An Article in the Chronicle of Higher Education in Response to the December 15 Open Letter to Congress

Last month I published an article about the December 15 letter to Congress requesting that six percent of President Elect Obama’s economic stimulus package be allocated to higher education.  The fifteen higher ed associations that drafted the letter, in my opinion, neglected some of the pressing issues that most in the online higher education community understand quite well.  Specifically, the letter seemingly altogether ignores the needs of students attending classes less than half-time and the initiatives of for-profit institutions to provide quality educational opportunities.  In the January 30 edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Milton Greenberg, professor emeritus at American University, also calls the fundamental tenets of the letter into question.  The points in Greenberg’s article are worth considering and I especially liked his emphasis on the fact that to change the state of higher education today, we should first look at improving the quality of elementary and secondary education in America.