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The federal government annually receives a comprehensive report from universities and colleges detailing their expenses from everything ranging from research facilities to foreign students and controlling crime in campus. There is serious lobbying by leaders of higher education to provide a more transparency to financial aid practice and college admissions. They also try their best to bring to the forefront the college or university’s performance in educating students and graduating them.

It should be noted here that higher education is the country’s pride and a huge enterprise. Over 3.5 million Americans are employed in this realm. At least $21 billion goes towards federal student grants and much more goes towards contracts and research grants. With so much at stake, the amount of money going in, what happens to the money and more importantly to the students is often dubious and vague.

As more initiatives are under way by Obama administration and the congress, universities and colleges must be made to provide a clear picture of their financial spending and education provided. It is necessary to determine whether deserving students are getting into the institutions. For this, it must be made mandatory for colleges to disclose details of students who get in through special provisions such as athletic talent and legacy status.

It is also imperative to determine the methods in which the aid dollars are used up by colleges. It should be monitored whether colleges are providing aid that is need based or are just engaging in leveraging financial aid to their advantage to ensure admissions for the bright and best students, usually those in the high income group.

The next aspect to give attention to on an emergency basis is to determine the percentage of students who successfully graduate or transfer to obtain college degrees. It is important to determine the root cause of so many drop outs and work on improving the situation.

Projects such as the non profit Delta Cost Project which is a research organization are conducting in depth research and survey on revenues generated and aid given to higher education and their spending pattern. This is done by calculating cost per degree with the help of models. It is the duty of the Federal Government to track college spending and make a significant move towards controlling costs. Institutions must be made accountable for both price as well as cost.

It is essential knowing all about the problem solving and communication ability of our graduates in order to gauge our human capital strength and devise ways and means to improve on it. It is a good idea measuring results of valuable data on comprehension and reasoning skills collected by the Department of Education’s National Assessment of Adult Literacy before the administration makes substantial moves towards improving the education scenario.

It is highly encouraging to see the Obama administration taking the right steps in the direction of improving higher education in America. However, in order to ensure effective usage of investments in the right direction, it is important to address the above issues first.