University Business - April 2007 - (Page 44)

College (D.C.). “I knew of the people, but now I know everyone, except the president.” Some members did offer speculation. Vedder had written a fairly provocative book, Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs Too Much (American Enterprise Institute Press, 2004), which he suspects caught someone’s eye in the West Wing. “One person said to me, ‘Mr. Miller says you have friend at the White House,’ ” says Vedder, adding that he has no clue to that friend’s identity. According to David Ward, president of the American Council on Education, “The agenda [Spellings] outlined seemed one that overlapped with my interests of equality and accountability.” Katie Haycock, director of The Education Trust, believes she was chosen for two reasons. “I’m a strong advocate for paying attention to lowincome and minority students,” she says, “and because I’m a strong proponent of accountability. This commission was clearly going to explore those issues.” The members got down to business and held a series of formal meetings across the nation, in which, just like Spellings urged, students and community leaders readily gave their opinions. “We probably heard from about 100 different people or more,” Vedder says. Nearly as many students as experts spoke before the commission. “The students told us they were finding themselves $70,000 in debt,” says Nunley. “They would like to become teachers, but they wouldn’t earn enough to pay off the debt.” “Why are you starting from scratch when 40 states already have this data?” —David Ward, American Council on Education Privacy Concerns The commission submitted its report—signed by 18 of its members—in August 2006. The report offered a broad range of proposals, some that drew wide support and some that led to dissension among members. One called for the creation of a giant database of every student in the United States—all 15 million students who attend the nation’s 42,000 degree-rated institutions. Known as the Unit Record Database, it would create student identification numbers that would anonymously link the students to their transcripts. Proponents say the information that could be gleaned from it would be priceless. “Can you go online and find what percentage of students go on to graduate in four or five years?” asks Vedder. “You can go online and find it, but a student of mine took a week to do it. What are the crime rates? How many students drop out? What do they learn in college? We don’t really know whether they leave college knowing more than they [did when they went] in.” But opponents of the Unit Record Database say it would allow an invasion of privacy on a par with certain provisions of the Patriot Act. To enact such a database, say some, Congress would first have to revise protections guaranteed under the Family Educa- tional Rights and Privacy Act. “Many commission members were concerned about privacy,” says Ward. “Creating the data set could signal abuse. Universities might give it to the draft board or to banks.” But Ward adds that while the privacy issues are important, his concerns were of a technical nature. Data sets on this grand a scale are difficult to compile, he says, and this was the biggest he had ever seen. (And as the former chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he’d come across some massive data sets.) “Why are you starting from scratch when 40 states already have this data?” he says. “You can get data from it, but you can also get the same data in other ways.” He was the only commission member to refrain from signing the report. First Aid for Financial Aid The commission’s report calls for simplification of the financial aid process by using existing income and tax data from the IRS to help students complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). “The FAFSA is far longer than the income tax form,” says Vedder. “Many people give up and miss out on financial aid and even college. There is a lot of data replication,” he adds. “Why should people fill out their federal income tax form and replicate it on another form? We have all that information elsewhere.” But it’s a legal issue: The IRS is not allowed to turn over the data to the Department of Education. The commission also said that students should be notified of their estimated aid eligibility before the spring of their last year in high school, in order to help them and their families plan 44 | April 2007 universitybusiness.com http://www.universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - April 2007

Contents
College Index
Company Index
Advisory Board
Editor's Note
Stats Watch
Sense of Place
Viewpoint
Admissions
Independent Outlook
On The Hill
Future Shock
Spellings Lessons
Identity Mangaement
Getting A Bigger Picture
Facility Directors Speak Out
Internet Technology
Working the Web
What's New
Calendar of Events
Direct Connect
End Note

University Business - April 2007

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