September 21, 2006

• Secretary's Commission on the Future of Higher Education; Congressional Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance; Final Report and Study to the Congress

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Secretary's Commission on the Future of Higher Education; Congressional Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance; Final Report and Study to the Congress

Two recent publications just released — the Report by the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education and the most recent study by the Congressional Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance (ACSFA) — are now available.

The Commission's final report, findings, and recommendations — A Test of Leadership. Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education — is a product of a year long endeavor by an ad hoc body appointed by the Secretary of Education that includes very general recommendations directed at the Congress, state legislatures, governors, and the private sector.

The report's findings are divided into four areas:

• access;
• affordability;
• quality; and
• accountability.

The recommendations are organized into six areas:

• colleges and universities;
• accrediting bodies and governing boards;
• state and federal policymakers;
• elementary and secondary schools;
• the business community; and
• parents and students.

With respect to the Commission's findings and recommendations concerning access and affordability, the report continues to emphasize the primary barriers to postsecondary education for low income students and families is a:

• lack of academic preparation, followed by;
• lack of information about postsecondary education and student financial aid, and
• lack of adequate student financial aid targeted at those who are most in need.

This is the reverse of what studies have concluded. The ACSFA — a permanent body established by the Congress in 1986 to advise it on student aid policy — has found in its studies (Access Denied in 2001, Empty Promises in 2002, and the recently published, Mortgaging Our Future in September 2006) that inadequate funding for need-based student financial aid at the federal and state levels and the increasing net price of obtaining a postsecondary education are the primary barriers for low income students.

Among the Secretary's Commission report's recommendations concerning access and affordability are:

• restructure the student financial aid system (federal, state, institutional) and consolidate the federal programs;
• replace the FAFSA with a shorter form;
• appropriate savings achieved through program consolidation into the Pell Grant program;
• encourage institutions and states to develop better methods to control and lower costs improve productivity, and enroll more students from underrepresented populations;
• reduce the role of accrediting bodies and state regulations that stifle innovative ways to deliver and expand postsecondary education; and,
• develop a "consumer-oriented database" to offer information on the quality and cost of higher education.

None of these recommendations are detailed and include some dubious assumptions. For example, any savings that may be achieved through any of the recommendations will be used by the Congress to fund its particular priorities, which will be determined by the leadership and majorities in the House and Senate. Savings attributed to program consolidation will not automatically, necessarily, or, in fact in reality, be earmarked or dedicated to the Pell Grant program. Rather, the savings will go to the Treasury to be appropriated by the Congress to finance the federal defense, transportation, commerce, energy homeland security, interior judiciary, housing, labor, health and human services, and, yes, education programs.

Making the mix of federal student financial aid programs and the FAFSA simpler may not be as beneficial to low income students and families in accessing postsecondary education as fully funding the unmet financial need would, as the ACSFA has pointed out many times. The recommendation to develop a centralized consumer data base on higher education information has already been established as the College Access Initiative in Section 8023 of S. 1932 (Section 485D of the Higher Education Act).

On the other hand, the ACSFA's new study, Mortgaging Our Future, is the third study from the Committee issued this decade which demonstrates through an analysis of student cohort data of college prepared high school graduates that lack of adequate student financial aid and the increasing cost of a college education are the primary barriers to obtaining a higher education for students from low income levels.

The ACSFA commends the Congress and states for all of the work done over the past several years to increase awareness of postsecondary education opportunities, raise high school academic standards for graduation, and simplify the student financial aid application and delivery process. The study demonstrates that these efforts have had the desired effects of increasing the number of college applicants and college prepared high school graduates and, now, it's time to adequately fund the need-based student financial aid programs, e.g., Pell, SEOG, ACG, SMART Grant, etc., as the necessary, and most important, component to these efforts.

The study includes several specific recommendations that the next year's HEA reauthorization should include. Among these are: a national partnership to increase need-based aid from all sources for academically qualified students; expand the system of early awareness information on financial aid and college costs for middle and high school students; reduce the penalty on work by increasing the income protection allowance; raise the income threshold for automatic zero EFC; and phase out the paper FAFSA and implement the EZ FAFSA for low income applicants.

The study, once gain, challenges the Congress to make the difficult policy choices to address the issues of access and persistence in postsecondary education for low income students and families associated with the nation's demographic trend.

The report and study are available at www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/hiedfuture/reports/pre-pub-report.pdf and www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/acsfa/edlite-index.html.

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