Posted on 08/22/2013 7:06:25 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
President Barack Obama on Thursday will unveil a broad plan to lower the cost of college, the highlight of which involves a new ratings system that ties the federal government's allocation of financial aid to the ratings system.
Obama's plan would instruct the Department of Education to rank colleges with their peers, according to new measures that evaluates their success and affordability.
Some of these measures, according to the White House, include the following:
* Access, such as percentage of students receiving Pell grants;
* Affordability, such as average tuition, scholarships, and loan debt; and
* Outcomes, such as graduation and transfer rates, graduate earnings, and advanced degrees of college graduates.
Obama will talk about this plan during two stops on a bus tour in Buffalo and Syracuse, N.Y., on Thursday.
Obama wants the ratings system to be in place by the 2015 school year. If all goes well, the government would start allocating financial aid according to the system by 2018 — a time span that would give colleges opportunity to adjust for the new system. Students attending higher-performing colleges could receive larger Pell Grants and more affordable student loans, the White House said.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Don’t give them ideas.
Yes, that is probably coming.
Stop all student loans. Make people pay in cash.
Just look how the FREE 0Phone program and the EBT program have expanded (in participants AND items covered), since 2008. Housing programs are in the works (neighborhood equalization plans).
Everything else will be *a right*, soon enough.
yeah just like health ins is getting cheaper, yeah uh unh right..............
Let me suggest a better plan which the courageous (sarcasm) House Republicans would never take up.
1) Eliminate the Department of Education and the $150 billion per year the federal government spends on Pell Grants, Stafford grants and administering student loans. Also eliminate all research grants and other direct and indirect subsidies for higher education.
2) Return the education loans to the private sector
3) Allow the free market to work
The immediate consequence would be colleges and universities having to suddenly be competitive in a new marketplace for higher education. The first step they would all have to take is to slash the bloated administrative and faculty overhead structures and increase the productivity of those remaining employed. Force tenured professors go to the classroom and teach 5 or 6 classes a week instead of studying patterns of discrimination against left handed minority subway riders in the inner city. These same professors can be assigned new tasks such as grading the papers and exams of their students instead of delegating the task to graduate assistants. The bloated administrative staffs would have to be slashed. Goodbye to deans of diversity, ethnic studies, gender studies as well as their staffs. All non education activity would have to be scrutinized including the funding of student community organizing clubs through student fees. Utilize technology to lower instruction costs. The focus would return to actually teaching students instead of fake research and bureaucratic empire building.
Another consequence would be the destruction of the parasitic “for profit” colleges who cannot survive in the marketplace without government grant and loan money.
If the government subsidies were eliminated from higher education the market would work quickly to deliver low cost alternatives to students of all income levels assuming there was a demand.
With respect to aid for low income students:
1) Work to save money for college, then work while in college.
2) Join the military, serve the nation, and use the military education programs to earn a degree.
3) Scholarships funded by private entities
4) Private loans
5) States can set up scholarship funds for low income students if the state taxpayers feel it is a priority. If not, too bad.
The reality is there is not entitlement to a college education. Motivated low income students will find a way to fund an education. Unmotivated students will not.
The crying shame in this nation is we are spending billions to educate students in the arts and humanities for jobs that do not exist while community colleges are cutting programs that train people for real jobs because the administrators are trying to turn the community colleges away from their focus on technical education to education in the arts and humanities.
A nearby county in NC had an outstanding two year technical program in woodworking. Many students graduated and went onto jobs at cabinet shops or started their own businesses. The community college hired a new president who came in and decided to shut down the woodworking program in order to shift funds to “higher value” four year college track programs. Her rationale was the furniture industry was moving offshore so the graduates of the woodworking program would have no jobs. In reality, 95% of the students either went on to their own businesses or worked for small contractors, not large furniture factories. Obviously it did not occur to her that the students in the woodworking program might not be suited to a four year degree and the skills they were developing might be their only chance at decent jobs and a middle class lifestyle.
The nation would be much better off if the bloated higher education establishment was jerked off the government teat and had to compete in a free market. Doing so might even cause some of the marxist professors to lose their jobs in the inevitable downsizing. That would be a good thing.
Ah, ah, ah...in today's BizarroWorld, that could be construed as raciss, FRiend.
And then he will strong arm them into giving “minorities” better grades than they deserve in order to boost the graduation rate.
Outstanding ideas.
However, your plan has nothing to do with affirmative action and it is not government based. Therefore, it has no chance of success with the rats and probably a majority of RINO’s.
We had a republic and we could not keep it because the majority of voters do not understand that government makes everything more expensive and they want free stuff.
You forgot one other thing : NOT EVERYONE NEEDS TO GO TO COLLEGE.
Let’s be honest...
The scholar, Charles Murray is right.
Outside a handful of majors — engineering and some of the sciences — a bachelor’s degree tells an employer nothing except that the applicant has a certain amount of intellectual ability and perseverance.
Even a degree in a vocational major like business administration can mean anything from a solid base of knowledge to four years of barely remembered gut courses.
The solution is not better degrees, but no degrees. Young people entering the job market should have a known, trusted measure of their qualifications they can carry into job interviews. That measure should express what they know, not where they learned it or how long it took them. They need a certification, not a degree.
The model is the CPA exam that qualifies certified public accountants. The same test is used nationwide. It is thorough — four sections, timed, totaling 14 hours. A passing score indicates authentic competence (the pass rate is below 50%). Actual scores are reported in addition to pass/fail, so that employers can assess where the applicant falls in the distribution of accounting competence. You may have learned accounting at an anonymous online university, but your CPA score gives you a way to show employers you’re a stronger applicant than someone from an Ivy League school.
The merits of a CPA-like certification exam apply to any college major for which the BA is now used as a job qualification. To name just some of them: criminal justice, social work, public administration and the many separate majors under the headings of business, computer science and education. Such majors accounted for almost two-thirds of the bachelor’s degrees conferred in 2005. For that matter, certification tests can be used for purely academic disciplines. Why not present graduate schools with certifications in microbiology or economics — and who cares if the applicants passed the exam after studying in the local public library?
If a high-profile testing company such as the Educational Testing Service were to reach a strategic decision to create definitive certification tests, it could coordinate with major employers, professional groups and nontraditional universities to make its tests the gold standard. A handful of key decisions could produce a tipping effect. Imagine if Microsoft announced it would henceforth require scores on a certain battery of certification tests from all of its programming applicants. Scores on that battery would acquire instant credibility for programming job applicants throughout the industry.
An educational world based on certification tests would be a better place in many ways, but the overarching benefit is that the line between college and noncollege competencies would be blurred. Hardly any jobs would still have the BA as a requirement for a shot at being hired. Opportunities would be wider and fairer, and the stigma of not having a BA would diminish.
Most important in an increasingly class-riven America: The demonstration of competency in business administration or European history would, appropriately, take on similarities to the demonstration of competency in cooking or welding. Our obsession with the BA has created a two-tiered entry to adulthood, anointing some for admission to the club and labeling the rest as second-best.
Here’s the reality: Everyone in every occupation starts as an apprentice. Those who are good enough become journeymen. The best become master craftsmen. This is as true of business executives and history professors as of chefs and welders. Getting rid of the BA and replacing it with evidence of competence — treating post-secondary education as apprenticeships for everyone — is one way to help us to recognize that common bond.
His laser is out of focus.
It isn’t about making college cheaper.
It is about improving the revenues of the government who has taken over the funding of college.
I agree. College is overrated/unnecessary for many occupations and the return on the investment is only advantageous for a select few.
Higher education is the perfect lesson to show that government involvement makes everything more expensive and student debt will continue to get worse until the rats have enough votes to forgive it. Why not? What’s another trillion?
Oh!
You said the same thing that was my first thought.
IIRC, Reagan campaigned on closing the D of E. But it’s still there.
The media and local political intelligentsia are falling all over themselves slobbering & covering him deliver this drivel at the State University in Buffalo right now. The campaign continues ....
How much do you want to bet that conservative schools, such as Highpoint University, and certain Religous schools rank at the bottom?
There used to be a college out west that had no tuition, instead you worked on the schools ranch to earn you way. I don’t if it’s still around.
Obama on Thursday will unveil a broad plan to lower the cost of college.
Another detour speech to avoid the real issues at hand that need to be addressed.
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