Panel urges shakeup of higher education / Proficiency testing, quality checks, aid changes proposed

Panel urges shakeup of higher education / Proficiency testing, quality checks, aid changes proposed

Washington -- A federal commission approved a final report on Thursday that urges a broad shakeup of American higher education, calling for public universities to measure student learning with standardized tests, for federal monitoring of colleges' quality, and for sweeping changes to the financial aid system.
The panel also called on policy makers and higher education leaders to find new ways of controlling costs, saying that college tuition should grow no faster than median family income, although it opposed price controls. And it recommended bolstering the Pell grant, the basic building block of federal student aid, by making it cover a larger percentage of public college tuition. That proposal, if implemented, could cost billions of dollars.

This is just the start of the Federal government trying to stick their nose into higher education. I remember a time when people from all over the world were willing to give their left arm for the opportunity to go to school in the USA. Back then accountability, responsibility, and community were the cornerstones of education. Now it is No child left behind, Standardized tests, bigger federal grant programs, and social promotion. This garbage has to stop. Abolish the Department of education and we can save almost 70 Billion dollars in the budget and eliminate nearly 4500 federal jobs and the expenses that go with them.