We Need a National Postsecondary Education Commission (column)

Now and then, a ray of hope emerges that maybe we aren’t doomed to a permanent partisan war over what postsecondary education is and should be. One occurred this month when the last two U.S. under secretaries of education, Nicholas Kent and James Kvaal, actually found a good bit of common ground about the need for “value-based accountability” for colleges and universities.

Kvaal, who oversaw higher ed policy during the Biden administration, praised Kent and other architects of the Trump administration’s new rule that will end access to federal loans for degree programs that don’t help graduates earn more than high school diploma holders in their states.

That’s as close to a kumbaya moment as we get these days; we’ve seen little but partisan policymaking out of D.C. for at least a decade. To wit: The demagoguery against foreign students during the first Trump presidency, the Biden administration’s (over-)zealous pursuit of student debt relief and largely ineffectual crackdown on an already weakened for-profit college sector, and the all-out attacks on diversity, international students and research of the last 18 months.

The relative consensus between Kent and Kvaal made you dream, for a few minutes, at least, that it might be possible to return to the days when Congress and the executive branch mutually developed policies to make higher education better in service of the nation’s interests, as opposed to furthering political goals.

But given Congress’s dysfunctionality and President Trump’s hyperbolic stance toward colleges, it’s unreasonable to expect a truly thoughtful and fruitful postsecondary agenda out of D.C. in the next few years. And besides, as I wrote in this space a few weeks ago, most of us don’t want the government more involved—a truly effective, sustainable strategy for how we educate and train people after high school should be national but not more federal.

Finding a unified national strategy for postsecondary education and training won’t be easy; policymakers aren’t the only people at odds over what’s working and not. Divides are plentiful: between those who think colleges and universities need to focus more on career outcomes and those who believe an overly vocational emphasis degrades the life of the mind. Those who favor more use of technology to expand access for learners and help bend the cost curve against those who insist the technology tail has been wagging the educational dog for decades. And those who think we need to develop a new brand of diversity and inclusion that promotes equity for all Americans (including people of color, first-generation Americans and rural white men), versus those who, well, don’t.

But I believe there is a sizable, mostly silent middle—of the populace, of people who work in and around higher education, of policymakers, and probably even of politicians—who could align around a holistic, long-term strategy for educating and training American workers and citizens.

If, that is, we could find an influential, broad-based, nonpartisan entity to propose one. It’s time for a new national commission to do so.

There’s a long history of such groups emerging at important moments. The Truman Commission after World War II promoted much broader access to higher education and helped set the stage for the creation of community colleges. The Carnegie Commission on Higher Education in the late 1960s and early 1970s drove the creation of the Carnegie classifications, among other things.

And, most recently, the Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education, developed under President George W. Bush, published its report 20 years ago this fall, prodding higher education to pay closer attention to student learning outcomes and arguably inspiring much of today’s student success work.

Why We Need a New Commission Now

This is a pivotal moment for American postsecondary education and training. Yes, it hasn’t helped that President Trump has punished many of its leading institutions. But the biggest factor is that the world has been changing and colleges and universities have not kept pace, and the advent of generative artificial intelligence promises more and even faster change ahead.

As I’ve written previously, many of the most pressing problems in how we educate and train people after high school cannot be addressed without something approaching systemic solutions—the usual higher ed model of changing one institution at a time won’t meet the moment. I don’t need to catalog all of them here, but a short list would include:

• Rationalizing how the country finances education and training after high school to try to better target federal, state and other funds to individuals and providers when, and for what, they and society most need.
• Building a national education and workforce data system so we better understand how individuals move between learning and work and which credentials and experiences produce the most value for the most people.
• Devising a true cross-institutional framework for recognizing and awarding credit for learning earned both in the classroom and in the workplace, so students don’t have to waste time, energy and money retaking courses as they increasingly move among institutions and experiences.
• Developing an instructional workforce that meets the needs of today and tomorrow, focusing more on teaching than on research, on mentorship more than on delivering content and on meeting students’ needs more than on scholarly and disciplinary expertise. It will require changing how would-be professors are trained, hired, incentivized and rewarded.

More broadly, the commission’s work would focus on making our postsecondary education and training ecosystem better: making higher education more affordable, equitable and effective for those who choose that path; expanding and improving the range of options for those who choose not to go to a college or university; and better ensuring that we are moving toward a lifelong learning model for the kind of constant education and training the economy demands. This is essential both for individual thriving and to keep America globally competitive.

Who Should Undertake This Work?

Many past commissions on higher education have been government-appointed, but for this to be truly non- (or bi-)partisan, this one shouldn’t be. It would ideally be funded by either one organization or philanthropic group that has no clear agenda other than believing that all Americans deserve equitable access to high-quality education and training, or perhaps a group of funders who share that goal even if they come at it from slightly differing perspectives (in other words, one could conceivably bring together organizations like the Walton, Ford and Koch Foundations, say, behind this common cause).

They’d have to commit up front (and throughout) to letting the cards fall where they may in the commission’s ultimate recommendations.

In terms of who should be on the commission, we should aim high—for a mix of influential policymakers, business executives, college and university leaders, experts on education and the workforce, and others who can put the needs of learners and the country above their own interests. They can and should come from a range of ideological and other perspectives, but for this to work, they would have to be committed to finding solutions rather than scoring points. Bomb-throwers on the left and right need not apply.

The only way this commission would have influence is if its members produce a report that people (including politicians) of all stripes can rally around as rational, wise and feasible. Some of the likely “solutions” would not require the involvement of politicians, but those for which federal or state action would be needed would require buy-in earned by a combination of the wisdom of the ideas and the credibility of those proposing them.

In my ideal, this group (it’s too early to name names, but I’ve got plenty of ideas) would produce a bipartisan plan that leaders in both major political parties would feel comfortable embedding in their platforms, setting the course for a sensible, consistent, long-term strategy for developing talent, producing knowledge and making society better.