Better Federal Higher Education Policy Needed
The recent news that the University of California system is going to borrow millions of dollars to build new online degree programs points to some clear opportunities for federal policy.
What UC is doing makes perfect sense. In the long run higher education will be transformed by information technology and it’s best that prestigious public institutions with strong brands, intellectual capital, and egalitarian values lead the way. But doing it well costs money and the UC system is short on money these days. So it’s borrowing with the reasonable expectation of a positive long-run return in terms of revenue and enrollment.
It’s still only one system, though, and state attempts to build online universities