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What We're Reading: New Thinking on Financial Aid

Welcome to another new miniseries of the Education Optimists. Once in awhile we get a chance to sit and read-- it's rare, but when it happens it's crazy fun. Here's a taste of what we've liked lately. For those pondering the reform of financial aid programs, I want to draw your attention to two papers--one very new, and one a year old. In Postmortem for the Current Era: Change in American Higher Education, 1980-2010 , Penn State historian Roger Geiger cogently tackles the many dismal trends of the last several decades. Among my most favorite of his observations is the following: "The four vectors of the current era—-the financial aid revolution, selectivity sweepstakes, vocationalism, and research intensification—all bear an underlying signature by invoking private, as opposed to public or social, interests. They do not necessarily contradict public interests. On the contrary, to significant degrees, financial aid has allowed students with limited means to pursu...
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Human Resource Directors and Employee Unions

Tomorrow afternoon, the Faculty Senate at UW-Madison will hear from Bob Lavigna , the institution's Human Resources Director. Lavigna will be discussing HR Design , a new plan I've covered several times recently on this blog . It's a controversial proposal, in part because it shifts the focus on setting compensation from internal equity towards external markets .  It also reduces some of the benefits held by classified staff, who are currently unionized, and for whom perks like substantial vacation time slightly dull the pain stemming from the terrible wages. I was therefore intrigued when this morning I delved into my Inside Higher Ed backlog of reading and found the results of a brand new national survey of HR directors and their opinions about the future directions universities need to take.  The results help to at least partially set the broader stage on which HR Design is occurring.   (Partially: the response rate for this survey is 15% and with just 324 particip...
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The New Badger Partnership is Not About Affordability

According to the Badger Advocates' new television ad promoting the New Badger Partnership, the number one reason this new policy is needed is "To keep tuition affordable and provide more financial aid." This claim is echoed in speeches by Chancellor Martin and her Administration , and maintaining or enhancing affordability is a central goal for the NBP articulated by student advocates . Can the NBP achieved its primary policy objective? Will it? The strong likelihood is no. Here, again, is why. (1) The value of financial aid depends on cost of attendance. The real cost of college attendance for students and families is the "net price " they pay -- that is, the cost of attendance minus financial aid. Since some students do not respond well to loans, many argue that net price is actually the difference between cost of attendance and grant aid. (2) The New Badger Partnership makes statements about the need to "keep tuition affordable" but it says no...
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