WASHINGTON, D.C. — Nearly 300 leaders from the worlds of business, higher education, and philanthropy convened in Washington, D.C. on March 22 to discuss how to carry out the recommendations of the U.S. secretary of education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education.
By the end of the day, they had produced a list of 25 “action items” but no plan for how to put them into practice. Education Department officials said they would work on assigning responsibility for the items in the coming days.
Among the 25 proposals were issues dealing with: * outcome reports
* rewarding compliant states
* funding part-time students
* increased funding to recruit and retain low-income students
* increase private funding
* incentives to lower per-student costs
* encourage collaboration and innovation that lower costs
* increase public awareness of accreditation
* make comparisons between institutions easy
As the summit came to a close, some participants began asking the inevitable: What now?
The summation of the meeting was that it was time to move from “walk to talk” but how to do that will be part of future meetings.
For the full article, go to The Chronicle of Higher Education at https://chronicle.com/daily/2007/03/2007032301n.htm
