The Impact of Cost-Containment Proposals Associated With the Reauthorization of the Higher Education Act

The Impact of Cost-Containment Proposals Associated With the Reauthorization of the Higher Education Act is a new report from the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education that, according to a related article in The Chronicle of Higher Education by Sara Hebel, "concludes that 47 percent of the 587 public four-year colleges studied would be subject to sanctions proposed in the College Cost Reduction Act of 2007 (HR 2669). That compares with 28 percent of the 526 private institutions in the analysis."

In their study, the Wisconsin researchers concluded that many of the institutions that charge the most would be protected from the penalties because they could gain substantially higher revenue through tuition increases than lower-priced institutions could if both raised their rates by the same percentages.