From the New York Times:
"A federal commission approved a final report on Thursday that urges a broad shake-up of American higher education. It calls for public universities to measure learning with standardized tests, federal monitoring of college quality and sweeping changes in financial aid.
The panel also called on policy makers and leaders in higher education to find new ways to control costs, saying college tuition should grow no faster than median family income, although it opposed price controls.
The report recommended bolstering Pell grants, the basic building block of federal student aid, by making the program cover a larger percentage of public college tuition. That proposal could cost billions of dollars.
Eighteen of the 19 members of the panel, the Commission on the Future of Higher Education, voted to sign the report, which attacked increasing tuition costs and pointed to signs of complacency on some campuses. David Ward, who as president of the largest association of colleges and universities was the most powerful representative of the higher education establishment on the commission, refused to sign.
Calling the report “a shot across the bow,” Dr. Ward said that academia would take it seriously, but that he wanted to remain “free to contest” it. Several proposals, including those on testing and financial aid, aroused fierce opposition from university leaders and at points divided the panel. "
Read the article here; the report itself here; my earlier post on the subject here.
