While U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings tries to deal with the unfolding student loan scandal and defend her federal agency’s oversight of student loan programs, college officials like Larry P. Arnn, president of Hillsdale College in Michigan are taking aim at Spellings’ efforts to bring standardized testing to U.S. higher education.
Writing in the May 12 Wall Street Journal, Arnn calls for a laissez-faire approach to governing higher education. He first points out how private colleges like his struggle to compete with institutions that benefit from federal funding, then worries about how Spellings’ plans “to extend the testing and standards requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act to colleges” could further hinder schools like Hillsdale.
“The specific details of what these testing and standards would entail are unclear,” Arnn writes in his commentary piece, Hands Off Higher Ed, “but are likely to be determined by education department regulators over the next several months.”
President Bush and Ms. Spellings have brought a new approach to education reform at the federal level. They have good motives and a fair appraisal of the situation, at least in K-12 education. But national standards and testing in higher education will only strengthen a bureaucracy that already plagues an otherwise highly competitive system.
Instead of more bureaucracy, let the marketplace and competition determine the standards, Arnn says.
National standards are unnecessary in higher education. There are already plenty of accountability tools available to students and their parents — starting with the ability to pick up and go elsewhere. … [U]niversities compete for students, donations and top-notch professors every year. We also know that those institutions that allow their standards to slip will soon find their best students and faculty members migrating elsewhere.
“Reform is certainly needed in higher education,” Arnn writes. “But we should be discussing tax credits, not uniform standards. We should be thinking about tax-free saving accounts for college rather than rules and subsidies.”
A capitalistic approach, to be sure. (Hey, it’s from the Wall Street Journal.) But I have to admit it sounds reasonable.
It’s Commencement Weekend for 
Andy writes! 