The Learning Cloud

Fees R us

A fair query to any public institution that is increasing fees in the manner described in the excerpt below is "what have been the longitudinal trends in annual operating expenses per credit hour over the past 5-10 years?" I suspect that most public institutions have done little to control unit operating costs. Improving unit cost structures and simultaneously improving (measurably) academic performance, should be among the hallmarks of an effective public institution.

As Support Lags, Colleges Tack on Student Fees
Jonathan D. Glater, New York Times, September 4, 2007

When Emily McLain decided to enroll at the University of Oregon, a significant part of the appeal was low tuition. She had not counted on all the fees that unexpectedly appeared on her bill. “I had my dad calling me asking, ‘What’s this for?’ ” said Ms. McLain, 22, a political science and international studies major now entering her last year at the university. This year, for instance, the university is charging a $51 “energy surcharge” for rising electricity costs. A $270 “technology fee” for computer service. There is the $371.25 fee for the campus health center, a $135 fee to maintain buildings and grounds and a $624 “incidental fee,” for student activities. And more. All told, fees add up to $1,542, or nearly an additional 40 percent on top of tuition of $3,984. That does not even count additional fees charged for taking certain courses. College administrators say public universities are increasingly tacking on fees for the same reasons that some are experimenting with differential tuition for different majors: state support for higher education has languished, and legislatures shy away from approving tuition increases. Fees can often be set by individual campuses. Read more ...

Affordability of professional programs

The article excerpted below is further confirmation of the accelerating trend among public universities to differentiate tuition rates by degree program by assigning higher rates to high-demand programs, primarily programs serving lucrative professions such as business, law, engineering, and so on. This trend may lock out worthy but financially disadvantaged students from the high-tuition professions. This may not be a significant issue for well endowed flagship universities whose high-demand professional schools are themselves typically well endowed. It will, however, compromise most other public universities' obligation to maintain affordable access to professional programs for all academically qualified students, including those from the lower rungs of the economic ladder.

Regents approve major fee hikes for 34 UC programs. The 3-year increases will push the annual cost at certain business and law schools to $40,000.
Richard C. Paddock, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer September 21, 2007

The University of California Board of Regents approved a three-year plan Thursday for major fee increases at 34 professional schools that would push the cost of some law and business schools to $40,000 a year by 2010. The increases will take effect next year and range from about 7% at most of the schools to a high of 15% at UC Berkeley's law and business schools. The board voted to enact similar raises in the following two years but agreed that it would ratify them separately each year. Advocates of the plan, including Christopher Edley Jr., dean of the Boalt Hall School of Law at Berkeley, said the increased fees would help the school maintain its excellence and attract some of the best professors and students. "I can't overstate how critical this was for our future," Edley said after the vote. "I agree completely with the desire for more state funding. But the political reality is that California has been reducing money for K-12 and higher education for a generation." Read more ...

The last lecture of Randy Pausch

Allow me to deviate from the theme of this blog with this personal sidebar observation.

During approximately 30 years as a professor, I tried to practice my belief that what students most want and deserve from us professors is access not only to our content knowledgeable heads, but also to our emotional intellects, as personally revealed by our interest in their self-discovery and well being. I was reminded of that belief when I watched (and now commend to you to watch via YouTube) the "last lecture of Randy Pausch," a 46-year-old Carnegie Mellon professor who is dying prematurely of pancreatic cancer. Professor Pausch's last lecture is a moving testament to taking seriously one's dreams, obligations, colleagues, and, students (especially students) without taking oneself too seriously -- and making the world a better place in doing so. Kudos to Professor Pausch and those who invested themselves in him. Those investments have already generated spectacular returns and will continue to compound for generations to come!

Reauthorization of the HEA, finally?

Congress has mounted several attempts during the past five years to reauthorize the Higher Education Act.  According to the first excerpt below from a NACUBO report, reauthorization may be at hand -- if it is not derailed by policy disputes around unresolved issues, such as the Federal role in accreditation. The second excerpt, from USA Today, offers a more consumer-oriented version of the reauthorization that is awaiting the President's signature.

Congress Advances HEA Update; More to Follow
NACUBO, September 18, 2007

Over the August break, leaders of the two congressional committees charged with renewing the Higher Education Act completed the process of blending the House- and Senate-passed versions, which contained changes with implications for federal spending. President Bush’s signature on the act will mark another chapter in the five-year effort to update HEA, which governs the allocation of federal student financial aid and the rules and requirements for institutions that participate in programs covered by the law. In order to ease passage of this legislation--the College Cost Reduction and Access Act--Congress used rules associated with the budget process. As part of that process, the House and Senate committees with jurisdiction over HEA were instructed to develop legislation that would reduce entitlement spending during the next five fiscal years, albeit by relatively small amounts. Both the House and Senate have passed legislation conforming to this requirement, and each bill achieves the required savings through cuts in payments to Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program lenders and guaranty agencies. Both bills actually generate substantially higher levels of savings in mandatory spending than were required by the budget directive. The additional savings are intended to offset costs associated with a broad array of new or enhanced student-aid benefits. However, one requirement of using the federal budget process, known as "reconciliation to minimize legislative barriers," is that Congress can only make changes to the law that will either increase or decrease federal spending. As a result, other programmatic changes to the Higher Education Act were dropped during the development of the compromise legislation and will need to be addressed separately. The path that this separate bill might take and the timing for its consideration on Capitol Hill are far from clear. Read more ...

White House gets $20B college aid bill
Sandra Block, USA Today, September 18, 2007

Democratic leaders formally signed a $20 billion college aid bill Tuesday that will boost federal grants for low-income students and lower interest rates for student loans. Supporters say the bill, which President Bush is expected to sign within 10 days, is the largest investment in college education since the 1944 GI bill provided tuition aid to millions of World War II vets. "This is obviously a very big day for students and their families," said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. Read more ...

Cross-border learning accountability

Comparability of learning outcomes assessment data -- rather, the lack thereof -- has become a major federal and, therefore, national issue.  See, for example, the centrality of this issue to Judith Eaton's recommendations in Institutions, Accreditors, and the Federal Government: Redefining Their "Appropriate Relationship," in Change (September/October 2007, pages 16-23). The Chronicle excerpt below reveals that the issue is not unique to the U.S. Indeed, the OECD is entering the fray and pursuing a cross-border, international set of standards for assessing and comparing learning outcome. 

Quest for International Measures of Higher-Education Learning Results Raises Concerns
Aisha Labi, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 19, 2007

A fledgling international effort to develop comparable assessment standards for measuring how much students are learning at higher-education institutions throughout the world is provoking concern from several quarters, even though the project is still in its preliminary stages. The push is being led by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, whose 30 member countries include many of the world's most advanced economies, such as Australia, Japan, the United States, and several European nations. The effort grew out of a meeting last year of the group's education ministers and secretaries, at which the apparent dearth of available data on student-learning outcomes prompted discussion about how to fill that void. "It became evident that there are a lot of measurements about research outcomes at institutions of higher education, but what about the learning outcomes?" said Barbara Ischinger, director for education at the organization, which is known as the OECD. The push to formulate global standards for assessing higher-education learning outcomes coincides with efforts by some national and regional education systems -- for example, in the United States and in the 47 European nations that are synchronizing their degree system in the decade-long Bologna Process -- to develop standards within their own spheres. Chronicle subscribers can read more ...