--- title: Education: Elizabeth Warren Finally Has the Right Idea description: 'Reform must take aim at the problem's root causes' canonical: https://time.com/3925511/elizabeth-warren-higher-education/ author: Judah Bellin article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-06-19T16:49:59.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:58:52.140Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Elizabeth Warren Finally Has the Right Idea on Higher Education og:description: 'Reform must take aim at the problem's root causes' og:url: https://time.com/3925511/elizabeth-warren-higher-education/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6964b2fee38042d4/6988556b3c163916e445876f/elizabeth-warren.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3000 og:image:height: 1688 og:image:alt: Joe Biden And Elizabeth Warren Address Good Jobs, Green Jobs Conference og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Elizabeth Warren Finally Has the Right Idea on Higher Education twitter:description: 'Reform must take aim at the problem's root causes' twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6964b2fee38042d4/6988556b3c163916e445876f/elizabeth-warren.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Elizabeth Warren Finally Has the Right Idea on Higher Education > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: Shaping The Future of Higher Education in America [Watch (HLS stream): Shaping The Future of Higher Education in America](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/RfYE3pzE.m3u8) (9:03)  _Published 2013-09-20. TIME's Rana Foroorhar discusses the next generation of students and faculty with John Degioia, Peter McPherson and Hunter Rawlings at 2013 TIME Summit on Higher Education_ by [Judah Bellin](https://time.com/author/judah-bellin/) ## Judah Bellin Jun 19, 2015 4:49 PM UTC  Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) delivers remarks during the Good Jobs Green Jobs National Conference at the Washington Hilton April 13, 2015 in Washington, DC. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) delivers remarks during the Good Jobs Green Jobs National Conference at the Washington Hilton April 13, 2015 in Washington, DC. Chip Somodevilla‚—Getty Images by [Judah Bellin](https://time.com/author/judah-bellin/) ## Judah Bellin Jun 19, 2015 4:49 PM UTC Senator Elizabeth Warren has been a vocal, if unsuccessful, advocate for higher-education reform. So far her efforts have either been unrealistic—such as her [proposal](http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/05/09/what-elizabeth-warren-gets-wrong-and-right-about-student-loans) to reduce student loan interest rates to below 1%—or insufficient, such as her push for [student loan refinancing](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/06/11/elizabeth-warrens-bill-to-refinance-student-loans-dies-in-senate-now-what/). But in a [speech](http://www.warren.senate.gov/?p=press%5Frelease&id=853) last week, Warren outlined a higher-education agenda that’s ambitious, prudent, and potentially game-changing. Our national student debt problem has a clear cause: the inflation-outpacing, federally abated rise of college tuition. The Department of Education provides students aid on the basis of their college’s cost of attendance, meaning colleges can raise prices knowing that the federal government will simply increase aid awards. College administrators thus face little incentive to keep costs down. Students, in turn, must rely increasingly on debt to finance their college education. Warren is likely the most prominent Democrat in recent memory to acknowledge these backwards incentives. “Conservatives are right,” she said. Colleges take advantage of the “availability of guaranteed federal loan and grant dollars” to raise tuition prices. She suggested that most colleges are completely unaccountable, since the federal government’s generosity ensures that “there’s far less pressure to hold costs down or to ensure that their services are worth the price.” Echoing a long-standing conservative critique of contemporary higher-education, she also decried the lavish amenities—the “fancy dorms, high-end student centers, climbing walls and lazy rivers”—and the bloated administrative bureaucracies that taxpayer dollars now fund. It’s worth noting the significance of this admission. Up until now, most mainstream higher-ed reform efforts have addressed the fallout from—not the causes of—our student debt problem. Take President Barack Obama’s higher-ed agenda. His signature proposals—a ratings system, loan forgiveness and free community college—take stock of, but do nothing to reverse, the prohibitive cost of a college degree. Bipartisan proposals to simplify the financial aid application process, provide information about colleges to future students, and clarify the legal status of so-called “equity contracts” similarly fall short. Warren, in contrast, understands that reform must take aim at the problem’s root causes, and that the way to ease student debt burdens is not simply to offer students more funding, but also to change the way we invest in colleges and increase college accountability. In her speech she called for “skin in the game” measures that require schools to face consequences for poor graduation and loan repayment outcomes, a requirement that schools spend a minimum proportion of federal aid dollars on education-related expenses, and a “shared savings” system that would allow colleges the keep federal aid dollars attached to students who graduate quickly. These ideas should please conservatives concerned with federal waste. In addition, Warren called for greater accountability from the Department of Education. Noting the department’s frequent failure to respond promptly to data requests and its infrequent testimony before Congress about student debt, she argued that the it must be more forthcoming. Conservatives concerned with government transparency can get behind this proposal, too. These ideas would certainly help improve the federal government’s return on its investment in higher education. But Warren and like-minded conservatives could go even further. While these proposals would ensure that schools spend their federal aid dollars wisely, it’s worth questioning whether schools should receive a federal guarantee at all. In that vein, Congress might consider making more generous federal aid awards contingent on a school’s graduation and loan-repayment outcomes. Congress could also delink aid awards from the cost of attending a specific college and tie them to an industry-wide cost of attendance, thereby removing the individual subsidy colleges receive. Warren also argued for increasing higher-ed funding at the state and federal levels. In a dramatic change from her previous efforts, she didn’t advocate for increased spending on student loans, which benefit primarily middle and upper-middle class students. Instead, she argued for increasing and making mandatory Pell Grant program spending to give poor students “a real chance at college.” While conservatives might squirm at the prospect of another mandatory spending program, they can certainly support the goal of promoting social mobility through higher education. Moreover, they might note that Congress can also help the poorest students by rededicating funding for programs designed explicitly for students with “exceptional financial need”—such as the Perkins Loans and Federal Supplemental Education Opportunity Grants—that policymakers have slashed in the recent decades. There’s fertile ground for bipartisan higher-ed reform. As Warren argued in her speech, conservative policymakers such as Senator Lamar Alexander and institutions such as the American Enterprise Institute already champion ideas similar to hers. Republicans and Democrats should seize the opportunity. ## Transcript And I have here with me Dr. John DiGioia from Georgetown University Peter McPherson. [ COUGH ] The president of the Association of Public and Land- Grant Universities and Hunter Rawlings III, the president of the Association of American Universities. So, we're gonna get started right away. Everybody's got only three minutes to summarize what I know was a pretty vibrant session. I popped in while you all were speaking. So I'm gonna start. With you John and just tell me, you know, what is the answer? I'm curious to what is an educated person is in the 21st century. It's such a huge question. So, we, we recognize that we build on a great foundation much of which was covered in our conversation this morning and lots of different dimensions. David Bwarren identifying the importance of community. Don Randall and Jim Duderstadt identifying the importance of integration, that the university is the one place where we're able to, to do two different kinds of integration. We, we take the formation of students, the discovery of knowledge and the contribution to the public good. And, and then blend those together in ways that are interlocking and interweaving. To think that we could pull out any one of those and [ SOUND ] [ COUGH ] university's would be a disaster. Also we model integration for our students, and so what, what we wanna do is ensure they have the ability to integrate the, the wide range of. Of ways of knowing that emerge in the context of our work. There are four key incites that emerge from our, our discussion, one is to recognize that we're, we're in a new, in a new period. That much of higher education that, that we know of today was created in response to the industrialization of the 19th century. And we, we are now in the 20th year since the internet became available to us as a tool and the need for enhancing digital literacy, has never, is now a, a possibility that we, we have to, have to see. At the same time we, need to recognize that, that core work of teaching and research of the liberal arts and the humanities, the integration of the pieces, requires great patience. We can't rush through this kind of work. We need to help instill in our public. A recognition of, of the need for patience. Let me jump in there. Sure. And just, with no patience. [ LAUGH ] And ask you, if you have one action point, that came out of your group, what would you say that's, what's most pressing, what needs to happen right now, to re- jigger this model, and make it more current? Well, I think a very powerful insight that emerged was a recognition that our students are gonna have to. Be prepared for a world in which they're gonna have different kinds of, of careers along the way. Whether, whether they're in one field or across many fields, they're going to be, they're gonna have to adapt. And whatever we do in our camps, [ INAUDIBLE ] have to ensure that our students have the ability to adapt over the course of their, their lives. Okay, that's a good one. Peter, I'm gonna move quickly on to you. You all discussed preparing next generation of faculty researchers and teachers. Tell me your key points. I'm going to pick up a couple things but, of course, there was much more. One, the feeling that, that new, that the faculty need to have some additional training, education, as to use of technology as well as the new cognitive learning sciences we have. We, we need to educate a lot more students, but across the board the quality needs to be high. That's point one. Point two as reported several different places, we think there needs to be federal government matches for both juniors faculty, as well as chairs. We think that the general maintenance of efforts provisions such as the stimulus package are very important and the match is really part of that. Three our students are gonna, are gonna continue to be even more diverse in this country and so it's important to have. Even more diverse faculty. Hm. And there was some discussion about how, how to do that and how to achieve that. fourth, we talked a good deal about about research in graduate students. Great concern that, that post docs are kind of in holding patterns for steadily longer periods of time in the sciences. And many of them don't actually go on to tenure track, and how to train, provide some training for such people. For alternative careers, just given the fact that most of them can attain the slots a good deal and much of additional rich discussion but given my three minutes [ CROSSTALK ]. You know what? I'm gonna, you're gonna get 30 more seconds and I'm gonna pick up in the diversity. I'm really good at my clock. I know you're amazing. I know you've got 50 more seconds. [ CROSSTALK ] [ LAUGH ] [ UNKNOWN ]. Just to pick up an adversity point because that's been made by a couple of other people this morning. What can be done? What is, what is, is there a silver bullet? What is the, the quick, low- hanging fruit there? Well, I, I mean I don't think there's one silver bullet. I think it's, like almost everything at a University, if you're gonna get it done you have to track it. Hm. And, and worry a lot about it with everybody. But one idea, and I think it's a good one, is undergraduate research experience is is a way to bring people in. We know that and in the sciences particularly there's a need for minority faculty increases. And having undergraduate science research experiences help not just for, for minority students, but for everybody. But there is [ INAUDIBLE ] one idea that was a very good one. Excellent, you did very well with timing. Hunter 21st century governance what's working, what's not? We broke it into two issues, the first was shared governance to what extent can the faculty still really engage in governance given how quickly Universities have to make decisions these days and how corporate they have become. And the second issue that we talked about was the role of governing boards themselves. And I'll just say a word about each. On the first one there was, there were a couple of very good points made about the meed, for example, to be much more disciplined in asking for faculty input, to require the faculty to do so in a timely fashion and make certain the faculty are well- prepared to do that. Secondly there was a suggestion that presidents should actually choose faculty groups to address different issues. And not simply rely on the faculty senate process for selecting faculty members who will participate. There was the threat of online education, that that has an disruptive effect on faculty and it's clearly gonna cause a lot of difficulties in the future. So again. Faculty have to be highly organized. Presidents have to be sharp in the way they communicate to faculty, if shared governance is going to be effective. The, the second issue is governing boards. And we had a discussion of private versus public. Private University Boards versus the efficacy of Public Boards. Several people said they thought public boards actually were performing relatively well. That system is never going to be perfect. And that, if you work closely with your governing board as the president, sometimes you might even have to go to the governor of the state and say I need a higher quality board. But you should be very forward in doing so to make certain that you get people on your board who are going to be solid and effective. So, I think there's a clear, clear view that governing boards have to be much more effective than they have in the past given the issues universities are confronting. That, that can work, at the public level, even though there've been signs in the last few years, that public boards have had some real breakdowns. I'm gonna follow up on your point about online education, because that's been such a big topic. You, you describe that as a threat, in some cases, to the current model. How can that be re- jiggered? How can it become more of an opportunity? Well the good thing is, I think, at the Universities represented in this room. It's, the faculty at these institutions who are conducting the experiments now with online education. So, they're actually the leaders, the ones who are out trying new things, some of which probably won't work very well, others of which are going to work quite well. So, I'm actually rather optimistic about this, even though it does cause a lot of concern and anxiety. And the second, great thing about this, is that faculty at research Universities are today actually talking about teaching. [ LAUGH ] That's a new and very good thing. That's, that's a great place to end. We've done very well with our speed round, and we have one second on the clock, and we're done. [ CROSSTALK ] So, enjoy the rest of your lunch and we'll be back in a little while. [ LAUGH ] [ NOISE ] Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks for being here. Alright, you dis, you [ INAUDIBLE ]. 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