Access to institutions of higher education will become one of the defining domestic policy issues in coming years -- it's already on the public agenda and will become even more urgent as we move into the 21st century. That's a key message of a report released in early May by the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities.
In an open letter to the chief executives of the nation's state and land-grant colleges and universities, Penn State President Graham B. Spanier and 26 other current and former public university presidents have laid out a bold framework for change to expand access to higher education.
Returning to our Roots: Student Access, calls on public institutions to change or reexamine their admissions requirements, course-credit policies, student support and financial aid programs, and relationships with public schools.
"This report grew out of our dismay about the shape and nature of the current conversation about educational opportunity in the United States," said commission Chair Spanier. "The commission hopes to focus that conversation where it should be -- on the needs of students."
The access report notes that three challenges complicate efforts to expand access to public higher education: price; the challenge of diversity; and opportunities presented by modern technology. It concludes with an action program of seven recommendations.
Recommendations include:
* Transform land-grant and public universities
* Build new partnerships with public schools
* Validate admissions requirements
* Encourage diversity
* Clarify course-credit transfer and articulation agreements
* Renew efforts to contain cost and increase aid; and
* Focus on what students need to succeed.
To underline the need for change, the commission also released a companion working paper, Access to Educational Opportunity, Data Related to Change. The data show:
* In the last two decades, the portion of recent high school graduates going directly to college increased from 47 percent in 1973 to 62 percent by 1994.
* The shift in federal policy from grants to loans is forcing many students to graduate in debt and is mortgaging their future.
* The fastest growing student population consists of adults who are either enrolling for the first time or returning to colleges and universities after an absence.
"Penn State and other public universities have done a great deal in the last few decades to expand educational opportunity for students and citizens who had been denied a chance for a college education. But we can do much more," Spanier said. "We face new challenges to broadening access, and we must find new ways to do this."
The entire text of Returning to our Roots: Student Access is available online at NASULGC's Web site: http://www.nasulgc.nche.edu.