Senate's Higher Ed Bill Improves on House Version
The Senate version of the Higher Ed bill, introduced last week, takes a step in the right direction towards addressing the problem of rising higher education costs. Among the modifications in the Senate version of the bill is the adjustment from $15,000 to $20,000 the level of income below which no family contribution is expected.
According to the US Census Bureau, the weighted average poverty threshold level in 2004 was $15,067 for a family of three and $19,307 for a family of four. The change in the Senate's version of the bill means students whose families are below the poverty line will be eligible to fund the entire cost of their education through loans and grants and will not be expected to pay cash out-of-pocket. Kudos to Senators Mike Enzi and Edward Kennedy, the bill's co-sponsors, for realizing the importance of higher education to breaking in to the middle class and removing one of the barriers to doing so.
Great Post, Kathleen. While the bill, as you say, takes a step in the right direction, I think it that many of the issues affecting higher education are not even part of the public discourse right now. While the bill would increase accessibility to education, there are a number of cultural and institutional problems that reduce the value of the college experience.
On the cultural side, I think that alcohol abuse in college has a larger negative impact on education and by extension this country's economy than most people are willing to admit. For american students, college is a four year spring break. Alcohol contributes to sleep deprivation, unprotected sex, destruction of personal property and absenteeism. Addressing the phenomena of college drinking is a huge aspect of improving the quality of education in this county. The question, of course, is how?
On the institutional side, there are many problems with the way colleges are administered, many of which were highlighted last February during the tribulations of Lawrence Summers and Ward Churchill. The solution, I think, is that not all schools should operate on the same model. We should sacrifice intra-university diversity to achieve a diversity of educational philosophies among the community of education institutions. Innovation should be valued over consensus and each school should adopt a a unique operational model, though all models should include feedback mechanisms so that as solutions emerge they can be adopted by other schools. Every school should be an experiment in education and each should be constantly competing and evolving.
Finally, I'll say that a very few students graduate having recieved any training at all in personal finance. It may be necessary to de-emphasize things like classics and gender identity that seem to have an inordinate role in most school's core curriculums. Of course, in the decentralized model I outlined above, there would conceivably be whole schools dedicated solely to classics and gender identity and that have structures to reflect the needs of those subjects, but I think the majority of schools should move towards placing a greater emphasis on personal finance.
There are many other issues pertaining to higher education that I don't have time to touch on here, but I urge you spend some time contemplating the role the mental health establishment in higher education, the stranglehold that poststructuralism and postmodernism have on current thinking in the humanities, the grade inflation and lowering of standards at all levels of education, the near complete absence of training in technical trades at liberal arts schools, the presence of campus speech codes, and the lack of political diversity among university faculty.
September 14, 2005 3:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm waiting for a college professor to call on college faculty to help alleviate college costs. College professors are one of the most privileged castes in America. Often less than ten hours a week, for thirty weeks a year.
Professors justify their light workload by saying that their research comes first, but how much utility does their research really have if it is going to be published in a journal that only a few dozen people will read (scientific research is more valuable, I concede)
Also, even if the research is valuable, how come professors need to be excused from teaching to do it? Many individuals manage to write books while working 40 hrs a week.
If professors justify doing research on the university's dime, by saying their research is for the benefit of humanity, then how come they copyright their research? I just had to pay $80 for a compendium of articles on information science. The costs were entirely copyrights.
Finally, professors justify their privilege by saying that they worked so hard to earn their PhDs. But MDs worked hard to get their degrees, and they still work 40 hrs a week.
College professors should teach the same number of classes that hs teachers teach.
September 14, 2005 7:32 PM | Reply | Permalink