Lessons Learned from the Spellings Commission on how to reform American Higher Education

Questions I have been asked to address

1. The implications of the Spelling Report and its Action Plan.
2. The impact of the Spellings Commission Report on policy and practice, and its achievements in areas such as outcomes assessment, accreditation, and improved alignment between high school and undergraduate education.
3. International/global implications of the Spellings Report.

Let's start with the Spellings Commission

• I was a willing member, but a reluctant signer of the final report.
• All who joined sensed it was time to take a tough look at American higher education and challenge it to do more.
• A really impressive list of leaders from industry, politics, and higher education.
• Key members--Vest of MIT, Duderstadt of Michigan, Ward of Wisconsin and ACE, Grayer of Kaplan Inc.

What was expected

• A clear analysis of higher education's strengths and weaknesses.
• A thoughtful challenge to higher education to do more.
• A set of recommendations that would lead to real changes in how institutions do business.

How we worked

• Meetings in major cities.
• Totally open--life in a fishbowl.
• Parade of witnesses often with a particular aspect of higher education they didn't like.
• We listened--the Education Department staff and a team of consultants did most of the work.

A difference of opinion

• Most members of the Commission thought our task was to highlight some real and practical changes higher education could be asked to address.
• The Chairman thought what was needed was a tough, quite negative assessment of what was wrong with higher education.

Release of the “bad draft”

• How it happened.
• Was it an accident?
• Started the “tone wars.”
• Followed by the “blame game.”
• The Commission looses energy and standing.

Six basic recommendations

• US should commit to an unprecedented effort to expand higher education access and successes by improving student preparation and persistence, addressing nonacademic barriers and providing significant increases in aid to low income students.
• The entire student financial aid system should be restructured and new incentives put in place to improve the measurement and management of costs and institutional productivity.
• There should be a robust culture of accountability and transparency through out higher education.
• American colleges and universities should embrace a culture of continuous innovation and quality improvement by developing new pedagogies, curricula, and technologies to improve learning, particularly in the area of science and mathematical literacy.
• A national strategy of lifelong learning should be developed, one that helps all citizens understand the importance of preparing for and participating in higher education throughout their lives.
• There should be increased federal investment in areas critical to our nation's global competitiveness and a renewed commitment to attract the best and brightest minds from across the national and around the world to lead the next wave of American innovation.

A report that lacks focus

• Nothing new.
• No clear sense of who is being told to do what.
• A lot of subtext designed to make uncomfortable those on whom successful reform must ultimately depend.

A report that goes nowhere

• No champions in Congress.
• No champions within higher education.
• No interest in the White House.
• No interest in the media.
• Only organized higher education seems bothered.

The Secretary's Action Plan

What's missing?

Programs and strategies for changing how institutions do business

How to think about the Spellings Commission

• A missed opportunity.
• An indication that is time to talk about and challenge higher education.
• An important experiment that teaches how difficult it is to change higher education.

Lessons learned

• Challenge--don't vilify.
• Think of higher education as a system rather than a loosely coupled collection of very different institutions.
• Have a real strategy--not just a rhetorical call for change.
• Look for dislodging events--changes that will lead the system to re-examine both assumptions and practices.

Three dislodging events

• Fundamentally change federal student aid system.
• Fundamentally change rules for acquiring and spending endowments.
• Make the three year baccalaureate degree the standard undergraduate degree.

Will or should the Spellings Commission have a global impact?

• No.
• Framework is particularly American.
• Commission did not address the rise of a truly global market for higher education.
• Report is almost anti-Friedmanian.