American higher education “is not sustainable,” and risks a growing detachment from reality if it does not come to grips with the needs of community colleges and the way higher education and government consistently mistreat the sector.

That unsettling argument was put forth Sunday night in the introductory talk of the annual meeting of the American Council on Education, by Gail O. Mellow, president of LaGuardia Community College, of the City University of New York. Mellow’s critique probably wouldn’t surprise most people who work in community colleges, but it was an unusually public rebuke for the rest of higher education at a meeting of the higher education umbrella group that represents two-year and four-year, public and private colleges.

Mellow argued that the way higher education is categorized, defined and financed have all worked to the detriment of community colleges, even as they educate nearly half of all undergraduates, and significant portions of those who will later graduate with bachelor’s degrees from four-year institutions.

In September 2007, Drexel partnered with AcademyOne, a company that provides web-based services for transfer students through their recently developed web site collegetransfer.net, enabling students to access their course equivalencies. Drexel is now among nearly 4,000 other colleges and universities...

The idea of requiring colleges to spend a minimum proportion of their endowments has gained some political currency of late, promoted mostly by Sen. Charles Grassley, and higher education officials have suspected that the alluring notion might make it into legislative form some time in the not-too-distant future. Little did they know it would be tomorrow.

As the full House of Representatives prepares to take up legislation to renew the Higher Education Act Thursday, two major developments Tuesday threatened to reshape the tenor and shape of the debate. The Democratic and Republican leaders of the House Education and Labor Committee released a new draft of the bill — known as a “manager’s amendment” — that included several key changes to which they had given their imprimatur, including a softening of a proposal on student loan default rates that had been vigorously opposed by for-profit institutions.

And buried among the 61 amendments to the Higher Ed Act bill that lawmakers said they would seek to offer on the House floor Thursday was one, offered by Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), that would require colleges, regardless of wealth, to spend at least 5 percent of their endowments each year in ways that would reduce what students pay to attend college.

Improving Outcomes and Productivity in Higher Education: A Guide for Policymakers.  A joint report from The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education and  The National Center for Higher Education Management Systems.

This report offers evidence of a wide range of strategies and policies that have been used to increase access and improve quality while reducing perstudent costs in higher education. As with all descriptions of best practices, the examples herein are not comprehensive. Undoubtedly, other states and campuses have developed and implemented effective strategies that do not appear in this report. In addition, no single policy or practice offers a silver bullet to states that will raise the level of their population’s educational attainment. But Part I of this report highlights a solid base of experience available to policy leaders as they seek to raise the educational attainment of state residents. And Part II outlines the key policy levers that state leaders can use to pursue the strategies outlined in Part I.