ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 20, 1996 TAG: 9610220116
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: J. WADE GILLEY
WHEN ALL is said and done, the most significant education proposal coming out of the 1996 presidential campaign has been President Clinton's proposal to give a $1,500 tax credit to college students - ``making a community-college education as universal as 12 years of public schooling are today.''
Yes, I know about the welfare-reform bill, the Dole tax-cut plan, the array of Clinton proposals for the environment and other initiatives of both candidates. However, the $1,500 tax credit proposed for college students is an enormous step down the path of dramatically reforming American higher education - and in the process giving America the competitive edge in the 21st century economy.
First, much of the United States' competitive advantage in the science-driven, communications-oriented world economy can be credited to the accumulated investment in its more than 3,000 colleges and universities. Second, higher education must change for the better if the nation is to continue its leadership in this new economy.
Consequently, there has been much thrashing about, both within the academy and from state-level political leaders in particular, redirecting, restructuring and generally attempting to reinvent American higher education. Restructuring, the use of technology to make institutions more effective and higher standards are all tactics driven by the desire to make our colleges better. Unfortunately, these efforts to date have been of little help because they focus on symptoms rather than on fundamental change.
However, larger forces are at work to reshape America's colleges and universities. President Clinton's tax-credit proposal will propel one of these forces forward and complement the others.
The three primary forces poised to effect change in our colleges are the trend of giving federal (and state) assistance to students, rather than to institutions; technology; and privatization.
Privatization, or out-sourcing, is increasingly being used to effect efficiencies, limit cost increases to students and allow institutions to focus more on their core business - the education of students. This is not unlike what is happening in business and industry.
Communications and computer technologies are rapidly developing the capacity to transform American education, especially our colleges and universities.
Both privatization and technology are proceeding at a steady pace to fundamentally reorganize colleges and universities in America.
However, it is the movement toward funding students, if carefully crafted, rather than institutions that will be the most powerful force in transforming the nation's colleges. As this trend gathers steam, institutions - particularly public institutions - will more and more pay attention to students and prospective students, instead of simply lobbying Congress or legislatures for more federal and state aid. This attention to student needs will do more to redirect institutional focus than all the external requirements to restructure.
The movement to give the money to students rather than institutions can be traced to the post-World War II period and to programs such as the GI Bill, the National Defense Education Act, what is now known as Pell Grants and the ``Middle Income Education Act'' of 1978. All focused on helping individual students financially.
During the same period, states launched their own programs to aid individual students, with particular attention to grants to those enrolling in private colleges and universities.
Today, almost all the federal resources that go to the general support of institutions go first to the student, then to the institution. President Clinton's proposal will dramatically accelerate that trend - and fundamentally change higher education in America.
Obviously, there are institutions - such as national, heavily endowed private colleges - that largely will be unaffected by this and other trends. But with the principle established that a community-college education for all is assured by federal initiative, the movement toward a student-funded rather than an institution-funded system will be affirmed and relentlessly pursued in the years ahead.
In the process, institutions will be confronted as never before with the prospect of negotiating with students and prospective students to gain access to funds. This market-driven system will revolutionize America's colleges and universities, and in the process will complement the other powerful forces of technology and privatization.
Some regulation will be required, including restraint on growth in tuition relative to increases in the cost of living, a requirement that states not have a commensurate decline in their assistance and, of course, that institutional certification, known as accreditation, be actively and rigorously enforced everywhere. These requirements will be essential - and relatively easy to achieve.
American higher education can be changed and dramatically improved by a simple but powerful idea - a $1,500 tax credit to each student or his or her parents.
J. Wade Gilley, president of Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va. and a former Virginia secretary of education, is author of several books on American higher education and its future.
LENGTH: Medium: 96 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: NANCY OHANIAN/Los Angeles Timesby CNB