Ask the Wrong Questions, Get the Wrong Answers
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings’
accountability plan is a step in the wrong direction.
You don’t need a Ph.D. to recognize that colleges and universities are facing serious issues in the coming decades. Just ask the nation’s Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings — whose B.A. credentials have in no way kept her from pounding her bully pulpit and preaching for the fundamental reshaping of higher education in the United States.
Spellings has been traveling around the country since late September, clutching the final report from her 19-member Commission on the Future of Higher Education in her hot little hand.
Her talking points are the three A’s: accessibility, affordability and accountability. But it’s her views on accountability that are generating the most controversy.
That’s partly because of the language she’s using.
“We spend $80 billion in financial aid out of this department, and we just sort of hope for the best,” was what Spellings told Diverse in October.
