BY PAUL R. SHELLY

SPECIAL TO NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

COMMENTARY

College affordability is a key issue now on the front burner at both the federal and state levels. In August, President Obama announced plans to rein in college costs using federal student aid availability as a lever. Meanwhile, legislators in Trenton have introduced bills to implement, or at least study, novel approaches to funding higher education.

In a nutshell, here are some things we know for sure about citizens views’ of higher education:

* It is highly valued as a vehicle for individual success and as crucial to economic competiveness; and

* It is viewed as less affordable than in the past and moving in the wrong direction.

With these dual concerns on a collision course of sorts, it is imperative that the public come to thoughtful public judgment about the role of government, institutions, and families in ensuring college affordability. The backdrop of debt weighs heavily on many students and graduates looking for work in a slowly recovering economy.

As never before, perhaps, the public is open to the discovery and application of new approaches to making college affordable. This includes steps to reduce students’ time-to-degree. For example, a March 2013 poll by the Hughes Center at Richard Stockton College found that a majority of the public says they support colleges offering more online courses and making it easier to transfer credits from one college to another to reduce the time it takes for students to get a degree (63% and 94%, respectively).

Scientific polls have been one important way for policy makers to discern where the public stands on the challenge of college access and affordability. But to contribute meaningfully to the state and national dialogue about how to solve the perplexing challenges, polls have to be balanced and carefully crafted.

Conversely, polls that only scratch the surface of higher education matters may do a disservice to the process that author and public opinion analyst Daniel Yankelovich calls “coming to public judgment;” the development of informed public opinion that considers, over time, policy options including the costs and benefits of specific approaches.

Here are some principles for public opinion survey design that will advance public judgment about higher education:

* When asking about the cost of college and the reasons for recent increases, it is only fair to disaggregate the public college sector, where costs are very closely tied to state funding (and county funding in the case of county colleges) from the independent and proprietary sectors where educational costs are, generally speaking, much higher and not directly subsidized by the state.

* When asking about the worth of college it is important clarify, and not confuse, its various benefits to the individual, to American society, and to the economy. Plumbing the variations in how these different benefits are valued by citizens, and changes in attitudes over time, is also important.

Unfortunately, a Public Mind poll released this month falls short in some of these aspects. For example, its questionnaire design muddied the substantial differences between public college costs and independent and proprietary college costs and their respective cost drivers.

The poll is especially disappointing in that it fails to build on recent state and national scientific public opinion surveys on higher education that clearly demonstrate that a college degree is highly valued as a key to achieving individual success and a strong economy (2010, National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education/Public Agenda; 2011, New Jersey Association of State Colleges and Universities; and 2012, Innovation in Higher Education, Northeastern University). For example, in a 2011 poll conducted for our Association by Penn Schoen & Berland Associates, 93% of New Jersey residents agreed that “it is vital to New Jersey’s economy that we have excellent and affordable state colleges and universities” (57% strongly agreed, 36% agreed, and 7% disagreed ).

Polling is only a first step in helping Americans reach conclusions about aspects of higher education that need to be jettisoned, changed, or enhanced and preserved. Discussions among lay citizens, opinion leaders, government officials, and higher education representatives are also important. Our Association has conducted such discussions, as have other higher education bodies in the past. Richard Stockton College’s Higher Education Strategic Information and Governance program, part of the College’s Hughes Center for Public Policy, is planning to convene such meetings in the Garden State next year.

With informative polls and informed discussions, our state and nation will be more likely to enact policies that will effectively keep college affordable and help meet other important goals regarding college access, diversity, and educational outcomes. But we have to ask the right questions first.

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Paul R. Shelly is Director of Marketing and Communications for the New Jersey Association of State Colleges and Universities, a nonprofit, nonpartisan higher education association. The Association’s nine members are: The College of New Jersey, Kean University, Montclair State University, New Jersey City University, Ramapo College of New Jersey, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, Rowan University, Thomas Edison State College and William Paterson University.