Three hundred and seventy years after the first college in our fledgling nation was established to train Puritan ministers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, it is no exaggeration to declare that higher education in the United States has become one of our greatest success stories.

Whether America’s colleges and universities are measured by their sheer number and variety, by the increasingly open access so many citizens enjoy to their campuses, by their crucial role in advancing the frontiers of knowledge through research discoveries, or by the new forms of teaching and learning that they have pioneered to meet students’ changing needs, these postsecondary institutions have accomplished much of which they and the nation can be proud.

Despite these achievements, however, this commission believes U.S. higher education needs to improve in dramatic ways. As we enter the 21st century, it is no slight to the successes of American colleges and universities thus far in our history to note the unfulfilled promise that remains. Our yearlong examination of the challenges facing higher education has brought us to the uneasy conclusion that the sector’s past attainments have led our nation to unwarranted complacency about its future.

It is time to be frank. Among the vast and varied institutions that make up U.S. higher education, we have found much to applaud but also much that requires urgent reform. As Americans, we can take pride in our Nobel Prizes, our scientific breakthroughs, our Rhodes Scholars. But we must not be blind to the less inspiring realities of postsecondary education in our country.

To be sure, at first glance most Americans don’t see colleges and universities as a trouble spot in our educational system. After all, American higher education has been the envy of the world for years. In 1862, the First Morrill Act created an influential network of land-grant universities across the country. After World War II, the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act of 1944, also known as the G.I. Bill made access to higher education a national priority. In the 1960s and 1970s, the launching and rapid growth of community colleges further expanded postsecondary educational opportunities. For a long time, we educated more people to higher levels than any other nation.

We remained so far ahead of our competitors for so long, however, that we began to take our postsecondary superiority for granted. The results of this inattention, though little known to many of our fellow citizens, are sobering.

We may still have more than our share of the world’s best universities. But a lot of other countries have followed our lead, and they are now educating more of their citizens to more advanced levels than we are. Worse, they are passing us by at a time when education is more important to our collective prosperity than ever.

We acknowledge that not everyone needs to go to college. But everyone needs a postsecondary education. Indeed, we have seen ample evidence that some form of postsecondary instruction is increasingly vital to an individual’s economic security. Yet too many Americans just aren’t getting the education that they need—and that they deserve.

❏ We are losing some students in our high schools, which do not yet see preparing all pupils for postsecondary education and training as their responsibility.

❏ Others don’t enter college because of inadequate information and rising costs, combined with a confusing financial aid system that spends too little on those who need help the most.

❏ Among high school graduates who do make it on to postsecondary education, a troubling number waste time—and taxpayer dollars—mastering English and math skills that they should have learned in high school. And some never complete their degrees at all, at least in part because most colleges and universities don’t accept responsibility for making sure that those they admit actually succeed.

❏ As if this weren’t bad enough, there are also disturbing signs that many students who do earn degrees have not actually mastered the reading, writing, and thinking skills we expect of college graduates. Over the past decade, literacy among college graduates has actually declined. Unacceptable numbers of college graduates enter the workforce without the skills employers say they need in an economy in which, as the truism holds correctly, knowledge matters more than ever.

❏ The consequences of these problems are most severe for students from low-income families and for racial and ethnic minorities. But they affect us all.

❏ Compounding all of these difficulties is a lack of clear, reliable information about the cost and quality of postsecondary institutions, along with a remarkable absence of accountability mechanisms to ensure that colleges succeed in educating students. The result is that students, parents, and policymakers are often left scratching their heads over the answers to basic questions, from the true cost of private colleges (where most students don’t pay the official sticker price) to which institutions do a better job than others not only of graduating students but of teaching them what they need to learn.

In the face of such challenges, this commission believes change is overdue. But when it comes—as it must—it will need to take account of the new realities that are sometimes overlooked in public discussions about the future of higher education. While many Americans still envision the typical undergraduate as an 18- to 22-year-old with a recently acquired high school diploma attending classes at a four-year institution, the facts are more complex. Of the nation’s nearly 14 million undergraduates, more than four in ten attend two-year community colleges. Nearly one-third are older than 24 years old. Forty percent are enrolled part-time.

As higher education evolves in unexpected ways, this new landscape demands innovation and flexibility from the institutions that serve the nation’s learners.

Beyond high school, more students than ever before have adopted a “cafeteria” approach to their education, taking classes at multiple institutions before obtaining a credential. And the growing numbers of adult learners aren’t necessarily seeking degrees at all. Many simply want to improve their career prospects by acquiring the new skills that employers are demanding.

In this consumer-driven environment, students increasingly care little about the distinctions that sometimes preoccupy the academic establishment, from whether a college has for-profit or nonprofit status to whether its classes are offered online or in brick-and-mortar buildings. Instead, they care—as we do—about results. ...

Download A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education

PDF format, 2.25MB, 76Pages. Published by U.S. Department of Education

• Final Report of the Secretary's Commission on the Future of Higher Education
• A Report of the Commission Appointed by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings

CONCLUSION:

In short, the commission believes it is imperative that the nation give urgent attention to improving its system of higher education.

The future of our country’s colleges and universities is threatened by global competitive pressures, powerful technological developments, restraints on public finance, and serious structural limitations that cry out for reform.

Our report has recommended strategic actions designed to make higher education more accessible, more affordable, and more accountable, while maintaining world-class quality. Our colleges and universities must become more transparent, faster to respond to rapidly changing circumstances and increasingly productive in order to deal effectively with the powerful forces of change they now face.

But reaching these goals will also require difficult decisions and major changes from many others beyond the higher education community. The commission calls on policymakers to address the needs of higher education in order to maintain social mobility and a high standard of living. We call on the business community to become directly and fully engaged with government and higher education leaders in developing innovative structures for delivering 21st-century educational services—and in providing the necessary financial and human resources for that purpose.

Finally, we call on the American public to join in our commitment to improving the postsecondary institutions on which so much of our future—as individuals and as a nation—relies.

Working together, we can build on the past successes of U.S. higher education to create an improved and revitalized postsecondary system that is better tailored to the demands, as well as the opportunities, of a new century.

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