As Republican candidates visit college campuses as part of their campaigns, a conservative vision for higher education has started to emerge, finally.
For John Kasich, that happened at Michigan State University. He explained his thoughts on higher education in broad strokes rather than concrete proposals, however, according to the Lansing State Journal.
He rejected the Democratic proposals of tuition-free or debt-free college. Instead, Kasich suggested that colleges needed to cut costs and disregard services not crucial to education. He suggested privatizing food services, leasing parking lots, and limiting the growth of college provisions to core educational services.
“We can’t slow down the cost of college,” he said. “Overhead is through the roof and colleges should be focusing on getting students in and out with the quality skills they need.”
Getting students through the college pipeline has been more difficult than many realize. Though colleges promote themselves to students on the basis of a four-year graduation plan, relatively few students hit that ideal. The four-year graduation rate in the United States is 39.4 percent. The six-year graduation rate, which the Department of Education uses as its default, is 59 percent. While two-thirds of students at four-year universities finish within six years of enrolling, students (and their parents) still think about college finances in terms of four years, not five or six.
An effort by colleges to help students finish a degree in four years could help lower costs. The less time spent enrolled in college, the less debt students can build. To a certain extent, however, federal policy would need to change before costs drop faster. With more student aid comes rising tuition prices. When students can pay more, college prices tend to creep up, so long as enrollment numbers aren’t hurt as a result.
The Kasich campaign also mentions performance-based funding is mentioned as a way to allocate funding. When colleges make progress on completion rates and keep costs low, they receive more funding. The model hasn’t been deeply tested, as only a few states have experimented with the approach, but it holds promise for a different approach to higher education.
Kasich needs a more robust explanation of higher education costs and how to make it more affordable for students. As he and other Republicans visit college campuses, however, a conservative approach to college could emerge beyond the ideas offered by Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio.
