A bipartisan call to action for trustees

Higher education has taken a beating lately. The industry has been roiled by seemingly endless crises on topics ranging from affordibility and student debt to free speech and antisemitism. It is hardly surprising that public confidence in higher education has plummeted, as over two-thirds of Americans now believe it is headed in the wrong direction. This broad, bipartisan malaise has yet to translate into any action at the federal level, as divisions between the House and Senate have forestalled all attempts at enacting meaningful reforms. This has been the case for the past decade, as political polarization has doomed multiple attempts to reauthorize the Higher Education Act—a task that Congress is charged with performing every four years and yet has failed to accomplish since 2008.

Though reform has been stymied at the federal level, America’s statehouses have continued to pursue new and innovative ways to strengthen public colleges and universities. In the past few sessions alone, Connecticut provided trainings for its trustees and regents, Ohio pledged $24 million to fund a number of institutes focused on improving civic education, and five states moved to ban legacy admissions. The states, while certainly not immune to partisan rancor, have continued their proud tradition of serving as laboratories of democracy.

The strength of this tradition was in full display with the release of a new report from the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL)—a bipartisan nonprofit that serves state lawmakers and their staff. After over two years of work by a task force representing legislators and their staffs from 32 states, NCSL published in October a wide-reaching new vision for public higher education entitled, A State-Led Strategy to Enhance the Value of Degrees. Instead of waiting for their colleagues in Washington to awake from their sectarian stupor, these legislators plot a bold course for higher education, asserting that states “must continue to be the primary source of public support for higher education.” This is not to say that the group rejects federal assistance; far from it, in fact. NCSL recognizes the essential role federal agencies play in improving transparency and student outcomes. It calls for federal policymakers to take a complementary role “designed around helping states to achieve better outcomes in their higher education systems.”

Institutions are also given a to-do list, as the task force “exhorts higher education to better recession-proof itself to survive challenging times.” The task force recognizes that “While it is tempting for institutions to raise tuition to stave off cuts . . . higher education should be careful not to insulate itself from prevailing economic conditions by asking families to pay more during challenging economic times.” The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) examined this temptation in our report The Cost of Excess. We found that economic downturns and decreased state funding did not lead to comparable declines in spending at public colleges and universities, but rather coincided with increases in tuition revenue and the net cost of attendance. Our recommendations mirrored NCSL’s: “Institutions need to prioritize access instead of excess by scrutinizing nonessential spending and performing long-overdue cuts with an eye on efficiency and lowering the overall cost of a college education.”

The task force directly addresses college trustees, suggesting that boards of public institutions should take greater pains to evaluate program-level student outcomes to ensure that degree offerings “lead to desirable life, career and earning outcomes.” This push for program-level evaluation is long overdue, as too many colleges promote programs—particularly graduate degrees—that saddle students with life-altering debt without providing a path toward financial stability. ACTA made similar recommendations in our guide Setting Academic Priorities, written in partnership with Dr. Robert Dickeson, president emeritus of the University of Northern Colorado and charter member of the President’s Forum on Teaching as a Profession. We recommended that governing boards take an active role in evaluating the quality, size, scope, and productivity of academic programs. The need for active board leadership in this area has only grown in the 12 years since this guide was published.

The vision NCSL has outlined is admirable. Given the enthusiasm of the legislators on the task force, it is clear that there is a desire for real, meaningful reform in public higher education. While partisan disagreements have stalled efforts to address this issue at the federal level, individual states can make real progress to improve their institutions. Trustees would do well to keep abreast of the discussions happening in their statehouses, as they are uniquely positioned to act, in the words of former Harvard University president Derek Bok, as mediators “between the interests of their institutions and the needs of the surrounding society.”