By Joelle Fredman, NASFAA Staff Reporter

The former Secretary and Under Secretary of Education under President Barack Obama weighed in on the discussion surrounding accountability in higher education Tuesday, and argued that moving forward, Congress must support institutions implementing innovative policies that increase access to education and improve students’ outcomes.

While a majority of Americans agree that higher education leads to better paying jobs and expanded opportunities, a New America report released earlier this week found that most people are dissatisfied with the current state of the higher education system.

Martha Kanter, former under secretary of education and current executive director of the College Promise Campaign, attributed these negatives views to the rising costs of college, coupled with stagnant wages. Speaking at Scholarship America’s Dreams to Success event, Kanter argued that this phenomenon has led people to delay their education and consequently, their opportunity for social mobility.   

Former Secretary of Education and current President and CEO of The Education Trust, John B. King Jr., added that America’s skepticism of the value of higher education has also stemmed from stories and headlines surrounding students who were defrauded by their universities, saddled with debt, and left with no credential — which he argued is a result of a lack of accountability within the higher education system.

While both Kanter and King agreed that the government must create increased accountability measures to restore the public’s depleting faith in higher education, they differed in how they believe Congress should judge students’ success.    

King argued that he’d like to see “some version of gainful employment,” an Obama-era consumer protection regulation that sought to tie certain programs’ Title IV eligibility to its students’ debt-to-earnings ratio, expanded to all programs in a bill to reauthorize the Higher Education Act (HEA). ED proposed to expand gainful employment to all educational programs during the last session of negotiated rulemaking for the regulation, which concerned many education stakeholders at the table. Unable to come to an agreement on the fundamentals of the regulation, the session concluded with no consensus. ED provided an update earlier this month that it will publish a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) for the regulation in June.   

In addition to holding institutions responsible for students’ outcomes, King argued that the federal government should also hold them accountable for their efforts to educate low-income students. For example, he suggested that the government tax an institution's endowment more heavily if it fails to enroll a certain amount of low-income students, and use those funds to support institutions that do.

NASFAA recently suggested that Congress increase institutions’ accountability for educating lower-income students with incentives such as offering additional federal funds to institutions that enroll and graduate a certain amount of Pell-eligible students, and argued that this method may prove more effective than sanctioning institutions for poor results.

Kanter, however, said that she is concerned that the discussion around accountability focuses too much on the “economics of education,” and not enough on the social benefits. She suggested that institutions be judged based on how students are contributing back to their communities in 20 or 30 years after graduation, rather than by their earnings shortly after completing their studies.

“Social and civic perspectives are so important in terms of accountability,” she said. “Why don’t we look long-term? … How are they doing in the communities in which they live?”

Both Kanter and King argued that to better higher education moving forward, the federal government support institutions that are implementing innovative policies in order to improve their students’ outcomes and experiences in higher education — like those offering students access to free meals and reduced or free transportation to campus.    

King further argued that Congress establish an “innovation fund subsidizing those innovations,” paired with rigorous data requirements, in order to allow successful initiatives to be replicated at scale.

Publication Date: 5/23/2018

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