New Article: Can This Man Save the Public University

Today the Washington Monthly published its annual 2015 College Rankings, and with it an article on F. King Alexander, the president of Louisiana State University and one of the most outspoken critics of the federal government’s current role in higher education policy.

King is the go-to source for higher education reporters looking for a good quote on whatever new federal policy proposal is on the table. This is partly because he is so candid, but also because his opinions are at odds with those of many college presidents, for instance, when he wrote an op-ed in favor of President Obama’s now doomed college ratings plan.

A college president asking for the federal government to hold him more accountable may seem strange, but it is all in the name of saving public higher education. This profile examines the history of federal higher education policy and King Alexander’s motives and ideas for changing it.

The plate tectonics of higher education are rumbling. Fiscal and ideological pressures are pushing toward a clash over the role of the federal government in higher education. For many years, the Democrats were primarily focused on making the existing student aid program more generous. But with $1.2 trillion in outstanding federal student loan debt and continued state disinvestment in public higher education, Democrats are quickly coming around, as the hearing suggests, to King’s view that pumping ever-more resources into federal student aid is a mug’s game. The basic rules need to change. HEA reauthorization is one vehicle for that change, but given GOP resistance and the general gridlock in Congress, it’s probably not the most promising one. Instead, this is an issue that’s likely to play out in the presidential race. Democratic presidential candidates have already started to appeal to their progressive base by talking about “debt-free college,” and the emerging details of these plans all revolve around the federal government forcing states to fund public higher education. To make their case, the candidates need allies knowledgeable enough about the complicated policy architecture of federal-state higher education funding to advise them, and credible enough to be spokespeople for the needed changes. More than anyone else, that person is F. King Alexander.

Read the full article here“