Is Affordability Really the Top Issue in Higher Ed? DC Experts Weigh in During Panel Discussion
By Brittany Hackett, Communications Staff
Although college affordability and student debt are often viewed as the most pressing issues in higher education, it would be more effective to focus policy discussions on issues like completion and restoring resources and funding that has dwindled in recent years, according to a panel of experts.
The panel discussion, held Thursday in Washington, DC, was hosted by the Urban Institute and centered around the themes of a new book,"Lesson Plan: An Agenda for Change in American Higher Education." Spencer Foundation President Michael McPherson — who co-authored the book with The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's President Emeritus William Bowen — said during the discussion that the goal of the book is to push the discussion"past the overheated sense of crisis that's been placed around higher education."
"If we can put [issues like affordability and student debt] aside we can focus on the serious and persistent problems in the system of higher education," such as low completion rate, increased time to graduation, and reductions in resources and funding, McPherson said.
Several panelists said that while affordability is a significant problem for students in the lowest income brackets, the majority of students face other more persistent issues.
For example, schools that admit high populations of low-income students often have financial aid efforts to make their school affordable for even the neediest students, said Jessica Howell, executive director of policy research at the College Board. But "once you remove affordability from that situation, there's still a completion problem going on" because of academic unpreparedness and a shortage of institutional resources to help students graduate on time, she added.
"If we put all our chips on affordability we're going to end up squeezing the resources we have for higher education," McPherson said, pointing out that while cost-free tuition is an ambitious goal, "free is not nearly cheap enough for low-income students."
In their book, McPherson and Bowen call for greater federal-state partnerships for funding higher education, with the goal of incentivizing states and institutions to provide more aid and resources to low-income students. The panelists at Thursday's event said they were in favor of some form of partnership, but cautioned that the devil is in the details regarding the kinds of incentives that would be offered.
"It's really important to get the incentives right," said Matthew Chingos, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. He added that he would be in favor of "a targeted competitive grant program designed to create incentives for certain kinds of behaviors," such as enrolling high numbers of low-income students.
Publication Date: 4/22/2016
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