The United States no longer sets the global standard for higher education. Say what? You mean our public university systems are not the umpteenth wonder of the world? That statement might seem flippant, but it’s founded in reality and we only have ourselves — as well as state and federal policy makers — to blame for our more than 30-year investment failure.
A recent nationally published editorial in Inside Higher Ed highlights what we should be, as opposed to what we are, investing in our own millennial survival — we’re waaaay behind and rapidly losing ground.
The co-written article “We Need a New Kind of Institutional Aid” by Cal State Long Beach President F. King Alexander and California State University Chancellor Charles Reed is both an indictment and a cry to re-evaluate and straighten out the formula the feds use to fund our public university systems.
In the article, Alexander and Reed call for a compulsory overhaul of the current funding system, requesting that the federal government resuscitate the vision of the 1972 Basic Educational Opportunity Grant legislation. Now named the Pell Grant, the program was created to provide low-income students opportunities to attain valuable degrees.
In the current economic environment, though, the money provided to economically disadvantaged students doesn’t help universities provide the needed extras to help them succeed.
Building on the optimistic higher education promise by President Barack Obama in February, the two CSU leaders implore that federal legislators addend the Pell Grant with institutional money to help support programs and services to economically disadvantaged college students.
Alexander cited some difficult-to-afford critical needs at CSULB as “the Beach Learning Community, additional academic advising, financial aid counseling/counselors” and others.
Alexander wrote in an e-mail, “Under current conditions the resources that are used come from existing university budgets with no federal assistance … universities and colleges that remain committed to large lower-income populations must educate them and find the resources (taking it away from other things) without additional assistance.”
Complicating shortfalls from the federal government is the lack of incentives for states to meet educational funding obligations, instead favoring softer funding for small and private universities, or entirely ignoring the state’s low-income populations.
“One important, but unanticipated, outcome has been that as states increasingly withdraw their public support of public institutions, many universities have found other alternatives to educating more costly lower-income students, such as increasing out-of-state enrollments in exchange for less wealthy in-state students,” the editorial states.
Alexander’s and Reed’s proposal isn’t to tap into the student portion of Pell Grants, but to revive the original “cost of education allowances” legislative measure of supplemental funding accompanying the grants to cover the added costs of educating financially strained families.
In calling the lack of state and federal commitment a civil rights issue, they point out that “four-year public and private universities decrease their commitments to larger numbers of lower-income students,” which has caused “an overall decline in Pell Grant-eligible students as a percentage of the total student population. At public universities, the drop was from 41 percent to 34 percent, and from nearly 22 percent to 14 percent on all private four-year college and university campuses.”
With the recent and painful slashes to public universities forcing tuition increases, it’s probably time we all get involved.
The time to demand that Congress renew the BEOG strategy is now if we truly wish to return American education to its one-time apex. Calling or writing congressional representatives would definitively light a fire under their seats. This clearly isn’t a situation that will remedy itself.
Dragging money from Congress to a public university system is a monumental task during a recession. Pushing policy changes for higher education shouldn’t be as laborious as building pyramids.
Again, “black and gold,” the article begins with the problem that our schools are failing. The average 16 year old high school student in this country can’t hold a candle to the likes of the Asians and Europeans. It was shown not too long ago that Chinese elementary students knew every American president, but the vast majority of American high school students did not. The solution to this problem, in MY opinion, is to make standards higher and truly flunk students who don’t make the grade or let students who don’t care about school leave. You may disagree, that’s fine. The point I was making originally was that the article (and your subsequent comments) pose no solution to this problem. All you’re saying is merely “let’s encourage more low income people to finish school.” I agree that we should. However, that won’t solve the problems our schools are facing. The problems our schools are facing are due to the teaching methods and standards of the American public school system, not, as you argue, with the economic status of the students filling the desks.
Because a high school diploma is no more than a piece of paper in and of itself, we create a class of cheap labor for which there is no sustainable employment. Gone are the manufacturing job. Your argument is diminutive as elitist to imply that most students don’t form a direction of success orientation when they achieve a college diploma. They spend their high school years being taught to the test via NCLB (which also strains the systems because the mandate comes with no federal money). Standards testing like the CAHSEE is a waste of time and increasingly scarcer resources because it doesn’t ready high school students for college. They are only taught to ring a bell for a piece of cheese. Such a strategy leaves those who do attend college unprepared, placing a greater strain on public universities to provide remedial catch-up programs and courses. As a result, admissions are cut, opportunity evaporates exponentially, and we revert to tracking high school kids into trade schools and community colleges, where the best educations they can receive pieces of paper that amount to slightly glorified high school diplomas and perpetually menial jobs; again the rapidly decreasing cheap labor pool exacerbates poverty. It’s true that not every student with a four-year degree will emerge as a major contributor to society, but when we increase opportunity, we unleash a higher educated population to help solve problems that will impact their personal lives and ours as a whole. Perhaps when you hear college kids say “they chose their major because ‘it was easy’ or they ‘just needing something,'” you could help them out by referring them to an academic adviser or career counselor. But wait, there isn’t enough money in higher education to sustain those programs unless the federal government and state live up to legislative mandates of providing funding, as the article invests.
That’s all fine and good “black and gold,” but the article is set up with a problem: “The United States no longer sets the global standard for higher education.” My question is, “how is the availability of an education going to improve the overall education system in our country?” To me, the big issue with our country’s public education system is that we now are at a point were every kid with a pulse (no matter what race, religion, income, etc…) can get a high school degree and get some form of higher education somewhere. If we truly want “our public university systems (to be) the umpteenth wonder of the world” we need to make standards much higher and promote the value of education not merely getting a piece of paper as is promoted right now. It’s sad to me to hear kids on campus saying that they chose their major because “it was easy” or they “just needing something.” THAT’S the problem
Your name–Perhaps the cure for cancer is lurking in the untapped mind of a black kid in the inner city, where it will remain hidden from the world forever. The ideas to help solve poverty and hunger might be locked in the brain of some Latino child in East L.A., never to reach fruition because that child won’t be able to attend college. Maybe some poor white child in the Appalachians would be able to figure out how to stop wars, if she/he only had the opportunity to higher education. If you want to wonder “how having education available to low income students” could impact the world, look around you and see how many unsolved problems exist. If we provide the resources to have a greater educated society, we improve life for all people. It’s a no brainer.
I don’t get how having education available to low income students will get our public school system to where it should be in relation with the rest of the world.