In the past several years, online higher education has come under increased scrutiny by the federal government and policymakers.  As a relatively new trend, online education has been closely examined by some, not so closely examined by others, and has a number of critics.  In a recent report called “Odd Man Out: How Government Supports Private-Sector Innovation, Except in Education,” published by the American Enterprise Institute, author John Bailey notes that an acute lack of support and engagement from government agencies to the private sector in education is not only out of sync with other public-private enterprises, it is counterproductive in attempting to reform higher education. 

Bailey points out that the public sector has frequently employed the expertise of private industry in various attempts to solve the nation’s problems.  For example, in March 2010, President Obama reached out to private-sector businesses, agreeing to provide some $150 billion in support of those businesses developing an alternative to foreign oil.  He said to the CEOs in attendance, “’Your country needs you to mount a historic effort to end, once and for all, our dependence on foreign oil…And in this difficult endeavor, in this pursuit on which I believe our future depends, our country will support you.’” 

In another example, Bailey points out that the Review of US Human Spaceflight Plans Committee established by the White House Office of Space and Technology Policy recommended that NASA seek private sector assistance in developing commercial spacecraft.  “The review argued that this would free NASA to focus its attention and investment on developing more advanced capabilities, particularly in deep-space exploration.”  In each of these examples, a significant problem or dilemma has been acknowledged and government has rightly recognized that private sector innovation has the business agility and market understanding to propose and execute a meaningful solution.

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Last month the Delta Cost Project released its annual report on college spending, Trends in College Spending 1999-2009: Where Does the Money Come From?  Where Does It Go?  What Does It Buy?  Examining the decade between 1999 and 2009 the report paints a bleak picture of the current state of higher education spending with very small but notable improvements in specific areas. 

In general, the report finds that revenues are down and spending (overall and per student) reflects that decline.  Recession-related state budget cuts meant deep cuts to educational appropriations.  As a result, schools in every sector of the industry raised tuitions (in some cases significantly) in an attempt to make up that difference.  American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds may alleviate some pressure in the future but because most institutions did not begin receiving those funds until the last part of 2009, the impact of that funding source is not fully captured in the report. 

Some of the most striking statistics are related to community colleges.  In 2009 alone, community colleges were educating more than 6.5 million students, accounting for approximately one-third of all the nation’s college students.  Though shouldering a large portion of the burden of educating the nation’s college students, community colleges also saw the largest funding declines during the decade.   

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Last night I watched CNN and FoxNews for a while.  Both shows had panelists discussing the recent incident with the Nigerian terrorist on the Northwest/Delta flight to Detroit from Amsterdam.  Panelists discussed the fact that the terrorist’s father reported his concerns about his son’s radical activities to officials from Yemen, the U.S. embassy in Abuja, and the Central Intelligence Agency and yet, he did not land on a “do not fly” list.  I did not watch either of the shows to the end, primarily because the participants became engaged in partisan bickering that destroyed the sensibility of listening to both sides of the debate.  The failure of the intelligence agencies to engage in coordinated reporting for this incident led to the heated, partisan discussion.  Naturally, the discussion disintegrated when Republican participants stated that government workers are not disposed to working processes to perfection and that the same can be expected of the administration’s initiatives in healthcare and the cap and trade bill.  Panelists representing the administration and/or the Democrats resorted to blaming George Bush for the failure of the Department of Homeland Security and the moderators seemed to relish in the chaos rather than trying to rein in the discussion.

I was never a student of public policy, but because of its impact to my employer and myself, I have to be more than a bystander.  From my observations, it appears that healing and conciliation are no more than campaign promises from politicians on both sides of the aisle.  The breakdown appears to be more severe on a national level than a state and local government level, but that might be caused by the fact that state and local governments are required to balance their fiscal budgets and the federal government is the only entity allowed to print money to pay its bills.

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