Higher Ed - equal parts meritocracy and mediocrity

President Bush turned to improve K-12 education in his first year with "No Child Left Behind." Now his Education Department is looking into higher education. And there are big concerns, though Washington State might have escaped. The Commission on the Future of Higher Education issued a draft of their report last week. The University of Washington Daily reports:

The online journal Insidehighereducation.com calls it "a stinging first draft." After an initial reference to our nation's Rhodes Scholars and Nobel Prize winners, "We have found equal parts meritocracy and mediocrity," the report said. The report lists problems with the higher education system much as the No Child Left Behind Act did for the K-12 system. Critical findings include a "woeful lack" of publicly available information about colleges, a lack of access to the higher education system caused by inadequate preparation in high school and a failure to align high school and college standards.

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