WASHINGTON
U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings on Tuesday called for more need-based financial aid as part of wide-ranging higher education reforms that would include new accountability measures and data collection on student and college performance.
The higher education system today is often “self-satisfied and unduly expensive. There is an urgent need for change in America’s higher education system,” the secretary said in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The speech comes a week after the Commission on the Future of Higher Education released “A Test of Leadership,” the panel’s final report on recommended higher education reforms.
While Spellings did not specify how to increase financial aid, she said more need-based assistance is essential to increase access to higher education. “For low-income and many minority students, college is becoming virtually unattainable,” she said.
The increase in need-based aid may come as a result of restructuring and simplifying the federal aid system. Spellings identified 17 federal aid programs, each with their own rules, and criticized a cumbersome federal application process that is “longer and more complicated than the federal tax form.”
The secretary said President Bush would push for more Pell Grant spending, a move that would require congressional approval. But the Education Department will begin work immediately on other issues, including a speedier process to inform students about their financial aid eligibility. Spellings pledged to cut the notification time in half, with students getting information before the spring of their senior year of high school.
“The entire financial aid system is in dire need of reform,” she said.
