How American Higher Education can be Improved

Here’s what one edupreneur is thinking.

Burck Smith (CEO of www.Straighterline.com) suggests some ways that American higher education could be improved.

If students declare bankruptcy, their student loans should be discharged. That would encourage the growth of worthy colleges and reduce the growth of colleges that do not provide a good educational product.

Accrediting agencies should evaluate individual courses, not colleges. That would ease the problems that students experience when transferring from college to college or when getting colleges to award credit for courses they have taken online or at other institutions. And evaluating courses, not colleges, would offer a fairer yardstick for measuring the value of the education that students receive.

State funding for higher education should be voucher-based. That would allow states to continue to support post-secondary learning, but it in a way that would encourage innovation and efficiency. It would also reflect the fact that more students are taking college courses online.

In addition to his role as CEO and founder of StraighterLine, Smith was the founder and CEO of SMARTHINKING, the dominant online tutoring provider for schools and colleges. In addition to building StraighterLine, Burck is writing chapters for two books on education policy for the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). He is a member of the American Enterprise Institute’s Higher Education Working Group.