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Earlham President Assumes For Immediate Release: RICHMOND, Ind. — Earlham President Doug Bennett’s role as a college administrator just got a lot larger. While continuing to lead the affairs of his own institution, Bennett for the next year also will speak and act on behalf of nearly 1,000 other U.S. colleges and universities as the newly installed chairman of the board of directors of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU). 
Vice chairman of the NAICU board in 2004, Bennett was elected to head the 48-member panel, composed primarily of college presidents, during the association’s recent annual meeting in Washington, D.C. He assumes the post just as Congress prepares to take up its much delayed re-authorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA), which governs billions of dollars of federal spending on post-secondary education, and as controversy continues to envelope many of the nation’s campuses regarding a veritable “A-list” of issues: accessibility, affordability, accountability and academic freedom. Asked whether he views the confluence of events — Congressional re-examination and renewal of the Higher Education Act (regulating, among other things, federal student aid programs) and his contemporaneous selection as NAICU board chair — as a particularly daunting challenge or an especially fortuitous opportunity to help shape higher education policy well into the next decade, Bennett smiles and admits to having mixed feelings. “Candidly,” offers Bennett, president and professor of political science at Earlham since 1997, “when I was serving as vice chair, knowing that I would become chairman this year, it seemed pretty obvious to me that re-authorization was going to be just behind us when I took over the board. And that would have been fine, because it (HEA) tended to dominate NAICU’s policy cycle — this is our third run-up towards this re-authorization — and I’ve always felt there are many broader issues we also need to be concerned with. “At the same time, which is to say today, this re-authorization continues to suggest significant changes in the way the federal government addresses its relationships in higher education, especially with independent colleges and universities and particularly involving areas of accountability. It’s important that we (NAICU) be a part of that discussion, and so I’m grateful to have the opportunity to represent our membership and do so from a certain enhanced position of leadership.” How Big Brother? Helping to derail the last two attempts by Congress to re-authorize the HEA were contentious debates over both the nature and the extent of government oversight concerning what, Bennett insists, are “not public creatures”: the country’s independent colleges and universities. Half of the approximately 3,700 colleges and universities in the United States are private. Each year they enroll more than three million students or roughly 21 percent of all U.S. college students. “At what point does government oversight become inappropriate for independent colleges and counterproductive for the students and families we serve?” wonders Bennett, who doesn’t deny outright that the government should have some partnership role in seeing to the continued high quality of American higher education (and specifically, when it comes to federal funds intended to encourage and support select programs). But, who also is aware that often efforts to expand the size and shape of that role, while well-meaning, may have unintended consequences. “A lot of things can kind of drift into that net” if it gets too big, says Bennett. “For instance, should the federal government control college prices? Or, should institutions where tuition increases beyond the rate of inflation be penalized? We see some of these questions being raised right now. But, are controls on price setting at independent institutions either appropriate or effective? “As I see it, if the government is so interested in containing college costs, the first thing it needs to understand is that every new regulation it places on us (institutions of higher learning) in terms of assessing, reporting, record keeping and other things increases our costs.” Then again, Bennett, who keeps a sign that proclaims “It’s All About the Students” prominently displayed in his office, believes a far more substantive discussion of money issues related to higher education can and should be had in the area of student financial aid. “Nationally, our approach to financing higher education, in terms of making it available to all who wish to pursue it, is broken and has been for a long time,” Bennett says. “The first slice should go to those students with the greatest financial need. But, the federal government has not kept pace with what it needs to do to meet that commitment, even though the entire nation benefits when more people gain a college education. Instead, in recent years the biggest shift of these costs has been toward families and institutions.” Colleges and universities, especially, have felt the additional burden, says Bennett, who fairly bristles at suggestions that his fellow presidents, their boards of trustees and financial officers are insensitive to the escalating costs of obtaining one’s degree. He points out research indicating that at independent colleges and universities, the average, inflation-adjusted “out-of-pocket” costs borne by students and families have not gone up in a decade. “By implication, then, it’s the various institutions that are making up the gap, much to their credit,” Bennett says. “However, as the overall number and percentage of college students from low-income backgrounds skyrocket over the next 10 years, the strains on institutional finances will be unimaginable. It is absolutely crucial that the federal government step up to the plate.” Satisfying an “Incomplete” Although the so-called “College Cost Crisis” has tended to dominate the attention of members of Congress and the media since the country’s general economic recession in 2001, Bennett says within the realm of higher education itself the past few years there’s been greater concentration on quite a different, though no less significant, issue. That is, how do all of the nation’s colleges and universities guarantee that students really are learning what they’re supposed to be learning? According to Bennett, while a 2004 study by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education awarded each state various marks for higher education-related performance in such categories as student preparation, student participation, affordability and degree completion, on the question of actual learning compilers of the biennial National Report Card on Higher Education could assign each jurisdiction only an “incomplete.” The reason given by the center’s researchers for the “incomplete” scores is that they cannot find a standardized means for assessment. While some have suggested what amount to competency tests, akin to those that many states administer to high school students as a prerequisite for graduation, Bennett says the incredible diversity of courses at the college level, many of them unique or highly specialized, would make implementing that sort of proposal extremely difficult from a practical point of view. “Clearly, that’s a bad idea,” says Bennett. “This is not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ kind of question. But, one way or another it’s a question that needs to be resolved. All of the states are working on it, and I’m confident that NAICU will be examining the issue, as well.” — EC — Contact:
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Earlham
College · 801 National Road West · Richmond,
Indiana 47374-4095 |