www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/09/26/higher.education.ap/index.html
Most Popular Spellings backs ideas to simplify college choices Adjust font size: Decrease font Decrease font Enlarge font Enlarge font WASHINGTON (AP) -- Education Secretary Margaret Spellings launched plans Tuesday to redefine the college experience, promising less confusion and more results for families. Spellings said she would make a handful of changes on her own and start building support for some of the more sweeping ideas that came from her higher education commission. Chief among them is the creation of a massive information-sharing system, opening up greater review of how colleges and universities are performing. It would require vast data collection on individual students, already raising privacy concerns in some corners. Spellings also pledged to make it easier for people to apply for financial aid and to compare the price and the value of one school to another. She spoke of more federal college aid but would not endorse a specific request to raise Pell Grants, as her commission wanted. Sensitive to how colleges would react to her plans, Spellings heaped praise on them. "Is it fine that college tuition has outpaced inflation?" "Is it fine that only half our students graduate on time? Is it fine that students often graduate so saddled with debt that they can't buy a home or start a family? Even with the leverage of her office and the ear of President Bush, Spellings will need help to turn the ideas into action. In most cases, she will need support from Congress, governors, state boards of education and a complex mix of public and private colleges. Her overarching theme is to make everything about college -- choosing one, affording one, succeeding in one -- easier for families. Parents should be able to shop for a college as simply as they shop for a car, she said, with a clear expectation of what they will get. Spellings admitted she's been frustrated, as a mom, in getting those answers herself. Her oldest daughter, Mary, is a sophomore at Davidson College in North Carolina. "Over the years, we've invested tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer money and basically hoped for the best," Spellings said. David Ward, president of the American Council on Education, was the only member of Spellings' commission to vote against the group's recommendations. But he said Spellings' speech eased his concern that she was poised to enact some one-size-fits-all standards. "She was saying were very good, but you can't be complacent," Ward said. "' "I personally feel I can bring a lot more people into the tent after this speech," said Ward, whose umbrella council is the major lobbying voice in higher education. The United States Student Association liked the news that the federal government planned to simplify, and speed up, the process of getting financial aid. But a prominent faculty voice said the basis of Spellings' agenda is all wrong. The American Association of University Professors says the emerging vision of higher education is only a marketplace, focused on outcomes and skills. Developing a love of learning and civic virtues, the group says, "are marginalized to the point of irrelevance." On the Hill, with midterm elections nearing, the response was predictably divided. The Bush administration's new challenge to colleges -- more data, more accountability -- comes from the playbook of No Child Left Behind, the law governing the first 12 grades. Spellings wants to have a Web site that would allow people to compare one school to another, right down to the typical salaries of graduates. But there has been little legislative support, so far, for spending money on a system to track college student data. She offered cash incentives to colleges that report how their students are doing. Her commission said Congress should raise Pell Grants to cover 70 percent of in-state tuition costs. "That's the most important thing," said former North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt, who served on the commission, about the Pell Grants. I hope that they get in there and do the first down payment on that." Spellings said she'll hold a summit in the spring to go over all the recommendations. Many of the commission's ideas, such as new visa rules for foreign students, got no mention.
Musharraf: Iraq war makes world more dangerous The war in Iraq has not made the world safer from terror, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has told CNN, saying he stands by statements on the subject h ...
|
http://csua.com/feed/