^{Go directly to the original of the resource described below.}

[A]t the very core of the quality assurance process is the necessity for colleges and universities to clearly and unambiguously demonstrate student mastery of both discipline-specific and general education competencies in a fashion that is transparent to those both inside and outside of the academy.

• “The Future of Accreditation” by Judith S. Eaton
• “Accreditation and the Public Interest: Can Accreditors Continue to Play a Central Role in Public Policy?” by Terry W. Hartle
• “What’s an Accrediting Agency Supposed to Do? Institutional Quality and Improvement vs. Regulatory Compliance” by Elizabeth H. Sibolski
• “AQIP and Accreditation: Improving Quality and Performance” by Stephen D. Spangehl
• “Show Me the Learning: Value, Accreditation, and the Quality of the Degree” by Terrel L. Rhodes

SCUP members can visit their journal and download the entire issue, or selected articles as PDFs, MOBI (Kindle), and EPUB (iPad/iPhone and many Androids). About the contents, Middaugh writes:

The implications for planners of the issues raised in these five articles are both immediate and profound. How does higher education preserve and protect the integrity

of the peer evaluation process in quality assurance and,at the same time, responsibly address calls for greater transparency and accountability from the government and other entities? How do colleges and universities best work with their regional accrediting bodies to ensure the integrity of educational services provided under Title IV financial aid without having those accrediting bodies morph into the “accreditation police”? And at the very core of the quality assurance process is the necessity for colleges and universities to clearly and unambiguously demonstrate student mastery of both discipline-specific and general education competencies in a fashion that is transparent to those both inside and outside of the academy. The editorial staff of Planning for Higher Education is deeply grateful to the five authors who have so generously contributed to this issue of the journal. Their insights are quite provocative and provide substantial material for those of us whose planning activity is immersed in improving the quality of our institutions. (emphasis added)

"Slip-Sliding Away: An Anxious Public Talks About Today's Economy And The American Dream," is a report from Public Agenda which finds that the number one financial concern of economically-stressed Americans who also have children is college affordability. Also high on Americans' priorities, stressed financially or not: Social security and retirement benefits and job training.

If this isn't an indication of high demand for higher education, we don't know what is:

When it comes to what would be "very effective" in helping people become economically secure, the public puts its faith in higher education and job training, along with preserving programs like Social Security and Medicare. These are the top three solutions among both those who are struggling and those who aren't.

"Making higher education more affordable" led the list overall (63 percent) and among those who say they're struggling (65 percent). Preserving Social Security and Medicare was next at 58 percent (62 percent among the struggling) and expanding job-training programs came in third at 54 percent (56 percent for the struggling).

Neither cutting taxes for the middle class (48 percent) nor reducing the federal deficit (40 percent) get majority support, and other options rate even lower. ...

One reason for the faith in education may be the public's perception of who's struggling the most in the current economy. Three-quarters of Americans say that people without college degrees are struggling a lot these days, compared to just half who say college graduates are struggling.

Diane Auer Jones is a former Bush administration department of education official who is now employed in for-profit education world. In this aggressive post to The Chronicle's blog, Brainstorm, she takes on some regulatory changes by the Obama administration and posits them as mostly about hindering the uses of information technology. The entire piece includes no mention of her employment or of the fact that the new regulations are intended to cope with quality control issues by some major for-profit competitors.

It will not be long before students in brick-and-mortar classrooms will be required to have clickers in their hands so that they can press the button every 15 minutes to prove they are awake and in the room, and so that a computer can record each time they raise their electronic hand to ask or answer a question. Faculty members will need to preserve thousands of e-mails to show that they interacted with a student, even if he or she missed class on a given day. I guess faculty will be required to keep electronic logs of who visited during office hours, too. ...

You are absolutely correct, Mr. President, that the world has changed. So maybe it is time for your Department of Education to realize that the students of tomorrow will not be educated with chalkboards and overheads, no matter how much those of us who are over 40 wish to relish the glory days of our own college past. I challenge anyone who questions the quality of online education to sign up for an online course to see first hand just what it is like. Go ahead. Do it. Come back and tell us how it was. But for those who have never experienced online learning or teaching first hand, perhaps it is time to stop parroting hearsay and start making some evidence-based observations of their own.

Thank you, Mr. President, for recognizing that technology has changed our world. It is now time to allow technology to change higher education.

The document is titled Quality Higher Education for the 21st Century. It was prepared by the California Faculty Association and reviewed last week by faculty representatives from 21 states. 

The report: Feedback is requested. From Inside Higher Ed, a report on the report and the meeting from Dan Berrett:

And yet, the draft document prepared by the CFA advocates for more public investment in higher education. While this position is politically difficult, it represents sound policy, several faculty members said. “The irony is that not investing is dangerous for the future,” said Landy.

Some argued that cost efficiencies could be better realized in places other than the classroom, such as administration. When colleges put less than 50 percent of their budgets into what goes on in class, it is, said Taiz, "plain, flat-out crazy."

Another place to cut might be sports, or new facilities projects, some said. Roiblatt pointed to the $38 million renovation of a health, physical education and recreation building featuring space on her campus for student health services, fitness centers, a jogging track, gyms, locker rooms, café and classrooms. "The institution seems to have plenty of money for edifices," she said. "It seems like that is never questioned -- even when the dollars are enormous."

 In The New York Times, Tamar Lewin writes about how tuition payments are exceeding state appropriations, and some of the possible consequences foreseen by higher education professionals. Examples in this article focus on California and South Caroline.

Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers:

“The difference between this downturn and others in the past is that this time I don’t think higher education will be able to recover the ground it’s lost,” said Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers. “I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t see that money coming back. And with tuition already out of reach for many folks, I don’t think there’s much ability to keep raising it.”

Mark Yudoff, president of the University of California system:

“If approved, this budget will mean that for the first time in our long history, tuition paid by University of California students and their families will exceed the state’s contribution to the core fund,” Mark Yudof, the president of the University of California system, told the Board of Regents. “For those who believe what we provide is a public good, not a private one, this is a sad threshold to cross.”

We have seen a considerable flurry of recent reports indicating some serious cutbacks in higher education budgets in some states. According to a new SHEEO/CSEP report that is being released today, states are spending $79B on higher ed in 2011, down only .7% from last year. But those cuts are not evenly spread. Texas, California, and Arizona, for example, are imposing more severe cuts. This is a summary from Inside Higher Ed's Scott Jaschik, who was able to peruse an early copy of the report. Here is a report from The Chronicle of Higher Education's Eric Kelderman. From Jaschik:

Notably, however, there were six states where the percentage losses were in double digits: Missouri (down 13.5 percent); Delaware (12.4 percent); Iowa (12.2 percent); Minnesota (11.7 percent); Arizona (11.6 percent) and Oregon (10.8 percent). Only one state reported a double-digit increase: Wyoming (up 24.7 percent).

While states use different financial procedures to support higher education, the Illinois State-SHEEO study is considered the definitive source on state appropriations, with consistent rules for what is counted (state funds for operating support and student aid) and what's not (funds for building projects and tuition revenue). Federal research grants (a significant budget line for research universities) aren't counted, but the federal stimulus "stabilization" funds -- which were intended to support the operations of public schools and colleges -- are included because they support the same purposes as general state appropriations for higher ed.

The state of Arizona proposes to cut community college funding by 50%. Texas is cutting also, and closing four campuses.

No, this is not a larger-scale Walnut College Case Study; it's real-world 2011.

"Dean Dad" asks you, what would you cut if you were a community college CFO in Arizona?

To get a sense of just how bad this is, you could reduce every salary at the college by 25 percent, and still not make up the gap. (That's because labor isn't the only cost.) Alternately, you could lay off 25 percent of the employees and still not make up the gap.

The 'squishy' things would be the first to go. That means travel, professional development, and food for college functions. This adds up to well under 1 percent.

Obviously, any new full-time hiring for non-unique positions is out of the question. Normal attrition, unreplaced on the staff side and adjuncted-out on the faculty side, might get you another percentage or two.

This Business Officer document is blurbed, "Stimulus funds for university research can be a mixed blessing, causing an institution’s facilities and administration rate to shrink. A case study presents strategies to keep rates in check."

The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) presented higher education institutions with an unprecedented level of funding to expand and improve their research opportunities. Since ARRA's creation in February 2009, however, the government and academic community have debated the best approach to accounting for the additional funding and capturing its effect on facilities and administration (F&A) rates—the amount of overhead, or indirect costs, associated with federally funded research that universities can recoup.

The government, understandably, wants justification of every ARRA dollar awarded; ARRA grants come with a host of documentation and reporting requirements. Equally understandably, universities with increasingly tight budgets seek to recover from the government a significant percentage of their overhead costs. These costs have escalated with ARRA's administrative requirements, as universities must devote more staff time to gathering and submitting the required data. Given the government's regulations and stance in F&A rate negotiations, university leaders now question whether they'll be picking up more of the research tab—and, if so, just how much it could cost them.

Quite an in-depth look at Phoenix University founder, John Sperling, in the context of finances and the current various controversies and political battles around for-profit institutions. For most SCUPers, this article will provide background they have not previously known. 

As a humanities professor at San Jose State University from 1961 to 1973, John Sperling pioneered remedial reading classes for Mexican Americans and courses in social problems for police officers.

Defying the education establishment, he expanded such programs into the for-profit University of Phoenix, now largely online and the biggest U.S. university, with almost 500,000 students. ...

Phoenix’s quest for acceptance was “was one nasty, brutal, bare-knuckled fight,” said Murphy, 64, a screenwriter and producer who is writing a history of the University of Phoenix during his time there. “Everything we did drove traditional education into absolute apoplexy. We didn’t know on Friday if we’d be open for business on Monday.” At the urging of Phoenix’s vice president for product development, Sperling started an online campus in 1989 and stuck with it through unprofitable years. “He persisted when virtually all of the institution was opposed to the idea,” Tucker said. ...

In 1998, 65 percent of Phoenix’s 53,200 students attained degrees, Klor de Alva said. By contrast, two-thirds of the associate’s degree students and half of the bachelor’s degree candidates who entered Phoenix from July 2008 to June 2009 withdrew by August 2010, according to a Senate education committee report. The median length of enrollment at Phoenix is about four months. ...

Because most of its students were low-income and qualified for federal grants and loans, Axia fostered Phoenix’s dependence on its biggest source of funds, the Education Department. Phoenix derived 88 percent of its revenue from federal student aid in the year ended Aug. 31, up from 48 percent in fiscal 2001.

Jerry Bowyer has a fairly pronounced point of view regarding a bubble phase in higher education and thinks that, from a financial perspective, college education may not be "worth it." It's best to read some of what folks like this are writing about, if only because of who else is reading them. It's the first time we have seen what we consider to be a value of an education (that it can't be taken away) described as a negative (that also means you can't sell it to someone else, used):

And things are only going to get worse. To call the policy drift of the Obama administration pro-college is an understatement. College is becoming the new high school, and the recent nationalization of secondary education financing affords a policy lever through which capital can be shoe-horned toward the only industry in which our president worked for an appreciable span of his life.

Progressivity of income tax rates only shrinks the College E differential. And, most troubling of all, so far the data on the current recovery indicate that a college degree is dropping in employment value relative to the alternative. Perhaps the alleged intangible benefits of a degree--status, socialization and sophistication--can outweigh the increasingly heavy costs, but taken as an economic proposition, a college degree is looking more and more like Nasdaq circa 1999, or Nevada housing circa 2007. Caveat emptor.