Opportunity 08: Independent Ideas for America's Next President

Chapter 18: Strengthening Higher Education: Simplify Student Aid and Emphasize Vital Science, Math, and Language Skills

SUMMARY The importance of higher education to the future of the nation can hardly be exaggerated. Economic growth and responsible political participation increasingly depend on a well-read and scientifically literate citizenry. Social mobility and higher incomes are closely tied to the acquisition of a college diploma and the communications skills and critical thinking that higher education fosters. And for many, a liberal education introduces students to the many dimensions of their own civilization and to the diversity of human civilizations and enlarges sensibility and understanding. American universities are strong in many ways. No nation on earth can boast universities of greater overall quality or diversity. Millions of American students compete for admission. In fact, undergraduate and graduate students from around the world eagerly seek enrollment. Yet, today, higher education in the United States faces formidable problems: unaffordable tuition, lack of accountability, students illprepared for college, declining enrollment in math and science, and too few graduates fluent in critical foreign languages. The next president can take several specific steps to strengthen U.S. higher education: —Make college education more attainable for low-income students by simplifying the grants process and reducing inefficiency in the distribution of financial aid 262 Strengthening Higher Education Simplify Student Aid and Emphasize Vital Science, Math, and Language Skills PETER BERKOWITZ 18 Strengthening Higher Education 263 —Encourage universities that receive federal dollars to fashion responsible ways to measure student progress and track college costs —Create federally funded fellowships in biology, chemistry, and physics that require recipients, after graduation, to teach high school for one to four years —Create a signature program of federally funded fellowships not only to support students who study critical foreign languages but also to build much-needed capacity within the Departments of State, Education, and Defense CONTEXT In September 2006 the Department of Education issued A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education, written by the Commission on the Future of Higher Education, which included leaders in the worlds of U.S. business and education.1 The bipartisan reach of the report was reflected in the assertion of Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass., and chair of the Senate Education Committee) that it “laid out a promising agenda to keep our colleges and universities strong in this demanding age.”2 The commission’s work provides a useful point of departure for examining higher education policy in the United States. The report affirmed the common observation that U.S. higher education is in many ways the envy of the world and stressed that, in the twentyfirst century, higher education would serve more than ever as an engine of social mobility, of innovation, and for creating a knowledgeable democratic citizenry. At the same time, it noted that the United States has fallen to twelfth place among major industrialized countries in overall higher educational attainment and sixteenth in high school graduation rates. The report highlighted several specific causes for concern. Many students , particularly poor and minority students according to the report, do not obtain a college education because they lack information about college , it is too expensive, and the financial aid system is confusing. High schools fail to provide many students—again, especially poor and minority students—the skills in reading, writing, and math that they need to do college-level work. Little reliable information is available about the actual cost of higher education or its quality or about the intellectual skills students develop in college and the knowledge they acquire. Nor are these the only challenges American universities face. Since the tightening of immigration procedures in the aftermath of 9/11, many 264 PETER BERKOWITZ foreign students who would benefit from exposure to America and who would benefit Americans by exposing us to their culture have been denied visas. While science and technology play a larger role in all areas of our lives, scientific and mathematical literacy is on the wane. At a time when the United States’ involvement in the world is rapidly growing, American colleges and universities produce a meager number of readers and speakers of critical foreign languages, such as Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Hindi, and Chinese. And America’s elite universities, which set the tone for universities around the nation and train many of the next generation’s leaders , have retained the rhetoric but abandoned the content and aims of liberal education. To meet these challenges, the report recommended that the federal government —increase financial aid...