SOTU Reax, Ed Edition

Quick reactions to the State Of The Union’s education section:

• What was that thing we used to call ESEA? No Kid Left in the Back Room, something like that? Memories fade so quickly…
• Race To The Top will be with us for at least the next three years.
• Income-contingent loan repayment is the future of college financial aid. Expect some in-depth analysis from Ed Sector on this in the not-too-distant future.
• “And it’s time for colleges and universities to get serious about cutting their own costs – because they too have a responsibility to help solve this problem.” That’s an important line, and not just because the first paragraph of everything everyone writes about college affordability is now pre-written for the next year. But it’s noteworthy that the President’s big student loan / higher education reform bill, for all its worthy ideas, contains nothing whatsoever to address this particular dimension of the college affordability problem. Indeed, all else being equal, dropping an extra $40 billion into the Pell grant program will reduce incentives for institutions to restrain prices and become more cost-efficient, not enhance them. It’s a tricky problem to solve. Federal price controls are a terrible idea and the weak, quality-blind “shame lists” of price increasers mandated by the 2008 HEA reauthorization will do nothing to solve the problem. No, the only long-term solution is to change the pricing and efficiency incentives institutions operate under by removing regulatory barriers to low-price competitors and enacting a comprehensive set of policies to create more public information about college success in helping students learn, graduate, and succeed in life.