The March 2014 issue of Townhall Magazine is here! Check out an exclusive preview of some of our top stories and order Townhall Magazine today where you’ll find these can’t-miss stories:
– Joel Gehrke: Innovative solution – The American higher education system is broken. Here’s how to fix it.
– Kevin Glass: College isn’t for everyone – By pushing more and more students into schools for which they are not prepared to obtain degrees they do not need, the federal government is undermining higher education.
– Daniel Doherty and Amanda Munoz: Tomorrow’s Party Today – The future of the Republican Party depends on how well it can appeal to a growing and significant segment of the electorate: our nation’s youth.
– David Freddoso: Complaint Deficit Syndrome – America is much more tolerant today than ever before. This is a disaster for the progressive movement, which forces would-be heroes to create their own alternate reality.
Each of these features will be available entirely online after March 1. If you want to be the first to get them, you need to sign up!
A fragment of the February cover article of Townhall magazine entitled “Innovative Solution” by Joel Gehrke: :
The United States is facing a higher education crisis. To remain competitive in today’s global economy, our economy desperately needs highly skilled workers. But while our existing system of four-year higher education institutions works for some extremely talented and wealthy students, millions more graduate without the skills employers want and are saddled with tens of thousands in debt.
Collectively, Americans owe over $1 trillion in student loan debt. That’s much more than they owe on credit cards or car loans. And the youngest Americans have the most debt since tuition skyrocketed as the amount of federal financial aid for higher education increased.
Higher debt at a youthful age means children move back in with their parents, don’t buy cars, get married, and don’t build modern homes. This is a huge burden on the entire economy.
Something has to change.
SUCCESSFUL INNOVATIONS AT A GLANCE
There are people who want to change higher education. Some of them are even backed by millions in venture capital funds. However, with the lend a hand of the federal government, the current cartel of higher education providers excludes them from participation.
Take, for example, Ivy Bridge College, a partnership between Tiffin University in Ohio and Altius Education, Inc. Founded in 2008, Ivy Bridge College expanded access to four-year institutions of higher education by first offering traditionally disadvantaged students the opportunity to earn an associate’s degree. Offering extensive support services that include not only tutoring but also life coaching, Ivy Bridge gained a solid experience in completing an Associate’s degree and then, depending on their grades, secured them a transfer to a time-honored four-year partner institution, including house brands such as Arizona State.
Through the Tiffin connection, Ivy Bridge students were able to pay their tuition with federal loans, which generated revenue for the university and Altius Education, which financed the company.
Altius and Tiffin worked well together. The Commission on Higher Education, which accredits Tiffin, praised Ivy Bridge in 2010 for “delivering[ing] education for a relatively underdeveloped population,” according to documents obtained by Townhall. In August 2012, almost 2,200 students studied at Ivy Bridge. That same year, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded the nonprofit university a Next Generation Learning Grant. A year later, HLC told Tiffin that the university must cut ties with Ivy Bridge or risk losing its accreditation. Tiffin complied, which effectively killed Ivy Bridge by cutting it off from federal funding.
“The political environment in which accreditors operated has changed,” Altius CEO Paul Freedman told Townhall. This political environment changed when Higher Education Committee Chair Sylvia Manning was brought before the Senate Education Committee by Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) to explain the growth of for-profit colleges such as Kaplan University and the University of Phoenix.
Harkin and his colleagues based their criticism of Manning and HLC on the case of Ashford University, a for-profit institution in Iowa once known as Franciscan University of the Prairies. When the college came to an end in 2005, HLC, under the leadership of the previous president, allowed Bridgepoint Education, Inc. to purchase an accredited religious school without subjecting the modern for-profit model to accreditation scrutiny.
Six years later, Ashford had 78,000 students attending and receiving more than $600 million in federal grants annually. According to Harkin, sixty-three percent of those seeking four-year bachelor’s degrees dropped out in the first year, which looks good compared to the 84 percent dropout rate among students pursuing two-year bachelor’s degrees.
“I think it’s a fraud, an absolute fraud,” Harkin said.
Manning left the hearing promising that HLC would cut the shortcut to accreditation (and thus federal dollars) that had benefited Bridgepoint. “What happened in 2005 cannot happen today,” she said.
Two years later, when Ivy Bridge College’s for-profit parent company, Altius, attempted to operate independently of Tiffin in a joint venture, HLC blocked the change and withdrew its prior approval of Tiffin’s relationship with the for-profit institution.
“They drove innovators out of higher education,” Freedman told Buzzfeed in an August report on the demise of Ivy Bridge.
…continue reading in the March issue of Townhall magazine.
