Guest Post: A Victory for the Status Quo on College Completion

By Travis Reindl

The new law that brought us health insurance reform and student loan reform reminds us that politics truly is the art of compromise. In order to achieve its primary goal of reforming health care and its secondary goal of ending the era of subsidies to big banks and boosting student aid, all within tight legislative parameters (i.e. the budget reconciliation process), the Obama administration had to trade away a few things. On the higher education front, one of the more significant casualties was the American Graduation Initiative, a $12 billion investment in state-level strategies to improve college completion rates.

Compromise is an essential part of the legislative process, especially when the stakes are high. Looking back, it is difficult—if not impossible—to identify a piece of major social legislation that did not involve real compromises. At the same time, it is important to be clear about the costs of compromise. In this case, the cost of compromise may very well be that our progress toward the president’s goal of regaining world leadership in college attainment by 2020 is slowed, if not halted entirely.

To be sure, the administration deserves credit for taking on the student loan industry and trying to expand access to college for low-income students. But the grand bargain struck just days ago raises three tough questions that some in Washington might just as soon not think about:

Will a significant increase in student financial aid improve college affordability? Make no mistake, the 12 percent increase in the maximum Pell Grant is a step in the right direction. But history shows that these increases are quickly gobbled up by tuition hikes, even in good times. These are not good times—states and their colleges and universities face unrelenting pressure to raise tuition even more than they already have (and to divert their institutional aid dollars to lure in wealthier students). Until we get a handle on the underlying causes of tuition—the costs associated with delivering a college education—we will continue to bemoan the lost purchasing power of the Pell Grant, no matter how much we put in the program.

What is the next step for the Administration when it comes to college completion? Yes, politics is about compromise, but it is also about messaging. The president certainly sent a forceful message about completion in his first address to Congress. But by agreeing to dump the American Graduation Initiative, the White House has signaled that completion is not as important a priority of the administration as we were led to believe. A real compromise might have been to keep AGI and scale back some other elements of the package. And while the philanthropic community has succeeded in launching a new national nonprofit dedicated to college completion and has gotten 18 governors to sign on to a completion agenda, a truly national effort requires at least some degree of federal leadership and investment. 

Has the “no” crowd won again when it comes to better data? One of the victims of the compromise was funding for stronger state data systems that could link K-12, postsecondary education, and the workforce. The original bill’s provisions on this were not perfect—far from it. But they did represent a step forward, particularly for cash-strapped states that have relatively weak capacity to assess what happens to their students. The administration has indicated that community colleges are a key part of their education policy agenda, and improving data must be part of that agenda.

One of the biggest winners in this bargain appears to be the higher education lobbyists who make up the One Dupont Circle crowd. After all, they got the increase in Pell that they wanted and dodged most of what they really didn’t want — namely, an investment in state policy reform related to higher education and a change to the Perkins Loan program that would have distributed the money much more fairly. To paraphrase Mark Twain, it appears as though reports of their impending irrelevance may be somewhat exaggerated.

These are not easy issues. If they were, we would have resolved them by now. But an administration that campaigned on the platform of “change we can believe in” is going to have to do more to show that it is serious about college completion. The pressure is on for the White House to move beyond talk about reclaiming world leadership in college attainment, and for the Washington higher education community to advocate for something other than more money to continue business as usual.

One lesson this administration can learn from its predecessor is the risk of premature celebration. Stringing up the “Mission Accomplished” banner on college access and affordability now will only lead to problems later.

Travis Reindl is the state policy and campaigns director at CommunicationWorks, a public affairs firm that specializes in educational improvement. Prior to joining the firm, he had 15 years of experience in higher education policy and advocacy. Most recently, he served as program director at Jobs for the Future, where he led a national initiative focused on increasing productivity in higher education. Before that, he headed the state policy analysis unit at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. He has written extensively on issues of college affordability, accountability, and governance. His views are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New America Foundation.