The Missing Element in Education Reform: State-Based Policies to Improve Postsecondary Outcomes

Key Points

• Higher education reformers should align their efforts with the lessons they have learned in the K–12 space—namely, promoting meaningful competition and market-based accountability, aligning educational pathways with other parts of the education and training equation, and ensuring students are empowered to make informed choices among diverse, high-quality providers.
• Among the many state-level factors that do not get sufficient attention, the greatest may be the extent to which state policies either incentivize or force citizens to purchase more postsecondary education credits than they would otherwise desire to earn a living in their chosen profession.
• Whether in K–12 education, health care, childcare, or any other profession, the North Star for state leaders should be valuing competency ahead of college credits.

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Introduction

Education reformers have spent decades doggedly working to improve student outcomes in K–12 education by championing policies spanning federal, state, and local jurisdictions. Whether supporting COVID-19 learning loss recovery at the local level, education savings accounts at the state level, or policies to ensure more funds follow students at the federal level, reformers have a wide-ranging and often complementary K–12 agenda across each level of government that is designed to better prepare children for later life.

Higher education is a much different story. Policy ideas at the federal level are plentiful; however, state- or institution-level policies are examined and implemented far less frequently.¹ Often discussed, for example, are federal reforms to promote innovative academic programs or protect taxpayers from risky decisions regarding the federal student loan portfolio. That is not to say that state legislators, governors, and researchers have failed to diagnose challenges at the state level. In fact, issues such as affordability and alignment of curriculum to workforce needs are top concerns in state capitals.

However, attempts at such reform have too often been incremental rather than transformational, reactive rather than proactive, and lacking in the type of cohesive framework and vision often seen in K–12 education reform.

When trends can be uncovered, the policies revealed are often ineffective or even destructive to commonly held goals such as improving affordability and access while narrowing the gaps between the careers people want and the education they need to get there. States too frequently turn to blue-ribbon commissions, student “bill of rights” policies that can further complicate student loan options for students, or simplistic attempts to ban things they do not like and mandate things they prefer.²

Instead, higher education reformers should align their efforts with the lessons they have learned in the K–12 space—namely, promoting meaningful competition and market-based accountability, aligning educational pathways with other parts of the education and training equation, and ensuring that students are empowered to make informed choices among diverse, high-quality providers. Together, these lessons can bolster improved higher education policymaking where it is most lacking: the states.

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Notes

1. See, for example, ideas published by AEI. Frederick M. Hess and Hannah Warren, Sketching a New Conservative Education Agenda, American Enterprise Institute, April 2021, https://www.aei.org/sketching-a-new-conservative-education-agenda/.
2. Student Borrower Protection Center, “Student Loan Borrower Bill of Rights,” https://protectborrowers.org/sls-oversight/.