documentation from the professors as to how they scored on course tests and their overall rank. Under this new system, those professors would be free to set up their own business teaching Artificial Intelligence over the Internet, and students would be free to pay them with federal aid. Other providers might take advantage of the fast-growing body of open educational resources—free online courses, videos, lectures, and syllabi—and add value primarily through mentoring, designing course sequences, and assessing learning.
To remain eligible for federal financial aid, old-line colleges would have to accept transfer credits granted by the new providers.
And because they will be inexpensive and attached to verifiable data about how much students are learning, they will make a compelling value proposition when competing with traditional colleges that have no such data, charge more money, and are weighed down by legacy expenses and change-resistant cultures.
Existing colleges and universities will have to adapt or die, Carey writes.
Making sure those new-style credits are transferable will be tricky. Colleges today often reject credits earned at other accredited institutions.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan is dead wrong on how to control college costs, argues Cato‘s Neal McCluskey.
To a system blackout-drunk on taxpayer money, the Obama administration would deliver even more booze while only whispering about tough love.
A libertarian, McCluskey is the author of How Much Ivory Does This Tower Need? I love the title.
Colleges and universities give $5.3 billion a year in financial aid to students from affluent families.
To avoid default, consider technical college, say investors in bonds backed by bundled student loans.
High schools should ensure that all students have access to a quality education that prepares them for college and careers, say counselors in a College Board survey. But most say that’s not the mission of their school system.
Young adults think a college education is more important than ever — and less affordable — according to a new poll. They want more financial aid.
Also on Community College Spotlight: With the help of dropout recovery programs, community colleges are opening the door to high school dropouts.
Financial aid fraud rings are targeting online programs. It’s easy to enroll straw students and apply for federal aid if nobody has to show up in person.
Also on Community College Spotlight: Annoyed by credit-card spam generated by his college’s partnership with a debit-card company — the high-fee card is also the student ID card — a student joked on Facebook about porn-spamming the college site. He was suspended for the year.
Gov. Jerry Brown has signed the California Dream Act, which makes illegal immigrants eligible for state financial aid at public universities and community colleges, reports the Los Angeles Times.
However, the governor vetoed a bill that would have allowed state universities to consider applicants’ race, gender and income to ensure diversity. A state initiative bans college admission preferences based on race and ethnicity.
Brown also vetoed a bill that would have made it harder to start charter schools.
The California Dream Act applies to students who’ve graduated from state high school after attending for at least three years and have affirmed they’re trying to legalize their status. Starting in 2013, they’ll be able to apply for Cal-Grants for low-income students, University of California and California State University grants and community college fee waivers.
“Going to college is a dream that promises intellectual excitement and creative thinking,” Brown said in a statement. “The Dream Act benefits us all by giving top students a chance to improve their lives and the lives of all of us.”
The Dream Act will allow 2,500 additional students to qualify for Cal-Grants at a cost of $14.5 million, Brown estimates. That represents 1 percent of the total cost.
The state budget is in the red. More cuts to higher education are likely. Already, students are having trouble getting into the classes they need, especially at the community college level.
Republicans predict the Dream Act will draw more illegal immigrants to the state. A state initiative to repeal the bill is likely.
Financial aid significantly boosts persistence rates for the neediest students, but doesn’t make much difference for average students.
Also on Community College Spotlight: To qualify for financial aid, college students must declare they’re seeking a degree. People who enroll to learn some English or brush up on basic skills will be counted as drop-outs.
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