What Didn't Happen - But Just Might in the Future

Institutional autonomy

The new law does not include any provisions that would control admissions (except veterans’ readmission), prices, student outcome measures, academic content, or transfer of credit.  It does include non-binding “sense-of- Congress” language regarding student speech and association. 

Accreditation

Efforts to dictate rigid measures of student achievement were defeated and, in fact, the power of the Department of Education to interfere in this area was curtailed.  There are no public disclosures of internal reviews required by the new law. (More)

College Cost

There are no price controls in the new law (more).  Since 2003, we have pushed back proposals to:

• Cut off all Title IV funding other than loans and Pell Grants to institutions that increased tuition by more than twice the rate of inflation.
  
  
• Force institutions that exceeded the federally prescribed “college affordability index” to submit management action plans to the Department of Education, to be reported to their accreditors, and to be subject to audit by the Inspector General.
  
  
• Require the establishment of “quality-efficiency task forces” of outside “experts” to review the operations of the 5 percent of institutions with the highest cost increases.
  
  
• Require institutions to include net price information by income quartile in their admissions materials.