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Reviewing the range of responses to President Obama's plan to reduce college costs, and the questions that are being raised on Twitter, it seems important that the Administration clarify a few things sooner rather than later. 1. This effort to reduce college costs is a first step and thus it is not intended to solve all problems.  The President should say something more specific about the ultimate goal and what it would look like in practice. Are we working towards a free community college education? Are we trying to close achievement gaps?  What is the intended outcome down the road? 2. This is not NCLB for higher education.  The President needs to assure the public that he is not calling for standardized testing, the end of professorial tenure, or a focus on specific fields or majors.  He is trying to help more Americans access the quality post secondary education they seek, not water down quality or redefine what matters. 3. This is an effort to protect public h...

The last week was swept away by Hurricane "Pay It Forward," a new bill advanced by progressives in Oregon. Starting last Saturday I began engaging via Twitter with folks interested in debating its merits, by Sunday night I was knee-deep in a full analysis, and by Wednesday morning that analysis was published by the Century Foundation and NPR gave me an opportunity to discuss the issues On Point .  In between, I was fortunate enough to be introduced to both Barbara Dudley and John Burbank , key architects of the plan. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know both of these incredible activists, and thrilled that they share many of my concerns and end goals. The number of legislators and members of the media who are continuing to express interest in learning more and building on this plan is amazing.  In a key respect, it's also wonderful: people really want to do something NOW  to make college more affordable and reduce student debt.  It's about time! With that in mind, ...

This post has been revised following excellent additional information provided by Zakiya Smith of the Lumina Foundation and Rachel Fishman of the New America Foundation. Thanks! Student debt is the worst possible form of debt in one critical way: it almost never leaves you.  You may be disabled, unemployed, or even dead, but you almost always still have to pay. This "non-dischargeable"status is said to exist because there is no way to repossess the assets (your education) to pay off the creditors.  But that cannot be the only reason for this extreme rule. Instead, it's another example of putting bankers' needs above those of the average American. Federal student loans technically  can  be discharged (while private loans cannot-ever) but it's a very difficult process and almost no one does it.  Among those seeking a discharge, about 40% are granted, but only 0.1% of student loan debtors filing for bankruptcy have sought to discharge their loans.   Those...

Today's Journal Sentinel has an excellent chart illustrating how the challenge of paying for college in Wisconsin has changed over time The only problem is that neither the chart or the accompanying article addresses the likely assumption of many readers : students who can't pay these costs, even by working, are "held harmless" through financial aid.  For that reason, many say, we should simply raise tuition further and invest that additional revenue in financial aid distributed to the neediest students. To evaluate that claim, let's take a look at the "net price" of attending UW-Madison and UW-comprehensives-- the cost paid by the poorest students after taking into account all grant/scholarship aid provided to offset the sticket price.   At UW-Madison, for the upcoming year 2013-2014, that amount is $13,635.00 for Pell recipients with no expected family contribution.   As you can see in the chart above, that means students from families typically earn...

Sometimes public problems deserve massive public solutions. This is one of those times.   As I explained in my testimony to the U.S. Senate HELP committee this morning , student loans have been a requirement  for college attendance in the United States.  It is no longer possible for the vast majority of American families to afford college without taking on debt.  It isn't a "choice." While we can disagree about whether or not the personal benefits of that debt are "worthwhile," the policy question is whether the social consequences are tenable. I argue that they are not.  While the average student loan debt under income-based repayment plans may be "manageable" under current financial industry standards (meaning it represents no more than 10% of annual income) that does not mean it has no negative impacts. (The evidence is far from clear that the debt will in fact be manageable-- the Australians are reportedly amazed that we think lessons from their ex...

This morning, I testified before the United State's Senate HELP committee on the topic of college affordability. My written testimony can be found here .  The text of my oral testimony follows, and I have added a q&a to respond to several questions I expect to receive.  I welcome your feedback. TESTIMONY Good morning, Chairman Harkin, Senator Alexander, and Members of the Committee. Thank you all for this opportunity. There’s never been a more important time to address the issue of college affordability.  College is now the main road to a stable, secure life, and in this age of global knowledge markets, it is college-educated workers who will be the main driver of the U.S.’s prosperity. But the research evidence is clear:  most families and students find the high cost of college attendance unbearable, and it’s affecting their choices about whether to attend college, where to go, and even whether or not to finish the degrees and certificates they start. As access ...

It will be an incredible honor and immense responsibility to appear this Tuesday morning before the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions for a hearing about college affordability. I am especially happy that the focus of this hearing is on the perspectives of students and families, since they view policy as enacted, not policy as intended. The hearing will be webcast here beginning at 9 am Central/ 10 am Eastern.  My written testimony has been submitted and will be posted on the website following the hearing-- it is substantially longer and more detailed than my oral testimony, since I only get 5 minutes for that. This committee is chaired by Senator Tom Harkin, and (be still my heart!) includes both Senator Tammy Baldwin and  Senator Elizabeth Warren. I'm told they will both be present, and that Senator Baldwin will deliver my introduction. I will be joined by a representative from the U.S. PIRG and two students. I look forward to this imp...

A colleague who is skeptical of my argument that students and families are susceptible to sticker shock, and that this particularly affects the choices of those without financial strength, raising a good question: If these students and families don't know about financial aid (or changes in financial aid), why would they know about institutional sticker price (or changes in institutional stick price)? The answer appeared during a trip I took on the New York City subway today. Look at this ad and you tell me-- isn't the message quite clear?  If this is the number you see as you stare at subways ads for an hour commute to work, don't you think it will sink in?  With so many ads all the time telling the buyer "Trust us, big discount! Just file papers!" why would anyone believe another one, let alone one that comes with a long complex set of forms. It's a mistake to focus merely on the question of whether a net price intervention can move the dial a bit, helping so...

It seems UW-Madison's system of shared governance may be a new act for Chancellor Rebecca Blank to learn.   An interview conducted with journalists today shows her on the record weighing in on both tuition strategies and the composition of the student body . A word to the wise:  This year the University Committee charged two committees to work on these exact issues.  The tuition committee has been meeting and working hard all year long -- hiking out-of-state tuition and differentiating tuition further by school or college are strategies that come with significant potential consequences.   Reciprocity with Minnesota is costing the university a great deal of money and ending it should not be dismissed out of hand .  Regardless, these are not choices made simply by the chancellor, but by the shared governance system.  In addition, the Committee on Undergraduate Recruitment, Admissions, and Financial Aid was tasked with developing a profile of the ideal freshma...

There is an ongoing and reasonably interesting debate about the Obama Administration's College Scorecard that I'd like to weigh in on, in order to draw out what's gone unsaid. On one side of the debate are a set of elite college presidents who think the Scorecard's narrow focus on economic returns to the degree miss the mark; the college-going decision should be about more than getting a job. For example, Harvard President Drew Faust writes that " the focus in federal policy making and rhetoric on earnings data as the indicator of the value of higher education will further the growing perception that a college degree should be simply a ticket to a first job, rather than a passport to a lifetime of citizenship, opportunity, growth and change ... Equating the value of education with the size of a first paycheck badly distorts broader principles and commitments essential to our society and our future. " On the other side are people like the Brookings Institutio...

It is long past time to make college free, and thankfully the Atlantic writer Jordan Weissman just laid out the case very nicel y. Jordan points out that the money invested in our financial aid system could instead be invested in appropriations to public colleges and universities to drive down costs.  Yes, aid to private colleges would end. Oh well!  Why do we pay for private colleges when we don't pay for private high schools? (Well, we are starting too but we should stop.)  And yes, we need to cover costs of attendance for the poorest students too and we can do that by charging very low tuition to rich kids to give to poor kids (for whom tuition is free)-- and that's a progressive tuition structure rather than this incredibly deceptive price discounting scheme we now have in place. As I've been pointing out in talks around the country on the subject "When America Goes to College ," our current system of affordability was developed at a time when the college-goin...

Providing more students with a variety of college choices is a good thing.  But I'm beginning to wonder about the unintended consequences of policies that try to accomplish it. Take the case of Wisconsin, which shares a tuition reciprocity agreement with Minnesota.  Many students, especially those living on the borders of the two states, and those who don't get a place in their flagship university, choose to attend college in the other state. That's very nice, of course, and very neighborly. And, according to the press , it helps the state attract "the best students."  But every policy has its downsides, and in this case there may be several: (1) It seems to nudge data reporting toward the uninformative . Since both Minnesota and Wisconsin are treated as residents for tuition purposes, the vast majority of official reporting from the state and the campuses combines the two groups.  This makes it hard for the public to examine the characteristics of Wisconsin res...

Check out an op-ed that I co-authored with my doctoral student Robert Kelchen on income-contingent loans, over at the Chronicle.    Then, be sure to check out Robert's new blog !

Catching up on my reading from the last few weeks and want to draw your attention to this bit of reporting from Inside Higher Ed . Key lessons here: (1) Pell spending leveled off in the last year. (2) A very sizable fraction of Pell dollars are still going to for-profit institutions, but this has declined a bit in the last year. (3) We could cut total Pell spending by $15 billion dollars (almost 45%) simply by deciding that public dollars cannot be spent at for-profit institutions.  This would make Pell policy consistent with the policies of most state grant programs. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is spending $3.3 million on efforts to " re-imagine aid design and delivery ." I'm hoping they will revisit the decades-old decision to offer aid through a voucher system that rests on the premise that maximizing choices in an open market will promote the well-being of all students and the national interest in an educated citizenry. But absent that, let's hope they p...

Yet another policy brief highlights what realists know:   Wisconsin policymakers are presiding over poor policy decisions that threaten to undermine taxpayers' decades-long investment in the state's human capital. Far from saving our children from lifetimes of debt, those on the neoliberal Left and the conservative Right advocating for either "freeing" state universities from the limitations of state funding in pursuit of market models, or diminishing state spending in a time of austerity, are accomplishing the same goal:  driving up the costs of college attendance and reducing the overall educational attainment of our state's workers. Forty years ago our grandparents elected officials who invested $14 per $1000 of personal income in higher education.  Today, we elect jokers who put in just $5.  What happened? Figure courtesy of Tom Mortenson, Postsecondary Education Opportunity Let's admit it: we aren't leaders anymore, we're laggards. Yes, Wisconsin ...

Last week, a fellow Madison blogger drew our attention to some potentially troubling relationships between a major higher education foundation, a DC-based consulting group, a conservative political organization, and a new initiative in the UW System.   Scott Wittkopf at Badger Democracy is playing a critical role in attending to the relationships among funders of higher education reform efforts, and political constituencies.  He has since mapped in greater depth the work of one foundation, Lumina , and another blog post is forthcoming. Since I have established relationships with both Lumina and HCM Strategists, the consulting group in question, and have blogged (and hosted guest blogs ) before on the large role that foundations are playing in pushing the higher ed reform agenda, I want to fully disclose as much as possible my role and assessment of this situation. First, readers of this blog know my work as an expert on college student success, and as an outspoken champion fo...