Policy in Higher Education in USA Essay

Higher education in the USA has been receiving the highest enrolments for students in colleges and universities followed by the UK (Dill, 2007). Public research funding continues to increase annually to ensure that the students are comfortable and the enrolments should keep on increasing. The number of international students is also increasing and these overseas students are vital for institutional funding and without them the sector would be literary bankrupt whilst many of the science and technology departments would have few or no postgraduate students. Although the revenue position of USA universities has improved, there remains a large backlog of investment in infrastructure especially for teaching. The higher institutions will continue to be the subject of pressures from the government and employees to be more efficient and relevant and provide a better learning and social experience for the students’ money. Some literature review to the same reveal that services have ventured into synchronous forms of communication using chat technologies, enabling an interactive, real time connection (Alderman, & Brown, 2005).. Its main advantages include its instant gratification that education can now be assessed from everywhere and can be set into a 24/7 service (Dill, 2007). Yet much of the literature reports low uptake and dissatisfaction. Description of the policy issue To tackle the problem of the high numbers of students going for higher education then there should be an increase in the fee cap coupled by the reduction in generosity of the present student support regime (Alderman, & Brown, 2007). Raising the fees is likely to create gut effects for competition that will exacerbate the differences in funding and reputation between institutions and the social groups which they serve without any compensating gains in effectiveness or efficiency. The distorting influence of prestige in US means that the educational costs for elite universities provide a price umbrella to the rest of the system and present spending targets of less elite institutions that wish to compete by raising their prices (Brown, 2006). Competitive markets will encourage an academic arms race for prestige amongst all institutions, which rapidly increase the cost of higher education and devalue the improvement of student learning. Away of making the policy applicable is to have some cut off points for pursuing a certain level of education. Also particular courses which are in high demand, the cut off grade for pursuing the same should be high to standardize the quality of education offered. The state should dedicate funds in forms of loans and also avail an amble atmosphere for research work. It should also make sure that students have internship programs to enable them put into practice what they learn. Others the federals can offer them employment opportunities so that they work while pursuing their education. What the state should attempt to do and how The immediate response is likely to be an increase in inter-institutional collaboration in order to strengthen market position and to make better use of resources (Alderman, & Brown, 2005). This is likely to be in a number of ways: local collaboration with other higher education institutions within US, collaboration with institutions overseas so that students don’t have to come all the way to the USA to look for higher education when they can access the same services while in their home countries, and collaboration with partners outside the sector. Conclusions The presented policy may not be easy to achieve especially in teaching as older universities will fear to collaborate with new ones for fear of loosing prestige. Some newer universities on the other hand may not want to collaborate with competitors. However the state should see to it that the collaboration is not tampered with and all institutions work together for the benefit of all people who are in need of higher education (Dill, 2007). References Alderman, G & Brown, R (2005), Can Quality Assurance Survive The Market Accreditation and Audit at the Crossroads? Higher Education Quarterly Vol. 59, no. 4 Alderman, G & Brown, R (2007), American and British Higher Education: Common Problems, Common Responses. College and University Journal, vol. 82, no 3, 19-24. Brown, R. (2006) Higher Education and the Market. New York and London: Routledge Dill, D. (2007) â€Å"Will market competition assure academic quality? An analysis of the UK and US experience† in Westerheijden, D. , Stensaker, B. and Rosa, M. J. (Eds) Quality Assurance in Higher Education: Trends in Regulation, Translation and Transformation Dordrecht: Springer