Advocate Online
On the Road
with Valerie Wilk
Recently, NEA's National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) President Kathy Randolph Sproles and I attended a national summit: "College Costs: Making Opportunity Affordable," hosted by the Lumina Foundation for Education, a group that promotes student access and success.
We were among some 350 higher education administrators, trade association representatives, national and state policymakers, and experts who convened to discuss solutions to rising costs in higher education.
Throughout the day we heard sobering statistics like: Only 10 percent of students from families in the nation's bottom economic quartile have the chance of getting a college degree vs. 80 percent of students from families in the top quartile, and that 250,000-500,000 capable students in the United States were unable to attend college last year.
While the focus was on students and institutions, for NCHE President Sproles and me the summit highlighted the challenges that NEA higher education members everywhere now face: privatization, work redesign, accountability measures à la No Child Left Behind, and increased workloads for increased productivity, to name a few. We heard comments from speakers and audience members like: "Curriculum should not be left to the academics." "Faculty are causing the increasing costs."
The need for higher education to teach students to be critical thinkers who have learned how to learn was a recurrent theme of the Lumina forum.
The opportunity and challenge for NEA and other higher education unions is to make a compelling case for higher education as a public good. We will continue to do that on Capitol Hill, in state legislatures, at the bargaining table, and in all of our work.
— Valerie Wilk coordinates NEA higher ed activities. |
