University of Washington
A National Dialogue: The Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education
February 7, 2006
Good afternoon, my name is Galya Diment, and I am a professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Washington. I am also a member of the American Association of University Professors’ Committee on Government Relations, and I am testifying on their behalf this afternoon.
The American Association of University Professors ("AAUP") is the national organization serving the academic profession and college and university faculty members. Founded in 1915, the Association has some 45,000 faculty members at colleges and universities throughout the country and has long been viewed as the authoritative voice of the academic profession. Since its founding, the main work of the Association has been defending the principles of academic freedom and mechanisms to ensure those principles such as tenure, shared governance, and due process.
We welcome the opportunity to join in this national dialogue and discuss the critical issues of access for students, the fit between students and institutions, costs, prices, and quality of higher education, and the related question of how colleges and universities are meeting specific national needs. These are vital questions, and ones that faculty confront every day of their working lives.
In the last several years AAUP’s Committee on Government Relations has concentrated its focus on the critical issues facing higher education. For the past two sessions, we have also been lobbying Congress on the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. We have identified four key themes that must be part of the renewal of the HEA.
The core goal of the HEA from the beginning has been to increase access to a college and university education, and any reauthorization proposal must build on that goal. Equally important is the quality of higher education programs. Increased access to lower quality programs will not help institutions, faculty or students. At the same time, the HEA must recognize and promote the diversity of our higher education system—the diversity among populations within the system, as well as among institutions and institutional missions. Finally, the uncertainty and tension in the world today make it especially critical for the HEA to support the openness of the academic community; doing so is the only way to ensure the continued excellence of our nation’s colleges and universities.
During 2004 the committee studied the financial pressures colleges and universities have been facing in the wake of the national recession and state budget crises early in the decade. In January 2005, we issued a report “Ensuring the Nation’s Future: Preserving the Promise of Higher Education in an Era of Fiscal Challenges,” copies of which I have for the commission today. Our 2005 report focuses largely on state actions, but we do emphasize the interrelationship of federal and state policies. David Breneman, dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, has described how the pieces of higher education funding traditionally fit together. "State governments and private philanthropy," he writes, "have combined historically to provide the supply-side of higher education, while the federal role has focused on underwriting student demand through grants, guaranteed loans, and work study." This division of labor between the state and federal levels of government in the United States worked well as long as both levels kept up their end of the bargain. When neither is doing so, however, the quality of education suffers.
I would also like to draw this commission’s attention to the 1998 report, Straight Talk About College Costs and Prices, by the congressionally mandated National Commission on the Cost of Higher Education. The report closed with a series of five key recommendations.
- strengthening institutional cost control;
- improving market information and public accountability;
- deregulating higher education;
- rethinking accreditation; and
- enhancing and simplifying Federal student aid.
During the last 8 years, many of the recommendations have been addressed: colleges and universities have strengthened some measures of institutional cost control; Congress has addressed issues dealing with public information, accountability, and deregulation of certain aspects of higher education; and both the Department of Education and Congress have begun debating the role of accreditation. However, the fifth recommendation, in our view the critical recommendation in terms of increasing student access, has not simply been ignored, we are moving in the opposite direction. The Pell Grant maximum award, a critical benchmark, has not been raised in years, and last week’s vote on the budget reconciliation measure constitutes the biggest single cut to the student aid program in its history.
AAUP argues the following propositions:
- Today's economic climate requires more than just a high school diploma,
- State and federal finances are inexorably intertwined. Any solution that does not address both state and federal policy will be doomed to fail.
- Higher education is a public good, not a commercial enterprise. Its benefits accrue to both the individual and society at large, and any funding system should take that into account., and therefore
- We must ensure that higher education, as a public good, is available for everyone who wants it.
This will require a renewed commitment from all elements of higher education, those of us who teach and research, our institutions, and state and federal policymakers. It is clear however, that this is the kind of investment that pays dividends. In 1988, a congressional report concluded that the rate of return on the GI Bill “exceeded the government investment in the program by a factor of between 5 and 12 to 1.” Representative James Scheuer of New York pointed out that this finding did not even count any return to the government based on the “increased taxes” paid by the veterans.
Now, to be sure there are some encouraging signs about government involvement. As a specialist in foreign languages, literatures and cultures I am encouraged by the increased attention given to the study of at least some languages in recent proposals. However, even in situations where we see a welcome infusion of federal funds to encourage the study of foreign languages, there are some serious restrictions connected with the programs. This is a time when all of us recognize the need for increased understanding of other cultures, and that the study of particular languages–Arabic, Farsi, and Chinese being three currently popular—is an essential element of that understanding. However, the increased appropriations authorized in the version of the HEA currently before the House includes a politically appointed advisory board to oversee area studies programs under Title VI of the HEA. This board raises serious issues of academic freedom because of its potential to suppress certain views, chill dissent, and restrict academic discourse.
Faculty also have concerns about government intrusion into the academy that go beyond issues addressed directly in the Higher Education Act. While these issues may be beyond the immediate purview of the commission today, I want to take the opportunity of this dialogue to raise them. In our view they do directly address the question of how well universities are addressing specific national needs. I am referring to the increased use of restrictive regulations by various departments of the federal government that hamper university based research. In 2005 both the Department of Commerce and the Department of Defense proposed regulations affecting the ability of international students and scholars to participate in university based research in this country. AAUP submitted comments critical of both proposals, and we are still hopeful that many of the most onerous may yet be withdrawn. As an immigrant to this country myself, I find these offensive, as they restrict access to individuals who have already gone through individualized security screening to come into the country as students and scholars by the Departments of State and Homeland Security. I would also remind the commissioners that such restrictions in the early 20th century would have prevented such notable researchers as Enrico Fermi and Albert Einstein from participating in university based research because of their status as immigrants from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.