America’s system of colleges and universities is famously decentralized, producing experimentation and variety but making it hard to tackle big-picture issues such as access and affordability on a national scale.
Today, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings plans to announce a major initiative to address that problem: a commission charged with developing “a comprehensive national strategy for post-secondary education,” according to a speech she plans to deliver today.
The commission will be led by Charles Miller, former chairman of the board of regents of the University of Texas system.
In her first months on the job, Spellings has focused largely on the No Child Left Behind Act for kindergarten through 12th grade and more recently on Hurricane Katrina. But while the federal government accounts for less than 10 percent of K-12 spending, it generates about one-third of spending on higher education, through research grants and financial-aid programs.
Spellings said she was “not advocating a bigger role for the federal government in higher education” but said the country “needs a coordinated approach to meet rising enrollment numbers and new economic demands.”
Spellings outlined the commission’s instructions only generally, saying it would tackle issues such as affordability and how well colleges prepare students for the global economy.
The commission will also likely focus on a concern Spellings has expressed frequently: the lack of solid information about what colleges are and are not doing well. Last week, Spellings said how hard it was to find good information to help her daughter, now a college freshman, compare schools.
