New Report Supported By The Carnegie Corporation of New York, Addresses The Future Of Undergraduate Education
Nearly 90 percent of high school graduates can expect to enroll in an undergraduate institution, but only 60 percent earn a bachelor’s degree, and far too many are saddled with student loans that they struggle to repay. It’s an increasingly common scenario that the Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education addresses in a new report released today.
Two years in the making, The Future of Undergraduate Education, The Future of America provides a framework for helping colleges of every type work more efficiently and effectively to deal with pressing issues such as quality, affordability, and completion.
With support from Carnegie Corporation of New York, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences organized the commission. It conducted interviews with more than 200 students and faculty members, consulted with scores of experts, and visited more than 20 Congressional offices. The results are practical and actionable recommendations, including:
- Make degree completion a top institutional priority through the use of data to identify students in need of help and intervene with meaningful, personalized support.
- Improve the quality of undergraduate teaching by providing nontenure-track faculty members with fulltime positions and longer-term contracts.
- Establish a loan repayment plan that takes the recipient’s income into account to help prevent the borrower from defaulting.
- Track students across institutions and make financial aid contingent upon satisfactory academic progress.
- Restructure federally financed grants for low-income students (Pell Grants) to provide students with greater flexibility in meeting the requirements...