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Painting a Post-election Picture

Higher Education Policy After November 5
by Anita Blumenthal

Although higher education has not been a media-grabbing campaign topic, the new congress and administration will inevitably need to deal with a number of critical issues, from funding to accountability to competitiveness. The post-election period could be a time for the higher education community to reframe the discussion and promote comprehensive reform.

The war, the economy, the housing crisis, healthcare costs—all are elbowing higher education out of the front rank of campaign issues, even though the outlook is dire enough to grab any candidate’s attention. Earlier this year, the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) wrote in a letter to the candidates:

By the end of the next President’s first term:

✔ the United States will have three million more jobs requiring a bachelor’s degree and not enough college graduates to fill them;

✔ 90 percent of the fastest-growing jobs, 60 percent of all new jobs, and 40 percent of manufacturing jobs will require some form of postsecondary education; and

✔ global competition will demand research and innovation on a scale that even the U.S. is not yet prepared to sustain.

Yet little has been said at the hustings. In July, William Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland, said, “I am disappointed that the candidates have not spent more time on higher education, and in particular on the issues of access to higher education and the urgency of having a much higher percentage of our young people go to and succeed in college.”

American Opportunity Tax Credit: A Shaky Plank in the Platform?

Senator Barak Obama (D-IL) has discussed higher education in some speeches to young people, talking particularly about his proposed American Opportunity Tax Credit of $4,000.

But Darryl Greer, executive director of the New Jersey Association of State Colleges and Universities, called it a “middle class tax break that will not expand access.” Robert T. “Tad” Perry, executive director of the South Dakota Board of Regents, called it “a wonderful thing for people who pay taxes, but it is not the kind of broad policy that will expand the population we need to engage in higher education,” namely the people in the lowest third in income and underrepresented groups.

F. King Alexander, president of California State University at Long Beach, warned, “Be careful what you wish for: To get to a $4,000 tax credit means committing $10 billion in federal expenditures. So when new money shows up, you have to commit it to something that has little impact.”

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