Transparency in Higher Education

USA Today reports on efforts by the Bush administration to bring some accountability to institutions of higher learning.

Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings, wants to create a federal database on student performance that can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of college and university instruction. She wants:

better information made available to families, taxpayers and policymakers so they can make better decisions about how they spend their money. And given how little is really known about how well students are served by higher education, she says, she doesn't see why anyone would find that unreasonable.

Not surprisingly, colleges and universities find the proposal not only unreasonable, but dangerous and are organizing to oppose the proposal.

Read about it here.

I have often said that we pay far too much for education in this country and receive far too little in return for our investment. The performance of our institutions of higher learning is scandalous and pressure for accountability is building. And rightly so. Universities refuse to admit it, but there is a crisis in higher education in this country and things cannot long continue as they have over the past few decades. I welcome Secretary Spelling's proposals for at least some transparency in university dealings. I strongly suspect that even limited transparency will reveal some of the corruption that lies at the heart of the ed biz and will institute calls for further reforms. At least we can hope so.