This is a particularly important topic for students our age. Everyone, rich or poor, is concerned with the cost of education. As the readings show their is a trend toward more expensive higher education, more high school graduates, and less funding. This is a bad combination because it means public universities are expected to provide more for less… State financial aid and other initiatives to make higher education affordable are also failing to do so. Different things contributed to this such as the general economy not doing well and as stated in one of the readings, the lack of accountability. I found the accountability topic interesting when discussing the price and accessibility of higher education, because I normally only think of accountability in terms of quality, and not cost. The Accountability triangle that discussed state priorities (political), Academic Concerns (professional), and Market forces seemed very logical to me. I was wondering what the class thinks could be the easiest, or most feasible area of accountability to correct in order to make a better functioning system.
Another thing that was shocking to me is the graph of student state funding in the “Challenges for Financing Public Higher Education” reading. I could not understand the general trend toward less per pupil funding in higher education (specifically between 2001 and 2004). I would have thought that during such times people would put more emphasis on making education affordable, but it seems the opposite. I do not know if this is due to a lack of budgeting interest in terms of how state money is allocated, or if it is due to the higher number of high school graduates who are now utilizing this budget… I wonder if their is any more appropriate way to allocate these funds. Do you think that financial aid should be solely based on financial need, or also on grades, ethnicity, the school you go to, or any other factors that could make the system more “Fair.”
Personally, this reading was interesting because I never really realized the importance nation wide in the decline of higher education moneys. I have heard recently many stories of colleges doing poorly. For instance my friend at a College in Santa Fe actually had to finish school elsewhere because the college just one day closed due to funding, also I heard that Iona College recently filed for bankruptcy… Then I saw the numbers in this reading saying places like Nevada have lost up to 60% of their funding. This is apparently a huge trend which I was not really aware of, and should probably be made more public in order to have people begin to attempt and correct this problem. I know even the small changes in my financial aid here at CUNY Baruch are a big concern to me, so it would probably be wise on students, educators, and universities parts to attempt to work on these issues together in some way.
