Obama pushes for more college value

WASHINGTON -- Access to college has been the driving force in federal higher education policy for decades. But the Obama administration is pushing a fundamental agenda shift that aggressively brings a new question into the debate: What are people getting for their money?

On average, students with loans are graduating with more than $25,000 in debt. The federal government pours $140 billion a year into federal grants and loans. Unemployment remains high, yet there are projected shortages in many industries, with some high-tech companies already complaining about a lack of highly trained workers.

Meanwhile, about 40 percent of college students at four-year schools aren't graduating, and in two-year programs, only about 40 percent of students do graduate or transfer, according to College Measures, a policy and analysis group.

College dropouts are expensive, and not just for the individual. About a fifth of full-time students who enroll at a community college do not return for a second year, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars a year, according to an analysis released last fall by the American Institutes for Research.

There's been a growing debate over whether postsecondary schools should be more transparent about the cost of an education and the success of graduates. President Barack Obama has weighed in with a strong "yes."

During his State of the Union address, Obama put the higher education community on notice: "If you can't stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down," he said. "Higher education can't be a luxury -- it's an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford."

He wants to slightly reduce federal aid for schools that don't control tuition costs and shift it to those that do. He also has proposed an $8 billion program to train community college students for high-growth industries that would provide financial incentives to programs that ensured their trainees find work. Both proposals need congressional approval.