May 19, 2006 Host: Tom McWade Guest: Anne O'Dell Bush Commission Tackles Higher Ed Issues
Tom and Anne talk about President Bush's commission on higher education and its publications on how to reform student financial aid. Duration: 00:05:55
Tom: Hello. I am Tom McWade, and you are listening to Radio JD. Today we will examine the work of previously mandated commission charged with revamping higher education. Commission members want to restructure accreditation and financial aid, but administrators across the nation are talking back. I have with me in the studio, Anne O'Dell, a representative of educational lender Law School Loans. It's great to have you with me here, Anne.
Anne: It's great to be here, Tom. Thanks.
Tom: Last September, President Bush ordered a panel of higher education and business experts to examine the American university system, specifically the panel was asked to consider the current crisis in financial aid. Panelists on the commission have called their preliminary work provocative and bold. Anne, how would you evaluate the findings so far?
Anne: Well, in the issue papers and reports that have been published by the commission, some panelists do make very good suggestions, but for the most part, their assumptions are entirely too broad. The homogenization of the entire student and graduate population is a consistent problem.
Tom: Really? How so?
Anne: Well, one report, for example, recommends limiting student loans by cutting off undergraduate students after their fourth years. This will leave so many fifth-year seniors out in the cold if they changed majors or if they just choose to study subjects like accounting or engineering, and sometimes earning these degrees just takes longer than four years. And every student is going to have different financial needs. That's why there are so many existing programs for financial aid. If you start cutting programs left and right, you have to think about the kinds of students you are affecting. It's not all students are from wealthy families; it's needy students, graduate students, dependent students with special situations. You can't just assume that everybody has the exact same educational and financial needs.
Tom: Alright, now I know the commission has some recommendations that will create a dire situation for private lenders, such as your company, if they were ever carried out.
Anne: Well, that's true, but you have to remember that cutting out private lenders would also have negative consequences for students. For example, one issue paper suggests entirely removing private lenders from the picture and making the government the sole holder of all student loans. The authors say that this change would save billions of dollars, but they never say how this would be accomplished, and they don't acknowledge that the change would eliminate even more options for the students and their families .
Tom: In your opinion, Anne, what are the themes of the commissions work to date?
Anne: Several papers mention cutting financial aid for students across the board in order to drive down tuition costs at colleges and universities. The panelists, I think they are looking at the issue as an academic, economics problem of supply and demand, but I think that approach is not practical for higher education. They have these hostile overtones. When the authors of these papers are talking about tuition, the panelists and researchers seem to blame colleges and universities for having inflated tuition, but they never point the finger back at the government for chronic under-funding at the federal level.
Tom: So if the commission decides that tuition is the problem and it's caused by the institutions themselves, what happens next?
Anne: The solutions that were offered were rather alarming. Many reports called for cutting costs at the institutional level. They want, you know, colleges and universities to increase tuition. This commission, they love for-profit institutions and career colleges because they are cost effective, and that's because they have no tenured professors, they don't do research, most of them don't have much full-time faculty, some of them don't even have one full-time faculty member, and of course you're going to be able to keep tuition low when you have standards like that, but if the U.S. is going to remain a leader education, we have to keep funding research and tenured faculty and all those activities because without them our country would loose its reputation for great higher education and with that we would lose a lot of revenue for our academic institutions.
Tom: What about curriculum?
Anne: Well, there are reports that suggest that the curricula need to be cut as well. Certain programs that they say have been inflated by arrogant department chairs and the requirements for degree completion need to be lowered, but again the point of view, at this point, is not really concerned with the higher goals of higher education. I mean, the commission obviously prefers the for-profit method of cutting costs, lowering tuition, and forcing the extinction of the full-time faculty. The panel wants to greatly reduce the general education requirements and core requirements, as well. All of this is essentially is a capitalist approach to a social problem, and lot of people feel this is not what's best for America's students.
Tom: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us, Anne.
Anne: Oh, you're welcome, Tom. It's been my pleasure.
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