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The college aid quandary: Access, quality, and the federal role
Economics
of Education
Review,
Vol.
17. No. 4. pp. 441-446,
1998
Copyright 0 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd
Pergamon
Printed in GreatBritain.All rightsreserved 0272-7757/98 $19.00+0.00
Book Reviews PII: SO272-7757(98)00020-X
while the higher education community remains opposed to increased governmental oversight the call for it continues. The third and concluding chapter summarizes the conferees’ points of agreement and disagreement. Conferees expressed disagreement on the effectiveness of federal aid in fulfilling legislative goals. Another point of disagreement was whether these programs should be restructured or merely supported with more federal dollars. Other conferees voiced concern that higher education must do a better job in communicating the value of a higher education to the individual and society. The chapter concludes with a listing of points of agreement. There was consensus that retention and persistence should be emphasized as well as access. Regulations should be tailored to the type of institution and where possible incentives should replace regulations. They also agreed that fraud and abuse should be addressed separately from quality issues. There was also agreement that federal aid programs need to be more focused. While not necessarily unanimous, there was strong sentiment that with the exception of greater funding perhaps the status quo was preferable to the uncertainties of any changes to these programs. This title will be of primary interest to members of the higher education community and legislative staff. While it does not offer much in the way of solutions, it does provide a relatively concise summary of the complex topic of accommodating accelerating higher education costs.
The College Aid Quandary: Access, Quality, and the Federal Role. By LAWRENCE E. GLADIEUW and ARTHUR M. HAUPTMAN. Washington and New York: The Brookings Institution/The College Board, 1995. pp. vii + 97. Price: U.S. $10.95 (paper) SINCE FIRSTauthorized over fifty years ago, federal student aid programs have pursued a number of diverse national goals. Military service has been rewarded through the various manifestations of the GI Bill. The National Defense Education Act of 1958 sought to address Cold War era security concerns. The civil rights movement sparked legislation to promote access and equity for the nation’s minorities and needy. Subsequent legislation has expanded coverage to larger segments of the middle class while searching for a balance between grant and loan aid. This book is based upon a paper, “Improving Public Policy to Help Students Pay for College”, and a series of policy questions prepared by Lawrence E. Gladieuw. The paper and questions were employed at an October 1994 conference sponsored by the publishers. Participants came almost exclusively from the higher education community and government. The book is divided into an introduction and three brief chapters. The introduction provides data and discusses the sources, amounts and composition of student aid for the years 1963-93. It provides the prerequisite historical context for the remaining discussion. The first chapter discusses the evolution of federal student aid policy. It identifies the major milestones in this evolution and notes five examples of policy drift that have transformed federal student aid into a something for everyone array of policies and programs. They include the increasing: 1) dependence upon loans in place of grants, 2) eligibility of middle income families, 3) eligibility for emancipated and adult students, 4) numbers of proprietary trade schools offering short-term training and 5) use of aid to support remedial studies. In spite of this drift, while federal student aid spending has grown in real terms, it has lagged rising tuition and other charges. While the authors cite various achievements, they characterize current programs as subsidies to individuals who would otherwise attend college rather than assuring access and equity as originally intended. The second chapter presents analysis and the highlights of discussion of Gladieux’s three sets of policy questions that were employed to organize the conference. The conferees were asked: Was financial aid the most appropriate form for supporting study at public, private non-profit and proprietary institutions offering education and training? Should the federal government be more assertive in establishing academic and cost standards? How can existing federal aid programs promote participation rates? The bulk of the chapter is devoted to excerpts from the discussion prompted by these questions. Much of the opinion and concern shared remains as valid today as it was when stated four years ago. Access and equity remain primary topics of concern. The accompanying debate over the propriety of compelling students to take on relatively large debt as they embark on their careers remains a serious concern. And
Purdue
W. PATRICK LEONARD University North Central
PII: SO272-7757(98)00022-3
Buying the Best: Cost Escalation in Elite Higher Education. By CHARLES CLOTPELTER. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. xi + 303 pp. Price: $29.95 (cloth) STUDIES OF costs and efficiency in higher education typically run afoul of three related problems. First, publicly available data on college and university finances suffer from serious problems that include difficulties of comparability across institutions, lack of meaningful detail in spending and revenue categories, and unreliability in reported data. Second, data are often too aggregated across differing types of institutions to allow for clarity and for the drawing of meaningful distinctions. Finally, the understanding of - let alone the measurement of - higher education’s multiple outputs is meager. In this fine study, Charles Clotfelter adopts a methodology that allows him to make great progress in dealing with the first two problems; ultimately, however, his findings are limited (as he would readily acknowledge) by his inability to overcome the great difficulty of quantifying higher education outputs. Clotfelter’s approach is to concentrate on just a few institutions, and to gather highly detailed information from each of them - data far richer than any that colleges supply to the federal government for its statistical publications. This case study approach, besides providing for more detailed data, also overcomes the problem of excessive aggregation-at some cost, of course, in terms of limitations in the ability
441
of Education
Review,
Vol.
17. No. 4. pp. 441-446,
1998
Copyright 0 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd
Pergamon
Printed in GreatBritain.All rightsreserved 0272-7757/98 $19.00+0.00
Book Reviews PII: SO272-7757(98)00020-X
while the higher education community remains opposed to increased governmental oversight the call for it continues. The third and concluding chapter summarizes the conferees’ points of agreement and disagreement. Conferees expressed disagreement on the effectiveness of federal aid in fulfilling legislative goals. Another point of disagreement was whether these programs should be restructured or merely supported with more federal dollars. Other conferees voiced concern that higher education must do a better job in communicating the value of a higher education to the individual and society. The chapter concludes with a listing of points of agreement. There was consensus that retention and persistence should be emphasized as well as access. Regulations should be tailored to the type of institution and where possible incentives should replace regulations. They also agreed that fraud and abuse should be addressed separately from quality issues. There was also agreement that federal aid programs need to be more focused. While not necessarily unanimous, there was strong sentiment that with the exception of greater funding perhaps the status quo was preferable to the uncertainties of any changes to these programs. This title will be of primary interest to members of the higher education community and legislative staff. While it does not offer much in the way of solutions, it does provide a relatively concise summary of the complex topic of accommodating accelerating higher education costs.
The College Aid Quandary: Access, Quality, and the Federal Role. By LAWRENCE E. GLADIEUW and ARTHUR M. HAUPTMAN. Washington and New York: The Brookings Institution/The College Board, 1995. pp. vii + 97. Price: U.S. $10.95 (paper) SINCE FIRSTauthorized over fifty years ago, federal student aid programs have pursued a number of diverse national goals. Military service has been rewarded through the various manifestations of the GI Bill. The National Defense Education Act of 1958 sought to address Cold War era security concerns. The civil rights movement sparked legislation to promote access and equity for the nation’s minorities and needy. Subsequent legislation has expanded coverage to larger segments of the middle class while searching for a balance between grant and loan aid. This book is based upon a paper, “Improving Public Policy to Help Students Pay for College”, and a series of policy questions prepared by Lawrence E. Gladieuw. The paper and questions were employed at an October 1994 conference sponsored by the publishers. Participants came almost exclusively from the higher education community and government. The book is divided into an introduction and three brief chapters. The introduction provides data and discusses the sources, amounts and composition of student aid for the years 1963-93. It provides the prerequisite historical context for the remaining discussion. The first chapter discusses the evolution of federal student aid policy. It identifies the major milestones in this evolution and notes five examples of policy drift that have transformed federal student aid into a something for everyone array of policies and programs. They include the increasing: 1) dependence upon loans in place of grants, 2) eligibility of middle income families, 3) eligibility for emancipated and adult students, 4) numbers of proprietary trade schools offering short-term training and 5) use of aid to support remedial studies. In spite of this drift, while federal student aid spending has grown in real terms, it has lagged rising tuition and other charges. While the authors cite various achievements, they characterize current programs as subsidies to individuals who would otherwise attend college rather than assuring access and equity as originally intended. The second chapter presents analysis and the highlights of discussion of Gladieux’s three sets of policy questions that were employed to organize the conference. The conferees were asked: Was financial aid the most appropriate form for supporting study at public, private non-profit and proprietary institutions offering education and training? Should the federal government be more assertive in establishing academic and cost standards? How can existing federal aid programs promote participation rates? The bulk of the chapter is devoted to excerpts from the discussion prompted by these questions. Much of the opinion and concern shared remains as valid today as it was when stated four years ago. Access and equity remain primary topics of concern. The accompanying debate over the propriety of compelling students to take on relatively large debt as they embark on their careers remains a serious concern. And
Purdue
W. PATRICK LEONARD University North Central
PII: SO272-7757(98)00022-3
Buying the Best: Cost Escalation in Elite Higher Education. By CHARLES CLOTPELTER. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. xi + 303 pp. Price: $29.95 (cloth) STUDIES OF costs and efficiency in higher education typically run afoul of three related problems. First, publicly available data on college and university finances suffer from serious problems that include difficulties of comparability across institutions, lack of meaningful detail in spending and revenue categories, and unreliability in reported data. Second, data are often too aggregated across differing types of institutions to allow for clarity and for the drawing of meaningful distinctions. Finally, the understanding of - let alone the measurement of - higher education’s multiple outputs is meager. In this fine study, Charles Clotfelter adopts a methodology that allows him to make great progress in dealing with the first two problems; ultimately, however, his findings are limited (as he would readily acknowledge) by his inability to overcome the great difficulty of quantifying higher education outputs. Clotfelter’s approach is to concentrate on just a few institutions, and to gather highly detailed information from each of them - data far richer than any that colleges supply to the federal government for its statistical publications. This case study approach, besides providing for more detailed data, also overcomes the problem of excessive aggregation-at some cost, of course, in terms of limitations in the ability
441