HEA, at Long Last

Congress passed a new version of the Higher Education Act yesterday, which President Bush is expected to sign. This is a real milestone -- it's been ten years since the last reauthorization, which is supposed to happen every five years. There's a lot in there to discuss, but in my mind the most disappointing thing is that even as InsideHigherEd calls it a "Huge, Exacting Accountability Bill," and institutions begin complaining about various onerous reporting requirements, the legislation is arguably a step backward on the kind of higher education accountability that matters most.

Basically it increases accountability (via public reporting and "shame lists") for a pretty meaningless measure (year-over-year percentage increase in tuition) while reducing the ability of the U.S. Department of Education to increase accountability for what really does matter--student learning--via the accreditation process. It also prohibits the department from modernizing its data reporting system, basically an anti-accountability measure passed under the guise of bogus arguments about student privacy. The irony is that, as I've written previously, holding down the cost of college--the one thing everyone in Congress seems to cares about--actually requires greater accountability for results, because one of the big things driving up costs is the current perception that price and quality are one and the same.

This is a short-term victory that will exact a long-term cost, not just to students and the public treasury, but to colleges and universities themselves. The vast majority of institutions would be better off in a world where perceptions of higher education quality are more closely tied to their core educational mission. But they're stuck playing a game they can't win, where perception of quality and the resulting rewards are all defined in terms of wealth, status, and exclusivity. Exclusivity is a zero-sum game, while wealth and status involve massive early-entrant, rich-get-richer advantages--basically if you're an old, famous, and rich university today, the odds are exceedingly high that you'll remain so, and probably become more so.

Your typical community college, regional private college, or public university--i.e. where the large majority of Americans actually go to college--would benefit from very different status signifiers that gave them points for being good at what they were designed to be--places that teach students. But they can't change the rules--that's what the government is for. And now the government has caved into the interests of institutions at the top of the status pyramid, leaving all the rest, and their students, and the public at large, out in the cold.

Five years from now--let's hope it's not ten--when all the new measures have utterly failed to hold down rising costs, student debt is still growing at a rapid pace, and policymakers still have no idea whether or not colleges and universities are doing a good job, let's hope Congress makes different, better choices.

Update: See also New America's comprehensive run-down of the best and worst of HEA.