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The Daily Signal
The 1 Change
the Government Could Make to Drive Down College Prices
Sen. Mike Lee
May 16, 2017
Over the past 20 years, the price of wireless service has fallen 46
percent, the price of software has fallen 68 percent, the price of
televisions has fallen 96 percent, and the quality of these services
and technologies has improved markedly.
But over that same time, the price of college tuition has risen 199
percent, and most parents would agree that the quality has not greatly
improved.
But if prices typically fall as competition spurs quality advancement,
as seen by the technological achievement of the last two decades, how
has that not happened in education?
There is no one simple answer to this question, but the different
regulatory environment facing higher education is a significant factor.
One hundred years ago, there were six regional, voluntary,
nongovernmental institutions that helped universities and secondary
schools coordinate curricula, degrees, and transfer credits. These
institutions had no power to prevent the creation of higher education
institutions.
This changed with the 1952 GI Bill.
After congressional investigators found thousands of sham colleges were
created overnight to take advantage of the benefits provided in the
first 1944 GI Bill, the federal government turned these voluntary
institutions into accreditors.
As the federal government steadily ramped up its financial support for
higher education benefits, it continued outsourcing the vetting of
higher education institutions to these regional accreditors.
This makeshift system worked well for decades, but in recent years
these regional accreditors have come under heavy criticism for both lax
oversight over some online institutions and a heavy hand in killing
some promising innovations.
No regulator is ever going to be perfect, but if they are going to be
gatekeepers for a sector of the economy as important as higher
education, they must be transparent and accountable to the American
people.
Unfortunately, our nation’s regional accreditors are neither. They do
not share how they make their accrediting decisions with anyone and
their board members do not face accountability at the ballot box.
This needs to change.
That is why I have introduced the Higher Education Reform and
Opportunity Act. This bill would allow states to create their own
accreditation system for institutions that want to be eligible for
federal financial aid dollars.
Each state could then be as open or closed to higher education
innovation as they saw fit. They could even stick with their current
regional accreditors if they chose to do so.
But they could also enable innovators like Purdue University President
Mitch Daniels, who recently signed a deal with the online provider
Kaplan University, to go even further in their mission to expand higher
education access to those who had limited access before.
Our higher education system should not be held captive to 100-year-old
institutions that were never intended to be regulatory gatekeepers in
the first place.
Instead, we should allow those communities that want to experiment with
higher education policy the freedom and accountability to do so.
Read this and other articles at The Daily Signal
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