During the Faculty Senate meeting Tuesday, Brian Foster, provost for Academic Affairs, suggested that faculty begin a serious discussion about the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.
The act, which was last reauthorized in 1998 under the Clinton administration, was created to federally regulate higher education and provide governance and funding of public higher education institutions. It is up for reauthorization next year, although Foster said that the debate over the new meaning of higher education might forestall it for another year.
Foster said that higher education is now an "entitlement" rather than a privilege, which means all things about it are going to change.
He said that what was once created as an institution for higher-class whites who would take up leadership roles within the country, has become much more mainstream - meaning that most people have access to higher education of some kind.
Foster said that the reauthorization might mean the end of accreditation and would be replaced by a government agency. He added that a whole new division of labor could exist between public and private higher education institutions.
"This is a discussion we ought to be having on campus," he said.
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Foster added that it is an important topic to talk about because it is "the academic substance of higher education."
He said it's not that he dislikes increased access to higher education, but he is more worried about increased governmental control of things such as academic programs. Foster added that higher education is in the similar developing stages of secondary education.
"We're sort of now in higher education where secondary education was a hundred years ago," he said.
Foster said that a variety of influences are prompting reauthorization of the act, such as a combination of political interests, the private sector and many workforce interests.
But, he added, no one in the UNM community knows enough about the issue right now to "have an intelligent conversation."
Faculty Senate President Beverly Burris suggested that it might be worthwhile to hold a symposium on the issue.
