It is no secret that the United States are quickly falling behind when it comes to international educational standards. We have been consistently slipping in basically every category as other countries overtake us in humanities, math, and the sciences. It seems as though educational critics of the government has finally noticed the lackluster performances of our educational institutions and have written a paper calling for the government to enforce a minimum standard of quality for any higher educational institutes that are looking for federal funding and support. While this doesn’t get to the root of the problem (that our public school system needs to be supported and revamped as opposed to slashed and left to rot), it would help set a precedent and will hopefully lead to higher quality college and university graduates that will be able to join the workforce in a more effective and efficient manner.
The paper was written by the Education Trust and is titled “Tough Love: Bottom-Line Quality Standards for Colleges”. Education Trust is a non-profit that focuses on educational equality and the paper goes lengths to promoting that. It calls for a system of accountability that sets requirements for the enrollment of lower-income students, graduate students, and the ability for colleges to produce graduates that can pay back their student loans. The paper also argues for penalties to be imposed on those 4-year colleges that end up in the bottom 5% of all schools. The paper also pushes for more scrutiny of “for-profit” colleges and universities as well as attacking elite institutions over the fact that they allow so few low-income students to attend.
The paper actually agrees with many of the governments ideas about how federal funding of higher education institutes should be run. Both the paper and government want more accountability and for colleges and universities to produce better, harder working, and more intelligent graduates who won’t be as saddled by student debt as the current generations students are. However it remains to be seen whether this can be realistically implemented and whether congress and the senate will actually take an attempt to fix things seriously.
If you’d like to read more, the link is posted below:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/06/18/report-calls-tougher-federal-standards-four-year-colleges#sthash.zaqx6J9G.dpbs