Obama's college costs plan attracts attention of Minnesota educators

Source: Pioneer Press, St.迷你倉庫 Paul, Minn.Aug. 23--President Barack Obama is pitching some wide-ranging proposals to slow the rising cost of a college education -- and Minnesota educators and students are listening."Colleges are not going to just be able to keep on increasing tuition year after year and passing it on to students," Obama said Thursday at the University of Buffalo."We can't price the middle class and everybody working to get into the middle class out of college."Among his proposals: link federal financial aid to new higher education rankings.And, he said, those ratings would be based on tuition costs, graduation rates, student debt and graduate earnings as well the percentage of low-income students they serve."It is time to stop subsidizing schools that are not producing good results," Obama said at the first stop on a three-campus tourIn Minnesota, colleges and universities said they need more time to examine the details of what some experts described as a dramatic proposal.The University of Minnesota said that at first blush, the idea of factoring student outcomes into how the government doles out federal aid "makes sense."But some students gave the president high marks for finally taking on an issue they say deserves higher priority. They said they would welcome more transparency about the results colleges and universities deliver for the money."We'd like for students and families to shop with their feet and choose institutions based on their track record," said Matt Forstie, chairman of the Minnesota Student Legislative Coalition and a senior at the U.Slated for 2015 at the latest, the rankings expand on the online scorecards the Obama administration launched in February to help students and parents compare colleges.Now, Obama said he would seek congressional approval for a proposal to distribute $150 billion in federal aid based on the rankings.Starting in 2018, students headed to schools with high ratings would receive more aid and cheaper federal loans than peers who choose lower-ranked schools.The proposal is an attempt to steer families toward schools that offer higher value and thus nudge the rest to do better.Obama also spoke about creating incentives for colleges to explore more innovative ways to keep the price tag for students down. Those could include so-called massive open online courses, or MOOCs, that students can take for free to competency-based degrees, in which students can earn credits by showing what they know, not just by taking classes.Much in the his speech was not new: In his 2013 State of the Union address, Obama suggested somehow factoring student outcomes in federal aid.Some higher education officials have argued such an approach would not be entirely fair as colleges are squeezed by eroding state support and higher health care costs, among other factors.The plan requires approval by Congress, and reaction Thursday tended to fall along party lines.Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., and chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said in a statement that he was skeptical of Obama's proposed rating system"I remain concerned that imposing an arbitrary college ranking system could curtail the very innovation we hope to encourage -- and even lead to federal price controls," Kline said.Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who heads the Senate education committee, said he supported college ratings "to help students and their families make informed decisions."However, he didn't say whether he would back tying aid to such r儲存nkings.A number of Twin Cities private colleges and the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system said their leaders were studying the proposals and declined to comment.In a statement, MnSCU Vice Chancellor Michael Dougherty said the system's leadership has long been "intensely focused on maintaining the affordability of our colleges and universities and continuing to drive improvement in our performance on measures such as graduation and transfer rates."At the U, Vice Provost Robert McMaster pointed to improvements in on-time graduation rates and new middle-income scholarships as evidence the university shares Obama's priorities. The four-year graduation rate at the U is up 11 percent in the past five years, to 58 percent.McMaster also touted the U's bold entry into technology-powered learning, including five MOOCs university faculty hosted this summer."While tying federal aid to quality and outcome metrics makes sense, we do want to understand more of the administration's plan in that area," he said.Students said they were heartened to hear the president take on access to higher education in Thursday's address."We're just excited the president is talking about higher education reforms and initiatives at the federal level," said Mike Ramirez, vice chairman of the Minnesota State University Student Association.Students said making more information about how colleges and universities perform readily accessible to families is a worthy goal, even if some had mixed feelings about tying that data to federal aid.Mike Schmit, the U's undergraduate student government president, said he found the federal scorecards informative and user-friendly. Pushing higher education institutions to strive to improve upon their outcomes is important, too, he said."Re-incentivizing colleges and universities to keep the focus on value is a good thing for students," said Schmit, a junior who estimates he'll graduate with some $35,000 in debt from the U's Carlson School of Management. "Whether or not this is the right way to do it, I am not sure."Forstie, the Student Legislative Coalition chair, said how the government arrives at the college ratings is key. It has to strike the right balance between cost and student outcomes so it is "punishing schools only when they deserve to be punished." And, in curtailing financial aid to lower-performing colleges, Forstie said, the Obama administration has to be careful not to restrict student choices too much.Ramirez said MOOCs have been a fixture of his association's conversations with MnSCU administrators recently. Obama's talk of competency-based and three-year degrees also resonated, he said: "If we can minimize our time in college when college is so expensive, why not go for it?"The feds recently approved competency-based online business degrees at the Minneapolis-based for-profit Capella University, making it the first school to offer such degrees.But Forstie cautioned that unless some of these innovations are part of a broader rethinking of how students pay for college, they are unlikely to make a major dent in the short term: "None of these things will fundamentally change the cost structure in the next five years."The New York Times and Bloomberg News contributed to this report. Mila Koumpilova can be reached at 651-228-2171. Follow her at twitter.com/MilaPiPress.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.) Visit the Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.) at .twincities.com Distributed by MCT Information Services新蒲崗迷你倉