Not that there are only two. but right away just off that bat, there are two very important things about his plan are
A). They're designed to control college costs-something not even on the radar screen for the GOP
and really importantly:
B). He can do this without Congress.
"The core of President Obama’s plan to cut higher-ed costs is “pay-for-performance.” The idea is to use federal financial aid to move colleges away from the current pay-for-enrollment model and toward a model in which they make more money if they graduate more students, hold tuition costs down, etc. (This is, in a sense, bringing the cost-control theories of Obamacare to the higher-ed sector.)"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/22/obamas-higher-ed-plan-can-work-without-congress/
So it's an attempt to make a market that hardly seems very efficient in the direction getting some efficiency. Nevertheless, making this market more rational certainly will have hurdles that need to be jumped:
"The problem with this plan is the problem that bedevils all pay-for-performance schemes: How do you define “performance”? Is it raw graduation rates? If so, how do you account for colleges that sign up more disadvantaged kids? Is it post-college salaries? Then how do you account for colleges that send kids into teaching rather than Wall Street? So far, the White House is only offering the broad outlines:"
However, those who say it will be stillborn because of GOP obstruction are wrong:
"What’s interesting about this plan, though, is that only half of it needs congressional approval — and it’s the half that comes later, and that can be done quicker. The Obama administration doesn’t need congressional approval to build the performance measures. That’s something the Department of Education can do on its own."
A). They're designed to control college costs-something not even on the radar screen for the GOP
and really importantly:
B). He can do this without Congress.
"The core of President Obama’s plan to cut higher-ed costs is “pay-for-performance.” The idea is to use federal financial aid to move colleges away from the current pay-for-enrollment model and toward a model in which they make more money if they graduate more students, hold tuition costs down, etc. (This is, in a sense, bringing the cost-control theories of Obamacare to the higher-ed sector.)"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/22/obamas-higher-ed-plan-can-work-without-congress/
So it's an attempt to make a market that hardly seems very efficient in the direction getting some efficiency. Nevertheless, making this market more rational certainly will have hurdles that need to be jumped:
"The problem with this plan is the problem that bedevils all pay-for-performance schemes: How do you define “performance”? Is it raw graduation rates? If so, how do you account for colleges that sign up more disadvantaged kids? Is it post-college salaries? Then how do you account for colleges that send kids into teaching rather than Wall Street? So far, the White House is only offering the broad outlines:"
However, those who say it will be stillborn because of GOP obstruction are wrong:
"What’s interesting about this plan, though, is that only half of it needs congressional approval — and it’s the half that comes later, and that can be done quicker. The Obama administration doesn’t need congressional approval to build the performance measures. That’s something the Department of Education can do on its own."
"The fact sheet is pretty clear on this: “Before the 2015 school year, the Department of Education will develop a new ratings system to help students compare the value offered by colleges and encourage colleges to improve.” Look ma! No Congress!"
"Linking the new ratings system to financial aid does require congressional action. But it doesn’t come till much later. “The President will seek legislation allocating financial aid based upon these college ratings by 2018, once the ratings system is well established,” the fact sheet continues. That’s two years after the end of Obama’s second term. That means that even if Obama did get legislation passed to link aid to performance, the law could be altered or undone by the next president before it even went into effect."
"So what Obama is really promising to get done in his second term is to create the infrastructure necessary for a pay-for-performance system: the definition of performance and the routine collection of the underlying data. He doesn’t need Congress for that. When that’s are done, Obama can try to get legislation passed through Congress to tie them to financial aid by 2018. But even if he fails, he will have set the next president up to finish the job, as the technically hardest and most time-consuming task will be complete."
So what we have here is yet another argument for a Democratic Congress in both Houses. A particularly good idea is universalizing income-based repayment.
"About 2 million people, out of 37 million federal student loan borrowers, currently benefit from income-based repayment programs. That includes people currently ineligible for the specific Pay As You Earn plan. There are other programs — notably the program actually called Income-Based Repayment, but also Income-Sensitive Repayment and Income-Contingent Repayment — that you can use for older loans, though they require payments more like 15 percent (for Income-Based Repayment) or 20 percent (for Income-Contingent) than the 10 percent used in Pay As You Earn."
Yes, some argue it doesn't go far enough:
"The plan doesn’t go as far as Reps. Tom Petri (R-WI) and Jared Polis’s (D-CO) ExCEL Act, which would make income-based repayment the norm for federal student loans. That plan eliminates loan forgiveness after 20 years of income-based payments (10 years for public service careers), which could provoke administration opposition, but it also caps the amount of interest borrowers will have to pay. It would be a much bigger change, especially for low-income students, than what the administration is proposing here."
Still, unlike Petri-Polis, the WH plan doesn't eliminate loan forgiveness. At least Obama gets it that Congress is just a rode block at this point.
Maybe performance should be based on getting them employed in the field of study. Since corporate America is getting more and more involved with our University system there should be able to be some sort of connection. Companies tell them what they need , universities produce them. It should probably be shorter than 4 years though.
ReplyDeleteKids who dont find jobs? 50% off? 65%?
I like these ideas a lot Greg. Certainly there has to be an actual delviering of the goods.
ReplyDeleteIn the past-up until about 2000-it wasn't necessary as most people who got college degrees found quality jobs out of college. As that's no longer to be taken for granted something should be done to put the money of these colleges where their mouth is.
So yeah, let's make colleges accountable and their profits based on performance.
ReplyDeleteGreg the more I think about it the more I love your idea of tying tuition to what a student does after college-at the least what they pay back in student loans should be impacted by that. Obama does have the thing that he wants expanded where a student's payments are no bigger than 10% of their income. Do you know of others who make this argument-is their a literature?
ReplyDeleteDo you mean anyone else making the argument of student payments not over 10% or making the argument about tying tuition to after college jobs? I havent specifically read anyone else making the suggestion I made, but Im sure its not an original idea.
DeleteThe one thing Id change about the 10% of income is Id make it 10% of net income not gross.
I was just curious. So it's an idea that occurred to you. All the more impressive... I would say however, that the 10% of income rule is actually a back door performance standard-it means that it behooves schools to make sure students actually realize a good career with a good income so they can pay back more of their loans. If someone makes $14,000 a year for 20 years after running up $120,000 in tuition costs, schools won't see much of that with the 10% income rule-you're point of net income rather than gross is well taken.
ReplyDeleteYou are right that the 10% income rule could function in the same way but currently it only affects the entity being paid back, currently the feds. The school gets their money up front and has nothing at stake. With my suggestion they would actually get not get full payment til they succeeded at getting the student a job.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that I dont like about any of these ideas, mine included, is that they are accomodating to the neoliberal mindset which essentially is working to privatize public education. Once we cross this line University culture will change drastically. No more useless philosophy classes, or black studies, or music theory for most students. You're here to be job trained for private sector work, not to learn, think , explore. College wouldnt be as fun as it was when I went.
Funny, went and did my morning perusing of my favorite sites and found this
ReplyDeletehttp://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013/08/obamas-new-plan-to-accelerate-corporate-barbarism.html#more-6148
by Dan Kervick at NEP. Didnt see it yesterday, but he doesnt like the corporatization of education either..
How many history professors do you think will be having discussions about labor movement at these universities in the future. Only kids who dont go to college might learn this stuff, it will be the talk of the lower rungs, rabble rousers of society. It might even become deemed "terroristic language". Only people who want to upset the corporate machine will talk like that.
Well, I understand the worry over corporatizatiobutn if the only way to avoid this is to just stick to the status quo I dont agree with that.
ReplyDeleteI like Dan Kervick but he's going to shootdown anything Obama suggests. I still get tired of hearing people criticizing his ideas without offering a better one themselves. We have to somehow fix the cost structure of college both tuition and loans.
DeleteYes I agree that a well rounded liberal education is desirable-I disagree with the whole attitude of 'teaching to the test' that starts in 3rd grade these days-it can't mean we give up on fixing it-not that I believe that's what your'e saying.
Well I think the Kervicks of the world are needed personally. The left isnt as left as it used to be (maybe good or bad overall I dont know) and in that sense the conservatives are correct about us being a right leaning nation. However we do need to constantly remind people that they are more left than they think they are by pointing out that they were raised in a time when we moved the country very far left (40s to the 70s) by expanding womens and minorities opportunities and by guaranteeing via strong labor laws (thanks unions), that fathers had a paycheck they could raise family of four on , send kids to school and have a retirement. We cant let these 40-50 somethings forget which side of the political aisle fought for and secured the lifestyle they and their parents enjoyed.
DeleteObama is a great guy by all I can see. He is a product of todays political realities and we need to always remember that. He offers a less harsh option to what the Cruz/Paul/Ryan wing offer but it still takes many of the same base assumptions, which I think are negotiable. Those base assumptions are not "correct". We can move those assumptions, and we must.
I agree with most of what you say substantively. I admit on the subject of Obama I have something of a blindspot. I just get so tired of the kind of gratuitous hectoring he gets on Firedoglake especially but also Naked Capitalism, and elsewhere in the left-liberal blogosphere.
DeleteHe may have the wrong assumptions on some things-certainly one thing appears to be monetary policy if the reports we're getting of White House thinking on the next Fed Chairman from folks like Ezra Klein are accurate, and you would imagine they are, certainly Klein has the access-but he has the right ones on a number of others. Like the need for college reform; he was also right about the need for healthcare understands the importance of reasarch and development of the kind that the private sector doesn't provide an adequate amount of; you eluded to the limits of markets and here is certainly and area that there are limitations.
At the end of the day he has an impressive list of real achievements-healthcare, Dodd-Frank, the original stimulus; he also got rid of the Bush tax cuts for the rich as promised.
Yes, I'm aware that all that the Obama bashers might well quibble about my list and any other of his accomplishments as not going far enough.
Yes, Obamacare could have been better, sure. However, let's not lose sight of the fact that this was at the top of the Democratic wishlist since FDR and he was the one able to finally breakthrough. Yes, there are still 22 million without health insurance-but that's only about 40% of how many they were prior to ACA.
In the original stimulus he created the ARPA-E which is doing so much to build up our technology infrastructure-just the kind of R&D that the market often doesn't do because the payoffs are years down the road.
http://arpa-e.energy.gov/
He clearly gets in on the evironment and on the need for building a green economy.
I would also say this regarding your statement here:
"we do need to constantly remind people that they are more left than they think they are by pointing out that they were raised in a time when we moved the country very far left (40s to the 70s) by expanding womens and minorities opportunities and by guaranteeing via strong labor laws (thanks unions), that fathers had a paycheck they could raise family of four on , send kids to school and have a retirement. We cant let these 40-50 somethings forget which side of the political aisle fought for and secured the lifestyle they and their parents enjoyed."
I would argue that we've done a lot more to expand women and minorities rights in recent years than in the 40s to the 70s. Ok, in a way, speaking of the '40s to the 70s' is wrong as the change really started in the mid to late
60s. However, while no doubt the economy was much preferable during the Keynesian years, we've improved dramatically politically and socially-where gay mmarriage is now being accepted by so many Americans.
The real problem has been the turn away from Keynesian demand management but we've had a lot of social progress. though, we have a very worrisome trend in the Southern states right now and Red states more generally. It's amazing how much more conseravative so many Southern states have become since Obama was elected; I don't think I'm to cynical by arguing that the fact that he's black surely has not hurt this sea change one iota.
I mean Aransas, Kentucky, Viriginia, and North Carolina, these states have changed overnight.
I do like Kervick's economic analysis but I've never heard him say anything positive about Obama. Whether you think Obama is not liberal enough or not, things could be a lot worse and would be now had Romney won. Just look at what's happening in these Red states I mentioned.
My trouble with many of the Obama bashers is that they have nothing constructive to add to the debate. Their whole stance is just taking potshots to show how pure they are. I mean yes, if I have the choice between having all 53 million of the uninsured insured today or 30 million insured today I choose door number one.
DeleteThat is not the choice however: it's having 30 million or none. Those who just keep insisting that 30 million are not enough or implicitly choosing 0.
I remember back when I used to get into it with them over at Firegoglake. They'd always make is sound like Obama was such a disappointment compared with the liberal lion himself, FDR.
Sure he made that great speech-'Rendezvous with Destiny' speech where he talked about welcoming the hatred of the economic royalists. Yet, when Social Security first went into effect only 5% of Americans received it-whereas over 60% will receive Obamacare. When I would say this they'd claim that in effect it will be less than 30 million-still it will be much better than 5%.
Isn't it obvious that radical new legislation takes time to perfect? Meanwhile, Obama's stimulus was actually much bigger than anything FDR did-who knows that?
ALL very good points Mike.
DeleteThe left is absolutely killing it on social issue the last few decades but I might argue that was started in the 50s 60s with the real left ; ) So many of these guys who call them selves conservative now were Vietnam war protestors, had dads that worked union jobs and had good public education all the way through college.They just turned conservative when they started getting a good upper middle class income and started listening to the right talk about them "Tax and Spend Democrats"
I hope I dont sound like an Obama hater to you cuz Im not. I enthusiastically supported him two times and I cant really blame him for the time he grew up. He is a product of the political realities postkeynesianism. We are bound and determined to push this privatization meme til it breaks or breaks us. Why am I not more like Obama? Why do I identify more with the old left than the new left? I dont know? Much of it honestly is probably a 180 degree turn form the absolutely ignorant right that I abhor in this country. I want to go as far away from those people as possible so 180 degrees is the furthest point. And its not that I hate the people, but the anti intellectualism, American Taliban and hyperindividualism that runs through the right is so wrong its not even good to find a third way with them. Its certainly not always true that when two people disagree the truth lies in the middle. The truth lies much closer to 180 degrees from our modern conservatives than 90 and I think history will prove me right.
They are hanging on to something that never really existed, this perfect America morally right and just and just harder working than everyone else, oh and watched over by Christ himself.
I think the ACA is going to end up being great legislation. If insurance companies want to survive they will need to play along with this plan or else single payer will come. Which was my preference at first but we can do this health thing with an insurance model but we cant let anyone go bankrupt because of illness. The govt CAN insure that and must. You are right about SS too. It only scratched the surface form the start but it kept people out of poverty, which was its intent.
Wow, my comment was so long blogger wouldn't accept it and I had to divide it up. Clearly I feel just a little passionate about this. LOL
ReplyDelete" Its certainly not always true that when two people disagree the truth lies in the middle. The truth lies much closer to 180 degrees from our modern conservatives than 90 and I think history will prove me right."
ReplyDeleteThat in itself, is a very good point Greg which is what the VSP in the media who just say 'both sides do it' and think they've accomplished something by being 'so nonpartisan' seem to miss.
I agree, like if a Holocaust denier says that no Jews were killed and a 'liberal'-really in this case someone who isn't totally nuts on the question-says that in fact 6 million were killed, the right answer is 6 million not 3 million even if that's the 'compromise' between the two claims.
I see you and Tom have really been lighting it up. Great! I've been trying to keep up with the evening jobs doing the mortgages along with my morning job doing the home improvement appointments but I clearly got a lot to catch up here! I'm looking forward to it.
For now I'm trying to see if I can fit a couple of posts in before my job starts at 5.
"I think the ACA is going to end up being great legislation. If insurance companies want to survive they will need to play along with this plan or else single payer will come. Which was my preference at first but we can do this health thing with an insurance model but we cant let anyone go bankrupt because of illness. The govt CAN insure that and must. You are right about SS too. It only scratched the surface form the start but it kept people out of poverty, which was its intent."
ReplyDeleteAgree 1000 percent here too Greg. The insures are pretty lucky. If they are smart they will play along. ACA covers a lot more than SS initially did-the main point is that SS was expanded and broadened as will the ACA-which again is starting from a stronger base.
I would say that the gains from civil rights aren't all just from the marches of the 60s. The gay rights movement is conetemporary and is paradigmatic of a successful movement.
ReplyDeleteI think young people today are much less tolerant of intolerance of all kinds.