National priorities outlined to improve higher ed outcomes

Asserting that the country’s future competitiveness is linked to a quality education, a recent report from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education argues that the completion rate of students pursuing post-secondary education must be increased. The report, The Future of Undergraduate Education, The Future of America, found that while nearly 90 percent of high school graduates expect to enroll in an undergraduate institution at some point, completion rates at those institutions average about 60 percent for students pursuing a bachelor's degree and 30 percent for students pursuing associate's degrees and certificates, with significant disparities within those categories by gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. To address the problem, three national priorities are outlined: improving students' educational experience; boosting completion rates and reducing inequities; and controlling costs and ensuring affordability.

The study was prompted by an observation from Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which supported the study. He saw the context and expectations for undergraduate education changing over the past few decades and believed it was time for a new study to examine the student educational journey, the report says. Action on the recommendations should begin soon and may take 10-20 years before they are realized, the report states.

Recommendations are outlined for each of the three priority areas. To improve students’ education experience, recommendations include:

• Integrate teacher training opportunities;
• Make a systemic commitment to the improvement of college teaching;
• Provide non-tenure-track faculty with stable professional working environments and careers;
• Develop more reliable measures of student learning gains; and,
• Federal and state government should invest in a research and development strategy that increases the knowledge base regarding new models for designing, delivering, and assessing learning.

To increase completion and reduce inequities:

• Make completion a top institutional priority, with a clear focus on understanding the diverse needs of students;
• Expand experimentation with and research on guided pathways designs;
• Work toward a new national understanding of and approach to student transfer;
• Utilize employer partnerships, which include internships and co-op programs, mentoring, and research opportunities; and,
• Federal and state government leadership should enact comprehensive and coordinated strategies to make college completion a top national and state priority, including using discretionary funds to make competitive grants that encourage evidence-based approaches to improving completion.

To control costs and increase affordability:

• Take further steps to simplify or even eliminate the FAFSA-based student aid application process;
• Develop incentives for states to sustain funding for public higher education institutions and, where possible, to increase it;
• Direct scarce resources to the students for whom they will have the greatest impact;
• Policy-makers should work with colleges and universities toward improved alignment between funding and program completion; and,
• Federal and state governments should take steps to consolidate and streamline confusing regulations, review and reduce unfunded mandates where appropriate, and eliminate extraneous and tangential rules while retaining and, where possible, improving worthwhile consumer protections.

The report concludes with a speculative look to the more distant future, considering several factors that could move in different directions, including social cohesion, workforce characteristics, access to information and educational technologies and unforeseen natural or human-generated global challenges.