Washington Monthly - September/October 2012 - (Page 30)

training their students for the workforce, and they’d rather nobody knew it. That veil of secrecy took a major blow this summer, when the U.S. Department of Education released the first results from its effort to crack down on abusive for-profit colleges. The so-called “gainful employment” regulations rate college programs on the percentage of graduates who are repaying their loans and the ratio of student debt to student earnings. The earnings data comes from the Social Security Administration. At little cost, the federal government was able, for the first time, to provide comprehensive, comparable measures of a critical higher education outcome for colleges nationwide. The next step should be to expand this effort to all programs, for-profit and nonprofit. That doesn’t mean we should regulate them in the same way—philosophy majors are clearly looking for something different than people who enroll in culinary school. But as the stakes in choosing a college grow higher and the array of options in the marketplace grows more diverse and confusing, it’s critically important to arm students and parents with as much information as possible to make an informed choice, and to hold colleges accountable for results. President Obama took a step in this direction in January, during the State of the Union address, when he said, “We can’t just keep subsidizing skyrocketing tuition. We’ll run out of money.” He called on states to stop slashing higher education budgets, but was clear that colleges were culpable, too: “So let me put colleges and universities on notice: If you can’t stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down.” Accompanying materials from the White House noted that “the President is proposing to shift some Federal aid away from colleges that don’t keep net tuition down and provide good value.” The key word is value. Paying a lot of money for college might be a good idea if the student gets a great education in return. A cheap college might not be a bargain. The problem is that nobody really knows what college students are getting in return, because information about how much they learn and earn is being suppressed by colleges that are scared to be held accountable for the quality of their work. The only plausible long-term solution to the college cost crisis is more value competition in the marketplace, and that can’t happen if value information doesn’t exist. President Obama’s proposal died a quiet death in the Senate a few months ago, a testament to the power of the higher education lobby. That’s to be expected—it took decades to reform health care, and the struggle continues. But in the long run, colleges and universities won’t be able to hide from information. And when that information becomes available, we’ll be first in line to use it on the nation’s behalf. Animals People Earth Do you want to be a changemaker and help create a more just, humane & sustainable world? Online graduate programs in humane education through top-20 ranked Valparaiso University & the Institute for Humane Education. www.humaneeducation.org www.valpo.edu/grad 207-667-1025 marypat@humaneeducation.org 30 September/October 2012 http://www.humaneeducation.org http://www.valpo.edu/grad

Washington Monthly - September/October 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Washington Monthly - September/October 2012