Higher Education as a National Resource

I found this article to be eye-opening and substantial for the average American college student to evaluate. It helped me understand better our financial standing as an educational enterprise in comparison with our less-than-perfect economy. I found Kerr's claims of recruiting educational leaders who think and work more creatively to be key to expanding both our university and universities as a whole. With our technological advances and nuance ideas, creativity is crucial to the standing of a college in comparison with others around the country. I agreed with the Carnegie Commission's disagreement with block funding for higher education. Federal funding needs to come to students on a personal level with loans and grants. This makes it possible for students to pick their attendance of a university based specifically on what they know they can handle financially. Something needs to be done to continue funding our higher education system. Currently the United States ranks 13th "in the percentage of the population that enters postsecondary education and the completes a bachelor's degree or enters a postgraduate program." We as college students need to fight for our right to attend grad school and make an effort to prove that the United States can in fact facilitate fulfilling undergraduate student's wishes to go on to postgraduate programs.

Government's Role in Higher Education

Towards the end of the article, John Aubrey Douglass says, "Arguably, the federal government has a greater role to play in supporting American higher education that ever before." This reminded me of an e-mail that I received about 10 days ago from the financial aid office. The email explained that the Stafford loans for next year will be disbursed from a government program, Direct Loans, through the Department of Education. The government loans offer guaranteed funding, lower interest rates, and faster disbursement. So even since 2005 the government has made and continues to make significant strides in attempting to assist students with the burdens that accompany higher education. Though they haven't done anything for the snowballing tuition rates, they are attempting to appease some strains.

Higher Education as a National Resource

There were a few main points in this article that I really agreed with. The first was that federal financial-aid should be given to the students directly, not to the institutions themselves. A big factor in choosing where to go to college is money. If universities are the sole recipient of federal grants, the university plays a substantial role in terms of finances and the choice students make on whether or not to attend that university. For example, if the University of Iowa gives a student money and University of Illinois doesn't, even if the student may not like Iowa as much as Illinois, they might go to Iowa because it ends up being less expensive. If the same amount of money that Iowa gave the student was given directly to the student, instead of to the university, that student could have put the money towards going to Illinois instead. Then the student has more control over where they go. If a student wants to go to a certain school, they should be able to put money towards that school instead of having it offered from another school that s/he might not like as much.

The other point I really agree with and support is in the conclusion, where it's written that "colleges and universities, the states, and the federal government all [need] to work together to continue America's great [...] higher education system" (37-38). They all need to contribute, the responsibility and obligation is on all of them. The federal government needs to put their money where their mouth is because they talk about how important higher education is in our society, but have not given the financial resources to actually do it. The state governments should provide more financial aid, and colleges and universities themselves should make attending their school more affordable. Especially with inflation and the recession, all parties need to work towards making a college education attainable for more people. The diversity of public and private institutions is one of America's strengths, now we just need to use them to their full potential to get back in the game.