Educating the Top 100 Percent: Policy Pathways for Public Higher Education

Educating the Top 100 Percent assesses the decline of higher education funding and offers ambitious policy recommendations to restore the possibility of accessible, affordable education for all.

Stephen G. Katsinas, Nathaniel J. Bray, and Martha J. Kanter probe the complex interplay of federal, state, and local policies and illustrate how government actions have, over time, contributed to the long-term slide of US educational attainment. Declining federal and state funding of public higher education has forced institutions to revise their financial models, passing costs directly through to students, to the detriment of prospective students-and the nation. Experts in education policy, the authors point out how the unintended consequences of today’s funding model deny an ever-increasing portion of the population important educational and professional opportunities.

By providing context for how we arrived at this financial conundrum and analyzing robust quantitative data from national sources, Katsinas and his colleagues offer pragmatic, sustainable, and stable policy options for educating all Americans. The authors provide innovative ideas, key lessons learned, and actionable proposals to fund public higher education. Their top-down federal and bottom-up local and state policy solutions aim to rectify plummeting high school-to-college continuation and college graduation rates. As a result, they present a vision of a brighter economic, cultural, and civic future for educating all Americans.

Educating the Top 100 Percent demonstrates how stable, sustainable funding policies can scaffold a better public higher education system for all.