Congressional report calls for our action

By Jill N. Reich, PhD
Executive Director for Education

The cost of higher education is an important issue for us as psychologists, as educators as well as in our personal lives as parents, and as members of a society needing highly educated members to maintain and strengthen our local, national and global standing. A recent congressional report, 'The National Commission of the Cost of Higher Education' speaks to each of these many perspectives. But let me turn here to the implications of the commission?s work for us as educators.

Education as a commodity

First, the context within which this report was commissioned by Congress underscores the mood of the public, and our legislators, toward higher education. It should not be surprising that the subject of education costs raises anxiety; however, this report places the level of this anxiety equal to that regarding health-care costs. Moreover, it reminds the reader that education is 'a product, a service and a life-long investment bought and paid for, like any other.' Those of us in higher education need to listen carefully. The commission is striking an increasingly strident chord of public sentiment, which views education as it does other products it purchases. An important commodity to be sure?but still a commodity, one that must be accountable to its market.

Within this context, the commission believes that the academic world has not seriously confronted the basic issues underlying the public?s concern about cost?even arguing that most have permitted a 'veil of obscurity to settle over these matters.' The commission concludes that continued inattention to these issues threatens the goodwill that has long been the foundation of trust between higher education and the public. Having said that, the commission indicates that such a gulf is dangerous to higher education and dangerous to the public good, thereby setting the stage to intervene should the education community not take the steps it sees to be necessary to reduce costs.

There is much in this report that illuminates the cost debate. Key among these is defining costs in ways that reflect the total cost of educating a student as well as operationalizing the concepts such as affordability and accessibility. I applaud the commission for recognizing the complexity of the matter and helping to unravel a truly knotty problem. And, I hear the ringing subtext throughout their report?that the education community must pay attention to the matter.

A call for accountability

Fine, you say, but what does all of this have to do with me? Central to many of the commission?s recommendations is the challenge to educators to explain?and measure?in ways the public can understand how we spend our time. And, we all know how difficult this is to do. Although we easily describe our world in terms of teaching, research and service and use these distinctions in various evaluative exercises within the academy, when questions are raised about costs by those who pay the bills, their allocation to teaching, research and service are most difficult to discuss in any straightforward or convincing manner. Absent our explaining the costs of our work, several recommendations are made to fill the vacuum. Efficiency self-reviews are urged to provide public information about faculty teaching loads, average class size, faculty-student ratios and the like. The academic world is challenged to find 'more productive and efficient approaches to collegiate instruction.' We must, whenever possible, build partnerships and utilize consortia so that institutional resources can be focused on a few priority areas where excellence can be sustained.

The recommendations proposed are not without merit. Yet, they neither delineate the issues nor fix the problem. The commission acknowledges what it calls 'a discomforting position.' And, in so doing, it places the onus for solutions squarely on the shoulders of the academic community. It claims that 'the nation?s academic institutions, justly renowned for their ability to analyze practically every other major activity, have not devoted similar analytic attention to their own internal structures. Blessed, until recently, with sufficient resources that allowed questions about costs to be avoided, academic institutions now find themselves confronting hard questions about whether their spending patterns match their priorities and about how to communicate the choices they have made to the public.'

The gauntlet is being thrown. Are we ready?