Draft Federal Report Says Higher Education Is ‘Unduly Expensive’

A federal panel studying ways to improve higher education is struggling to reach a consensus on its recommendations for how best to hold down college costs and prepare students for an increasingly competitive economy.

The Commission on the Future of Higher Education, which Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings established last year with a broad mandate to re-examine postsecondary education, has only a few months to hammer out its final report, which it plans to issue by September.

Some commission members were put off by a draft of the report, released June 26, because of what they considered its negative tone. The staff-written draft admonishes colleges for not doing enough to hold down tuition costs or explore innovative teaching methods, saying that the institutions have become “increasingly risk-averse, frequently...