With Congress set to review the Higher Education Act, a collection of federal regulations concerning colleges and universities, later this year, the Institute for Research on Higher Education Policy recently released a document outlining 10 key issues it feels should be addressed.
One issue particularly pertinent to schools like Penn, where tuition has been rising steadily in recent years, is the cost of college. Six of the 10 chapters in the document deal with the increased difficulty in gaining access to a college education.
"Issues about college costs are serious" in this reauthorization cycle, said Institute for Research on Higher Education Policy Senior Associate Thomas Wolanin. "We've identified a lot of issues... about why there are increases and if they are justified" and how, if at all, the government should become involved.
Other issues ranged from increasing teacher quality at the elementary and high school levels to opening the doors to higher education to minority groups and first-generation college students.
The study was submitted to Congress as part of the reauthorization process for the HEA. The legislation comes up for reauthorization by Congress once every six years, at which time the law can be amended to remain useful and current.
Wolanin said that researchers try, along with other nonprofit groups, to "inform the process so that it leads to good and appropriate decisions."
Researchers at the institute called the document a "new national 'road map' to the nation's most pressing higher education issues." According to Wolanin, it is meant to "lay out what we think are some of the major issues and options" concerning higher education.
In that capacity, the document points to 10 major issues that Congress could consider.
While the institute's analysis is one of the most extensive, Wolanin said that the legislature "will have a whole set of recommendations from interested parties."
He noted, however, that the Bush administration has yet to submit a recommendation.
The institute's Director of Research Alisa Cunningham said the document's purpose is not to directly recommend legislative action as much as to "try to give legislators some background.
"It is meant to be a primer of what the possibilities are," she said.
However, Wolanin noted that there seems to be a "consensus in a broad way about what the issues are," and believed that the document will be useful to the legislature as it begins shaping the future of higher education policy.
The reauthorized bill will most likely be enacted this summer, according to Wolanin. This will come at the end of over a year of hearings and committee meetings in both the House and the Senate.
