U.S. Spellings Commission findings on target or off base?

The recent Spellings Commission report addresses the quality of U.S. higher education and talks of the need for improved access, affordability, and accountability. While most agree that many of the issues outlined in the report need to be addressed, the devil can be in the details.

With all due respect to those conversations currently taking place behind America's ivy-covered walls, Lombardi says discussion about affordability, accessibility and accountability has been taking place for decades. Most would agree that U.S. higher education is generally doing a better job of preparing students than U.S. K-12, but could it do more? Sure, says Lombardi, but cautions that institutions will be more likely to pay attention to what their customers do rather than say. "Legislators, for example, say they want cheap, affordable, high quality education available to all. They support cheap education that is of generic quality and is affordable to many. They send their children, however, to the most expensive, selective institutions they can find. It's important to track what the customers actually do, rather than focus on what they say."

The real issue with the Spellings findings, says Read, is how does one really judge quality? Over what period of time? In the judgment of which stakeholders? Although the report specifically questions U.S. higher education, the issues are relevant to academia worldwide.

Lendo believes the commission's findings will have little impact on higher education until some of the underlying accountability issues are addressed. The notion of tenure and guaranteed lifetime employment is one of the items he puts at the top of the list. He noted there has been insufficient debate about considering multi-year contracts in lieu of tenure. An all-out effort regarding ineffectiveness and inefficiency in American public school systems is needed, he says, because fewer students are prepared for college and work. Studies indicate students from other developed countries are outperforming their U.S. counterparts in many subjects.

Allen considers the findings a profound statement of expectations about opportunity, but also a challenge. The values the report espouses can only be achieved, he says, by leveraging the use of technology and good process re-engineering principles of both academic and administrative systems in America's colleges and universities.

"Technology has given us an opportunity as never before to accomplish all of these values concurrently," says Allen. "In previous times, they were at tension with one another. It was assumed that to have quality, one had to limit access, that quality had to cost more and thus be unaffordable to most individuals, and that higher education institutions were really only accountable to themselves. All that has changed thanks to technology. Technology will enable a revolution in access to a quality higher education for large numbers of people that will surpass what was experienced in the U.S. when the GI Bill was introduced following World War II."