The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, with a combined higher education membership of nearly 200,000, applaud the efforts of the National Commission on the Cost of Higher Education. The Commission's report deserves the serious attention of everyone concerned with the future of higher education.

The Commission's report stresses that higher education must take seriously the public's concern about college costs and make strenuous efforts to control costs. We agree. We are educators and we want the fruits of education to be available to all qualified students, regardless of their financial circumstances.

We have led the fight against declining state support for public higher education, which, the Commission notes, is a significant factor in raising tuition costs. We also share the Commission's concern about sharp increases in student borrowing and agree with the Commission's recommendation to maintain or increase federal student aid and correct the imbalance between grants and loans in federal student aid programs.

Importantly, the Commission recognizes the efforts colleges and universities have made in recent years to control costs, while calling on these institutions to do better, particularly in the area of making their finances more understandable within the academic community and to the general public. We concur. The Commission cited this lack of clear financial information as a leading cause of misperceptions about the real costs of a college education.

We echo the Commission's finding that the United States has a world-class system of higher education. We note the importance of controlling higher education costs without diminishing the quality of that education -- and of continuing policies that provide access to higher education for all of our citizens able and willing to do the work.

The Commission did not uncover waste, corruption, or malfeasance as contributors to the cost of higher education. Nor did it find skeletons in academia's closets. In particular, the Commission found little evidence that faculty salaries or workload have been villains in driving up tuition costs in the past decade. The Commission points out that student contact hours by faculty have been increasing, while the percentage of tenured faculty has declined. We note that faculty salaries have not kept pace with inflation and that there has been a significant increase in the use of part-time faculty.

We share the concern raised in the report that the rush by some institutions to spend money on technology has not resulted in cost savings. We add one concern of our own: The increasing reliance on part-time faculty may diminish the quality of instruction and may not be as significant a cost-saving as some institutions hope.

Specifically, the Commission challenges all higher education institutions to conduct self-reviews to find workable cost-saving strategies and to include all of the academic community in this self-study effort. The AFT and the NEA concur with this recommendation. We welcome the challenges and opportunities the Commission's report presents and look forward to working with Congress, the President, and other members of the higher education community to address the issues surrounding college costs.

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The American Federation of Teachers represents 950,000 teachers, school support staff, higher education faculty and staff, nurses and healthcare professionals, and state and municipal employees.

The National Education Association is the nation's largest professional employee organization, representing more than 2.3 million elementary and secondary teachers, higher education faculty, education support personnel, school administrators, retired educators, and students preparing to become teachers.

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