The highly influential group founded by newly appointed White House counselor John Podesta has recommended “game-changing” education reforms, including the involvement of labor unions in higher education.
Scores of recommendation papers produced by Podesta’s Center for American Progress, or CAP, already helped to inform and craft policy for the Obama administration.
Last month, CAP released a 29-page paper titled “A Path Forward: Game-Changing Reforms in Higher Education and the Implications for Business and Financing Models.”
The document, reviewed in full by WND, petitions for more federal government regulation of education, calling for the restructuring of higher education.
A primary recommendation in the paper calls for the government to establish a Guided Pathways to Success, or GPS, which it defines as addressing “what is perhaps the most longstanding problem plaguing the American postsecondary education system: the lack of clear pathways for students to take them through postsecondary education to a career.”
Continues CAP: “Under the GPS model, students start in a limited number of meta-majors – a set of courses to meet academic requirements across a range of disciplines and programs – and ultimately complete a specific major through a highly structured degree plan.”
CAP envisions “tightly structured” semester programs to assure “that students have access to key milestone courses when they need them.”
“Technology would be in place to warn advisers when students fall behind so that they can offer timely and effective intervention,” the paper adds.
Podesta’s organization calls for the Department of Education to bypass Congress in implementing the recommended reforms:
“We also propose policy solutions that do not require congressional action that could accelerate the pace and acceptance of reforms with clear and significant implications for students, employers, and ultimately, taxpayers,” CAP says.
“Specifically, we call on the U.S. secretary of education to design and implement experiments authorized under federal student-aid programs and urge the adoption of quality metrics against which innovative strategies can be assessed.”
CAP goes on to call for labor unions to help in education reform.
“Finally, we urge greater stakeholder – organized labor, employers, and philanthropic organizations – involvement in higher-education innovation,” reads the paper.
