Education

Last year, student loan debt hit $1.5 trillion. From free college to loan forgiveness, there are plenty of ideas to lower student debt.

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But big questions remain. What is SEL, exactly? Who gets to define it? What does it require? What is its relationship to “character education,” civic education, or the traditional virtues?...

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In “Letters to a Young Education Reformer,” Frederick M. Hess distills knowledge from 25 years of working in and around school reform. Inspired by his conversations with young, would-be reformers who are passionate about transforming education, the book offers a window into Hess’ thinking about what education reform is and should be.

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As Congress wrestles with the long-overdue reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, it turns out that there is plenty of common ground to be found. But there are at least two key differences between that moment and ours. The first is the hyper-polarization of our time. The second is that the bipartisan cooperation of two decades ago yielded the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which is now regarded by lawmakers and advocates in both parties as a cautionary tale — chastening many who see value in demanding accountability from colleges that collectively receive over $120 billion each year in federal student aid programs. Given all that, where are Republicans and Democrats on the same page — and where aren’t they? When it comes to the challenges, as Third Way’s Lanae Erickson and I observed in the report, there’s bipartisan agreement “that too many students are ill-served by college, that colleges are insufficiently responsible for student outcomes, that too many students wind up with too much debt, that taxpayers cannot be confident that their dollars are being invested wisely, and that the higher education ‘market’ is in the grips of dysfunction.” In that same vein, participants made clear that while debates about American higher education system tend to characterize higher education as a “market” — the truth is that it is anything but a healthy marketplace. There was bipartisan agreement that massive distortions caused by subsidies and public policy, especially a financial aid system that rewards colleges for enrolling students rather than graduating or educating them, are responsible for many of current frustrations. The upshot, we reported, is that “those on the right should not imagine that defending the status quo equates to defending a free market, and those on the left should not imagine that the manifold problems in higher education are the product of simply an unfettered market.” As to what should be done about all this, there was much less consensus. While there was wholehearted agreement that colleges should take more responsibility for their outcomes and that students should be attending institutions where they will actually acquire an education and earn a degree, Republicans were generally less comfortable than Democrats with the notion that Washington should try to manage that process with performance targets or federal interventions. There was a shared awareness, anchored in K-12’s NCLB experience, of the dangers of relying too heavily on simple metrics or clumsy remedies. In the higher education context, there was particular concern that putting too much emphasis on college completion, for instance, would pummel colleges that serve nontraditional and disadvantaged students while encouraging institutions to dumb down expectations in order to graduate more students. But the college accountability hawks were optimistic that such concerns could be addressed by the use of multiple metrics and careful policy design, while the skeptics were dubious that Washington could or would be able to heed that advice. Despite disagreements about whether to support the adoption of federal accountability, there was a consensus on the value of heightened transparency. Both left and right thought it appropriate that Washington, given its enormous investment in higher education and ownership of the lion’s share of data on higher education, should be doing much more to promote transparency in higher education. This may mean reporting on completion rates, loan repayment, and earnings by particular programs, as well as by college, and it may mean much more. Whether policymakers can turn these points of agreement into legislation, given the shape of Washington today, is anyone’s guess.

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This paper proposes a plan to simplify the federal student loan system by providing all eligible students with a single $50,000 line of credit, with repayments structured as an income-share agreement.

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The use of the college degree as a default hiring device is the biggest and most significant barrier to employment in American life.

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