It's time to rethink rising costs of higher education

Chris Murphy is 40. Brian Schatz is 41. Both still are paying off student loans and both are concerned about the ever-rising cost of higher education in the U.S.

Both also are U.S. senators. That means they are in position to do something. Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, and Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, want to use federal funding as leverage to slow down the cost spiral.

"Like so many other families across the country, we and our spouses continue to pay off our own student loans at the same time we are saving for our children's college funds," the two wrote in an article published by politico.com. "We need aggressive reform whereby federal dollars do not simply subsidize out of control costs, but instead create real incentives for schools to lower the cost of college."

They want institutions to question the assumption that every program has to consist of a given number of credit hours over four years. They also want schools to experiment with awarding degrees based on competence and giving credit for prior learning. Undergraduate and graduate programs should be consolidated whenever possible, they wrote.

"President Obama was correct in saying that it's time for America to talk about whether it should take seven years to become a lawyer, or whether students must spend a decade learning before they can be a certified physician," the two wrote.

The points are well-taken, though we must note that there already is a lot of innovative thinking going on, especially at the community-college level. Early College is a five-year program leading both to a high-school diploma and an associate degree. Many vocational programs offer certificates rather than degrees with curricula geared to workplace needs.

Still, there is room for more reform. The senators want a commission of students, education experts and others to recommend minimum standards for colleges to remain eligible for federal student-aid money. Murphy wants schools to pay back 10 percent of that funding if they fall short for two years and 20 percent if they fail a third year. Fail four years and aid would be cut off.

One obvious criterion would be loan default rate. The danger here is that penalizing schools based on default rates could work against schools that serve low-income students, said Debra Humphreys of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

"You run a real risk of building into the system an incentive to only serve the easiest to educate," she said. "We have to do a better job educating poor kids. ... The last thing you want to do is to incentivize an institution to not serve those students."

The senators are on target, however, when they cite for-profit outfits with sky-high default rates. "About 40 percent of students who take out loans to attend for-profit universities end up in default, either due to the enormity of their debt or their inability to gain employment," they wrote. "We must demand that schools achieve reasonable benchmarks."

One thing the commission should consider is the proposed legislation by Sens. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., and Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, that would forbid schools from using student-loan money for advertising. Some for-profit entities get as much as 90 percent of their income from student loans and use 20 percent of their income for advertising. They are using loan money not to educate the students they have but to advertise for more students.

Reform won't be easy, but it must be undertaken if we do not want to risk "putting college out of reach for millions of American families," as the Senate's two loan-paying members put it.

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It's time to rethink rising costs of higher education

Chris Murphy is 40. Brian Schatz is 41. Both still are paying off student loans and both are concerned about the ever-rising cost of higher education in the U.S.