items tagged with American Enterprise Institute

Here at Free Exchange we often talk about priorities for higher education.  We argue that the Horowitz and ACTA crew are trying to get us focused on the wrong priorities, distracting the general public with an ideological agenda rather than focusing on real issues such as college access and affordability.  This week provides a perfect example of what we mean.  Let’s see what is happening out there with higher ed.

Yesterday, President Bush vetoed a bill passed by Congress that would have added almost $500 dollars to the maximum Pell grant.  The administration said the bill “spends too much.”

Today, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor is marking up its version of the Higher Education Act that would among other things seek to address the rising cost of college and would likewise seek to raise Pell grant funding by authorizing that the maximum Pell jump dramatically to $9,000.

Clearly, higher education is squarely in the political mix here inside the beltway as it is in many state legislatures around the country.  And the big question is how to help students attend and succeed in college without ruining their lives with debt.  Different policymakers have different ideas, but some version of this issue is generally held to be the main question facing this country with regard to higher education.

So you might expect a day long conference on higher education at the American Enterprise Institute to be looking at these fundamental questions.  Um, no.  They have decided to answer the ever-pressing question:  How can we “Reform the Politically Correct University.” To approach this critical topic, AEI has brought together an esteemed group of researchers whose research we took a look at here.

We have seen some of the “research” to be unveiled today, but we will hold our commentary until after we have heard all of the arguments and rest assured dear readers, we will let you know what happened.  Until then, we suggest you pay attention to what is happening in Congress since that actually has something to do with trying to help improve our system of higher of education rather than just throwing ideologically bombs at it.

The American Enterprise Institute has announced a day long echo chamber series of panels on "Reforming the Politically Correct University."  We will surely be talking about this more here at Free Exchange, but readers might want to start by looking at the agenda and comparing that to this.  Until then we will just have to hold our anticipation in check and wait until November 14, 2007 to see what rote arguments unexpected findings come from these discussions.  We can hardly wait.