National Commissions and Wisdom - The Spellings Commission

This morning, which was the last of the conference, we heard from two members of the Spelling Commission - convened by the US Secretary of Education to discover what can or should be done to or for higher education. In 1997 I was a member of an earlier national commission on college costs - which produced a very well done (if I do say so myself) report. The two speakers were an economist from Carnegie Mellon University (Richard Vedder) and a former college president (Arthur Rothkopf) - I know Art well - he was a great president of Lafayette and was also the Assistant Secretary of Treasury for Tax Policy in Bush 41.

National Commissions may well be a good thing. Higher education could learn something more about transparency. They could learn a bit more about making the complex bit of information clearer for all of the stakeholders. But the risks here are tremendous. Spellings has spoken in terms that would extend the model for elementary and secondary education (No Child Left Behind) to higher education. While both sectors deal with education that is about where the comparison ends. K-12 is 90% public (it could probably benefit from more private sector providers). Almost half of the institutions in higher education are private. (Even though that represents about 20% of the enrollment at the undergraduate level.)

The differences do not stop there. Last fall the Economist published one of its periodic surveys - this one on higher education. Their conclusion was that the reason that the American system of higher education is the envy of the world is that it is not a system. The range of institutions give students, all types of students, a depth of choice that is simply not present in countries where a ministry of education holds forth. One size does not fit all.

The Commission should spend some time thinking about changes in science and math in the country. We fall down in a number of ways. OECD, in a survey last summer, found that among the developed nations we rank next to Portugal and Mexico in our completions of high quality science and math. As noted in an earlier post that could be from fewer men in college (which we should address) but it could also be that we have lost our focus on doing that part of the curriculum well. We also need to rethink how we admit scholars from outside the US into the country. Since 9/11 we have lost a generation of students who would have studied here. As I have worked outside of the US that resource of people who know us has been very clear to me. I can't tell you how many times I have encountered people who studied in the US and therefore have an appreciation of who we are. In the long term - the stiffer requirements for student visas will hurt us. We need to understand security issues but we also need to understand the benefits from have an open door into our universities.

There is a real worry about a couple of issues that the Commission could spend some productive time on. Those might include a further discussion of the differences between price and cost, subsidy and net subsidy. Some thought about affordability would also be useful. The role of accreditation would also be of interest - are the gate keepers really serving a need? (Clearly establishing a central and single source of institutional review would be foolish and fool-hardy.) The Commission could also provide some guidance on how colleges can explain their numbers better. There are a series of disclosures which should be available to all stakeholders and some in higher education are reluctant to do that. But the end line of the commission should follow just two principles. First, the members should take the Hippocratic oath - first they should do no harm. Second, they should recognize and celebrate the diversity of opportunities in the country. The Economist found that 17 of the top 20 research universities are in the US - there are many reasons for that. But if there were a survey of great liberal arts colleges or community colleges or any other kind of best of list - the US would also rank high.

The Commission will submit its report to the Secretary in late summer. Let's hope they have something that is both useful and helpful.