Last month, the Council on Foreign Relations’ (CFR) Renewing America initiative published a progress report and scorecard on federal education policy, providing striking comparisons between the US system and those found in other developed nations. The report sheds light on the grimmest details of federal education policy and the shortcomings that led to the nation’s decline in worldwide educational rankings.
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.