Robert Scott is president of Adelphi College in Long Island, New York.
Here, he offers his ideas about how to strengthen higher education and direct federal aid more thoughtfully to students.
First, he suggests a year of mandatory national service in communities after high school graduation. Rationale: This service year would help young people develop knowledge, skills, abilities and values outside of school by doing supervised, constructive work in communities and with organizations that need assistance. They would gain maturity needed to succeed in advanced study and save money for postsecondary opportunities.
Second, direct federal research grants to regional and community institutions of higher education. Rationale: The criteria for selecting such institutions for competitive grants could be based not only on their expertise, but on their success in enrolling students from low-income families and in graduating students in a timely manner without large amounts of debt.
Third, provide grant and loan forgiveness funding to students who enter high-need professions like nursing, health-related services (and, I might add, teaching). Rationale: We know that students’ employment decisions are influenced by the debt they accumulate in college. This program could not only help students manage their debt but encourage them to consider less well-paid employment and still help stimulate the economy.
President Scott subtly adds that some of the funding might be enhanced by reallocating federal aid from “institutions with high loan default rates and low graduation rates.” He refers to the large numbers of for-profit online “universities” that match those two criteria. Those institutions have high default rates and low graduation rates; they are protected by lobbyists from both parties in Washington, who keep these failed institutions eligible for federal aid despite their disservice to students and society.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think research dollars should be spent where the research can be most effectively done.
If the federal government wants to reward schools for enrolling low income students and high graduation rates it should make grants to those schools for that, not to encourage research.
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Here’s how the Germans do it. . . . France and Spain also have public colleges that are low or nominal cost:
And here in the United States, we plunge our young adults into debt and make money off of them with loans so that when they graduate, their debt is equal to a home or a down payment on a home.
And I guess that gives them such a great start in their young adult life.
No wonder Americans are far more likely to think about themselvers instead of the collective good. It’s a major reason that explains why we are where we are today as a society. It also explains where we could be going and the paths that could be created.
The American Government in collusion with the United Corporations of America are succeeding brilliantly . . .
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Hey, maybe in their new national “mandatory community service year” after HS graduation, those grads could be placed to teach for free in our inner city classrooms. Then we could replace our remaining career teachers and even the TFA corps with an even cheaper work force. I’m sure that the students would really connect to new HS grads since they are so close in age, and the curriculum is still fresh in their minds. We could rename TFA to Teacher Free America.
Perhaps Scott hasn’t heard about the problems his college grads face when the only jobs they can find are unpaid internships that will never become paid work. Companies love to feed on the desperation of new grads. With a mandatory service year, we can exploit our youth before and after college!
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