The States and Public Higher Education Policy: Affordability, Access, and Accountability ed. by Donald E. Heller (review)

There may be no better survey of state policy in higher education than what Heller provided in his 2001 edited volume. His early work was well conceived, highly readable for both academic and public policy audiences, and a valuable framework that the field has used for more than a decade to discuss the evolving role of policy in American higher education. It will come as no surprise to the higher education community that the second edition of The States and Public Higher Education Policy provides all the same benefits while situating the conversation in a more contemporary context. Faculty and students of higher education policy will be particularly appreciative because this volume will serve as the foundation for many higher education policy courses.

Heller points out in his introduction that, even after 10 years, the major issues have remained largely the same, though the state and national backdrop has certainly changed. He has organized higher education policy into three familiar groupings—affordability, access, and accountability. Heller leads with affordability for good reason—it was the dominant higher education policy issue at the start of the 21st century and it continues to dominate the conversation today.

In his introductory chapter to Part 1, Heller does a nice job of summarizing, in broad strokes, the trends in college prices and affordability and sets the stage for Mumper’s discussion of the paradox of rising prices and growing enrollments. He also points the reader to what has changed during the 10 years since the first volume, reflects on his earlier conclusions, and appraises his interpretations of trends at that time.

Both the Mumper and Hauptman chapters that round out the “Affordability” section provide important insights into the complex problems and challenges we face in trying to address affordability as a public policy issue. Both authors suggest that we have unfortunately not made very much progress in addressing some of the critical challenges. Costs continue to rise, affordability (particularly when understood as a ratio of price or net cost to family income) continues to decline, and our understanding of the reasons remains largely unchanged.

Mumper summarizes the dominant narratives informing how policymakers rationalize the causes of the affordability from declining state support to the cost of prestige and rising cost of competing public priorities to the lack of accountability for higher education. The one possible explanation missing from Mumper’s description is Archibald and Feldman’s (2011) revision of Baumol’s “cost disease” hypothesis. They argue that technological change and innovation have driven higher education costs, consistent with other highly professionalized service industries like medicine, resulting in higher quality rather than reduced cost. Mumper’s basic premise holds that whatever rationale resonates with policymakers will inform the policy strategies they propose.

Hauptman continues to promote a set of strategies to control costs and target public resources more efficiently, particularly based upon ability to pay. The reader is reminded that these same recommendations were made nearly 10 years earlier, casting doubt on whether policymakers view them as either feasible or politically possible. This section is a sobering reminder that we have a great deal more work to do, both in understanding the complexity of the problem and in crafting solutions that address those problems.

Unfortunately, this section missed an opportunity to consider some of the recent developments designed to address affordability. For example, the Colorado experiment with vouchers as an alternative state funding mechanism for higher education or the growing emphasis on place-based tuition guarantees building from the success of the Kalamazoo Promise (Miller-Adams, 2008) provide interesting experiments for allocating resources in new ways while attempting to address affordability.

More recent work on providing better information to students and parents by simplifying the federal methodology for calculating need and FAFSA completion process (Bettinger, Long, Oreopoulous, & Sanbonmatsu, 2009; Dynarski & Scott-Clayton, 2007) may have also pointed to...