Letters & Op-Eds

April 17, 2012

Letters to the Editor
Washington Post

Re: "Online comparison-shopping tool makes costs of college clearer," Michelle Singletary column, April 14

To the Editor:

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's college cost website can be useful for comparing financial aid award letters and is graphically appealing. However, the site's entry point provides confusing and inaccurate information that muddies the true cost of college.

From the site's estimates of average annual debt, it is clear CFPB is failing to use federal data sources correctly. CFPB grossly overestimates the average annual debt of students at four-year private and public colleges. The reported numbers are actually closer to the average total debt of graduates, according to Project on Student Debt data. CFPB also fails to take into account Federal Work-Study; federal tax benefits; loan forgiveness; money contributed by students from summer jobs; and funds from family savings.

It is unfortunate CFPB launched its site in April, just as students are deciding their college choice. The CFPB needs to pull the site down until it has fixed the confusing terminology and inaccurate data. Until then, students and their families should be wary of it. Instead, turn to the other federal and private-sector resources available, use the net price calculators available on every college website, and talk to college financial aid offices. These steps, not the CFPB site, will make the costs of college clearer.

Sincerely,

David L. Warren
President
National Association of Independent Colleges & Universities

Letters to the Editor
Washington Post

To the Editor:

While I agree higher education must continue to find new efficiencies, cut costs, and improve affordability (Editorial, "Some welcome steps toward reducing the cost of college," Dec. 2), I find it deeply disturbing that the Post buys into the urban myth that federal student aid is a college cost driver. Federal studies conducted during the George W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations*, and most education economists, have found no evidence that federal student aid fuels tuition increases.

The recent actions of private, nonprofit colleges also refute the myth. In the past three years, despite increased funding for Pell Grants, higher education tax benefits, and other federal student aid, our colleges have kept tuition increases to the lowest levels seen in decades (an average annual increase of 4.4 percent since 2009). Just as important, they have increased institutionally provided student aid at a faster rate over the same period, boosting aid an average of 7.6 percent annually. Inflation-adjusted net tuition and fees at private, nonprofit colleges have actually dropped by 4.1 percent in the past five years, according to the College Board.

At a time when billions of dollars in federal student aid funding is at stake, it is counterproductive for the Post to wrongly suggest that student aid is a cause for growing college costs. Without the continued federal investment in student aid, a college degree will be a lost dream for millions of low- and middle-income Americans. It is too important to the nation and these students to abandon them now.

Sincerely,

David L. Warren
President
National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities
Washington, D.C.

* Study of College Costs and Prices, 1988-89 to 1997-98, Vol.1, National Center for Education Statistics, December 2001; Straight Talk about College Costs & Prices, National Commission on the Cost of Higher Education, February 1998

Trinity College Professor Stefanie Chambers reminded me that in a world overloaded with media and information, students need critical thinking and writing skills more than ever. The problem is that things really have changed dramatically since the high water mark for liberal arts education in the 1960s. We live in a time when college graduates depart campus with an average of $24,000 in loans and the unemployment rate for people in their early 20s is more than 14 percent. Is it fair to pretend that a true liberal arts education should not have anything to do with paying the bills later in life?

Education Trust's unreasonable, if not outlandish, research assumptions and untested data lead to research findings that generate sensational headlines and have the potential to detract from serious policy discussions. It strains credibility for Education Trust to report that less than one-half percent of U.S. four-year colleges and universities effectively serve low-income students.

Letters to the Editor
Christian Science Monitor

October 8, 2010

To the Editor:

There's a touch of irony here: In response to what you view as "biased bashing of career schools" by the Obama administration (The Monitor's View, October 7), you respond with your own biased bashing of traditional colleges. That's hardly an example of the kind of accountability for all of American higher education which you claim to seek.

Without adding an additional layer of hyperbole to this volatile issue, I do want to correct some of the basic misperceptions about non-profit colleges perpetuated in your recent editorial.

• 40,000 of the 53,000 programs that the administration seeks to regulate under the proposed Gainful Employment regulations are at public and non-profit institutions. It is false for you to claim that these programs are only at, or even predominately at, for-profit colleges.

• Non-profit colleges - like all sectors - serve the poor, the less-academically prepared, and adult learners. It has been a long-established fact that non-profit colleges have the greatest success rate with these students. In fact, we have recently posted a publicly available list of more than 500 of the programs contributing to this success (www.buildingblocks2020.org). Our hope is that by sharing this with institutions across all of higher education - including for-profit schools - we can all do more to help our nation reach the 2020 goal of being first in the world in college completion.

• Many of our colleges are engaged in such initiatives as online learning, three-year degree programs, summer programs, and satellite campuses, in order to more effectively serve the diverse needs of an increasingly diverse college-going population.

All of us should make sure that the students who are counting on America's higher education system aren't failed by it, and that in supporting that system, taxpayers' dollars are not wasted. Those should be the key points on which any federal oversight of higher education should be based.

As you seek to defend one sector of higher education, it is not necessary to do so by attacking other sectors with myths and innuendos. Your readers depend on information resources like the Christian Science Monitor to sort fact from myth.

David L. Warren
President
National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities
Washington, D.C.