<p>This link has a review of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education: <a href="http://www.universitybusiness.com/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=725%5B/url%5D">http://www.universitybusiness.com/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=725</a></p>
<p>[The problems facing higher education in the United States are daunting. From 1995 to 2005, the average tuition and fees at public four-year colleges and universities rose 51 percent, and 36 percent at private universities. (The figures are adjusted for inflation.) That's a faster rate of increase than that for inflation, health care, and family income. Students who graduated from four-year colleges and universities during the decade racked up a median debt of $15,500 for public schools and $19,400 for private schools. Meanwhile, state funding fell to its lowest level in more than 20 years. While Pell Grants covered 84 percent of the cost of public higher education in 1975, by 2005 they covered only 36 percent. Diminished student aid hinders lower income families, and navigating what The Education Trust calls "a Byzantine financial aid system" is particularly intimidating to first-time students.</p>
<p>That's not all. Wealth plays a huge part. By age 24, 75 percent of students in the top quarter of the income level have a degree. And then there's race. According to 2004 figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, 34 percent of white adults had received a bachelor's degree by age 25 to 29, but only 18 percent of African-American adults and just 10 percent of Hispanic adults had. Forty percent of college students took at least one remedial education course (mainly because their high school did not offer necessary preparatory courses), at a cost of more than $1 billion per year. Of the U.S. population between the ages of 25 and 64, more than 60 percent has no postsecondary education.</p>
<p>And let's not forget accessibility. "There is disturbing evidence that there has been no rise in accessibility in recent years," says Richard Vedder, adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a distinguished professor of economics at Ohio University. "In fact, there has been some decline in participation in four-year universities from kids from low-income situations. The progress in that area has come to a halt. The elite schools-Harvard, Yale, Princeton-those schools have become more elite."</p>
<p>That's hardly egalitarian.]</p>
<p>There is more that is interesting.</p>