The Spellings Commission, One Year Later

I went to the signing ceremony for the "College Cost Reduction and Access Act" this morning, at the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House. Flanked by Pell grant recipients, Secretary Spellings, and members of Congress including Rep. George Miller, President Bush offered some fairly pro forma remarks in favor of Pell grants and going to college generally. He took the opportunity to note the recent increase in NAEP scores and twice turned to Chairman Miller, in a friendly way, while calling on Congress to speedily reauthorize NCLB.

He also congratulated the Secretary for her Commission on the Future of Higher Education, which delivered its final report one year ago. The commission was then regarded as a marginal success, at best. But I think history may judge otherwise.

At the time, most of the press attention focused on rancor within the commission, the refusal of the American Council on Education (apex of the higher education lobby) to sign on, and the fact that the commission's original, sharply-worded recommendations had been substantially watered down. It looked like one more example of higher education beating back calls for reform.

But to her credit, the Secretary stuck with the issue over the next year, sponsoring a series of meetings around the country and focusing on the foundation of the commission's recommendations: the need for greater transparency and public information. For an industry as large and important as higher education, we know remarkably little about how well it actually educates its students. Getting that information is a predicate for many other reforms--you can't help colleges become more productive, effective, and affordable if you don't have the denominator in the productivity equation.

And in just the last month, the efforts of the commission and others pushing the same issues have begun to bear fruit. One higher education association after another has announced or rolled out new initiatives focused on providing new public information. The private colleges launched a new Web site that allows institutions to voluntarily disclose information on costs, graduation rates, enrollment, and other measures. The public colleges will do the same later this year, and just today announced a new initiative, backed by a $2.4 million federal grant, to study ways to assess student skills and educational outcomes. On-line and for-profit colleges are also getting into the game. All of this puts more pressure on the big regional accreditors to do a better job of promoting transparent measures of student learning results, a big priority for the Department over the last year.

Now, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand the strategy here. The Spellings Commission made a two-part argument: create and disclose more public information about institution-level outcomes, then hold institutions accountable for the results. The higher education establishment has essentially decided to concede the first element--but on its own terms, in order to preclude the second. More public information is very hard to argue against on principle--particularly if you're in the business of knowledge creation--and was going to come eventually, one way or another. Given that, higher education leaders have decided they're best off controlling that process as much as possible.

You can see elements of this in the private college Web site, the "University and College Accountability Network," or "U-CAN." In the upper-right hand corner of each college's page, there's a prominent click-through box that says "What Makes Us Special?" Putting aside the fact that this sounds like a question you'd ask a bunch of third graders, it's clear what's going on here: the private colleges are asserting their specialness as way to avoid accountability. As I wrote in this month's Change, (not on-line, sadly):

Like snowflakes, no two colleges are exactly alike. They're big, small, public, private, old, young, rich and poor. This diversity is a huge asset to the nation, a factor any effective accountability system should take into account. But just as all snowflakes are light, cold, and wet, higher education institutions are far more alike than they are different. Most organize and run themselves in the same way, with academic departments, professors, deans, tenure, and credit hours. They offer degrees with the same names that take the same amount of time to earn. The teach many of the same classes, and over half all bachelor's degrees are awarded in just five major disciplines--business, education, social science / history, psychology, and communications.

Yet rather than embracing their common purpose, colleges like to focus on their differences as a way of asserting their uniqueness. This is an anti-accountability gambit--if you're unique, you can't be compared. If you're not comparable, you can't be judged.

There's also a place at the bottom of the page where it says "For more about our students, click here:" Some colleges have chosen to post their results from the National Survey of Student Engagement, which has been cited by the Spellings Commission and many others as a promising way to compare institutions. But the wording is telling: NSSE results measure the institution, not the students, providing information about the quality of teaching practices and overall educational environment. Unsurprisingly, the U-CAN site doesn't provide ways to sort and compare the contributing institutions--a consequence of their unique specialness, no doubt.

That said, it's certainly a step in the right direction, and in the long run I don't think higher education institutions will be able to control the terms on which information about them is considered and judged. That's a good thing; for parents, students, and even the colleges themselves. A more accountable higher education system will be a more effective one, and ultimately that will lead to the resources and support the nation's colleges and universities need and deserve.

UPDATE: James Traub hits on a lot of these themes in the upcoming NYTimes Magazine, here.