Update, via erelevant: the Washington Post’s coverage of Margaret Spellings’ speech and reaction. A snippet:
Spellings did call for a complete overhaul and streamlining of the unwieldy college aid system and acknowledged that more money is needed, but she stopped short of endorsing increases in Pell Grants.
David L. Warren, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, said: “I found that quite remarkable, because it was the key recommendation from the commission. Yet she endorsed a unit record database, which would be enormously expensive to implement.”
Breaking news from The Chronicle of Higher Education:
In a widely anticipated speech today, the U.S. secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, will lay out an “action plan” for higher education that will call for the creation of a controversial database to track students’ academic progress, increased spending on need-based student aid, and more accountability for colleges, particularly on rising costs.
The speech, to be given at the National Press Club here, comes in response to a report submitted last week by the Secretary’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education. That report, which called for sweeping changes in American higher education, included dozens of recommendations for the Education Department, as well as for Congress, states, and institutions. …
Spellings previewed the speech in an interview with The Chronicle in her office on Monday. “She said she was acting quickly on a few of the report’s recommendations, centered mostly on the tracking database, student aid, and accountability, because ‘time is of the essence.'”
“There is an urgency here,” she said in the interview. “The academy is underestimating the American public — the anxiety and urgency about this. We have sold the dream of college … and more and more, it’s unattainable.”
At times during the interview, Ms. Spellings seemed exasperated by the response of higher-education officials to the report’s recommendations. She expressed disappointment at private colleges for opposing the student-tracking database. She mentioned several times how “expensive” colleges are, particularly private ones like Davidson College, which her daughter attends.
And she said the time had come for higher education to provide the same information to consumers that parents receive for their children’s elementary and secondary schools as a result of the No Child Left Behind Act. (Full story.)
More to come later today, or in the morning.
Andy writes! 
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