Archive for the 'Aligning tuition, aid & appropriations' Category

More than half of Latino students have family incomes of less than $25,000, and Latino youth enroll in college and complete college at lower rates than other students. (From Latino youth and the pathway to college.)

Sarita E. Brown, President, Excelencia in Education, thinks the high cost of college might be preventing the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population from gaining full access to college:

I attended the College Costs: Making Opportunity Affordable summit held in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 2, 2005. Lumina Foundation deserves kudos for taking on the issue of college costs and for deploying its resources to build a constituency willing to meet the challenge of making college affordable. Yet, for all that the summit accomplished, it failed to bring appropriate attention to one critical issue: how college costs and available aid affect Latino students.

America is falling behind other nations in mathematics ability, and it’s beginning to show up in our public policies. Consider these facts:

A recent federal report found the cost of attending a public four-year institution rose by 22 percent between 2001-02 and 2004-05, and tuition and fees for in-state students at those institutions grew by 33 percent, more than for any other sector of higher education.

We found Richard Colvin, director of the Hechinger Institute, taking notes at last week’s national summit on college costs. We told him we have a blog, and asked him to offer his observations. Here is his contribution, which we think is a terrific overview of the day’s events:

The most striking aspect of Lumina Foundation’s national summit on college costs on Nov. 2 was the bracingly honest conversations. The presenters did not minimize the challenges — educational, demographic, political and economic — that lie ahead for the U.S. and its colleges and universities. Nor did they shy away from acknowledging that not only have colleges and universities done little to address these challenges, they have little incentive to do so in the current seller’s education market. Except, of course, if they expect to survive over the long term.

I first became aware of summits and summitry when I was growing up and John Foster Dulles was the Secretary of State (yes, I am that old). Dulles practiced summitry during the Eisenhower administration when, as a nation, we had a common enemy and words like “brinksmanship” and “massive retaliation” crept into the national vocabulary.

Today, former adversaries are now allies, and the threats to our future are somewhat less nuclear.

Today, the threat we care about most at Lumina Foundation, however, is the tragic loss of human potential.

Sandy Baum, senior policy analyst for the College Board and professor of economics at Skidmore College, has submitted comments on the latest reports from the College Board. Here’s what she has to say:

This week the College Board released its annual reports, Trends in College Pricing and Trends in Student Aid, along with a supplement to their 2004 report, Education Pays: The Benefits of Higher Education for Individuals and Society. Together, these reports provide a comprehensive overview of how the published price of a college education has risen over time and the trend in the amount and forms of the financial aid students receive to help them pay the price. Education Pays highlights the returns to individuals and to society as a whole from the public and private investments in higher education, as well as the continuing gaps in participation and success that make an increased focus on making college education accessible and affordable to all eligible students so vital.

This week, The Chronicle of Higher Education is highlighting solutions to the rising cost of college, presented in a Lumina Foundation publication, Course corrections: Experts offer solutions to the college cost crisis.

As the nation continues to react and rebuild from the heartache and devastation of Hurricane Katrina, attention is divided between recovery and fault-finding. There is one clear consensus, however: Our country was ill-prepared, despite warning signs that were known and knowable.

No public official has demonstrated such a solid commitment to education over so long a period of time as Gov. James B. Hunt, Jr. We asked Gov. Hunt, whose Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy is breaking new ground with state leaders across the country, to weigh in on the critical issue of college costs. Here’s his contribution:

The American economy is changing at lightning speed, but our children are not being prepared to change with it. Millions of jobs that once supported families with only one parent working have gone overseas. Exciting new careers are replacing them, but this new work requires rigorous academic preparation, knowledge of complex technology, excellent communication skills, flexible intellect, extensive and wide-ranging content knowledge, and the ability to gather and synthesize the astonishing range of information available through the Internet.

A log is a journal kept on board a ship to measure a journey’s progress. As this Web log embarks, it’s probably a good idea to announce where we’re headed. Lumina Foundation for Education’s destination is increasing the number of people who enter and succeed in postsecondary education, especially adult learners, low-income students, students of color and first-generation students.