Colloquium Held Jan. 5–7 in California

Two hundred educators gathered at Colloquium 2008 in Laguna Niguel, Calif., to discuss issues in higher education finance. Shirley Ort, associate provost and director of scholarships and student aid at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, outlined the event’s theme, “Return on Investment: Global Perspective, National Interest.”

With new and mounting pressure in the global marketplace, she said, the need for an educated citizenry has never been greater. The country is slipping behind in international rankings, while the cost of educating college students is among the highest in the world. She asked, “What should students and families expect as a return on their investment? How do we in higher education, who compete for scarce public funds, demonstrate that we are good stewards of these funds?” Ort served as chair of the event planning committee.

Common threads of discussion included the need for better pre-K-12 education, viewing our higher education system in a global context, the call for greater accountability and the role of increasing college tuition.

In the session, “Education Pays, But Who Pays for Education?” Tia Martinez of the Bridgespan Group focused much of her talk on high school preparation, citing statistics that paint a stark picture for low-income students’ chances for success in college. “For low-income students, to get a B.A. means you’ve beat the odds,” she said. “It begins with the country’s dropout rates. Each year, about 1.2 million students drop out of high school.” She offered three strategies: linking the college entrance exams with high school exit exams; getting low-income students and their parents on college campus visits and connecting college professors and high school teachers.

Jane Wellman, executive director, Delta Project on Postsecondary Costs, Productivity and Accountability, and David Shulenburger, vice president for academic affairs at NASULGC, led the session entitled; “Making Our Investments Productive — Accountability.”

“We have a long history as an academy of reacting to public questions about accountability as if they are inappropriate and
lack legitimacy,” Wellman said. “In an era of ‘it’s not just your
mother’s accountability system,’ demands for accountability and transparency are not going to go away . . . There is real worry about where we will be in 20 years if we don’t get our
achievement gaps closed.” Wellman said that the perception that tuition increases are a result of spending on things that don’t help learning is basically not true for public colleges. She called for a more proactive approach, including a more robust conversation about how resources are used.

Shulenburger said that the majority of Americans believe that college is necessary, but also fear that qualified students don’t have the opportunity to attend. As a response to the Commission on the Future of Higher Education’s call for more transparency about cost, price and student success outcomes, he described the College Portrait: A Voluntary System of Accountability, which would present information (including learning outcomes and a college-cost calculator) to students and parents in a uniform way.

In his closing remarks, Mike McPherson, president of the
Spencer Foundation, said that societal benefits and the personal, nonmonetary value of higher education need to be a big part of the case for why families and the government should invest in education. He suggested that any argument in favor of higher education “encompass respect for the life of the mind, which is valuable for its own sake.”