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Affordability, accessibility and accountability: These are the three main goals in a new plan to improve the status of postsecondary education, announced Tuesday by Education Secretary Margaret Spellings.

After receiving recommendations from her higher education commission, Spellings launched plans to redefine the college experience, promising less confusion regarding financial aid and a new information-sharing system, allowing for performance reviews of colleges and universities and for prospective students and their families to compare institutions based on their individual preferences.

She said she would make several changes on her own as well as begin to find support for her more sweeping proposals, which came from her commission’s recommendations.

There were mixed reactions to the announcement. The United States Student Association liked Spellings’ plans to simplify and speed up the process of receiving financial aid, while the American Association of University Professors said the basis of her agenda is all wrong and the emerging vision of higher education is only a marketplace, focused on outcomes and skills.

But one point of contention regarding Spellings’ plan was the role of federal government funding for college students. The commission said Congress should raise Pell Grants to cover 70 percent of in-state tuition costs, as they cover less than half now, but Spellings said it’s too soon to commit.

Jim Hunt, former North Carolina governor and a commission member, disagreed.

“That’s the most important thing,” he said, referring to the Pell Grants. “And that’s the federal government’s responsibility. I hope that they get in there and do the first down payment on that.”

Murray Haberman, executive director of the California Postsecondary Education Commission, said his organization would encourage the federal government to provide more grant aid to more people.

According to the June CPEC report, the average debt of a University of California undergraduate entering repayment in the 2003-2004 year was $17,075, while the average debt of a UC graduate entering repayment was $34,284.

Haberman said the degree of debt students are accumulating is resulting in a decrease of interest in lower-paying public sector jobs.

“The key for a student debtor is to obtain a reasonably well-paying job that has prospects for future growth,” the report reads. In addition, it says, “some academic programs, particularly those that do not lead to jobs with high enough or steady enough wages, may not be worth borrowing money to attend.”

Haberman said many students may begin to find community college more attractive due to costs.

For students who pursue graduate school, debt can add up to over $100,000 which, in turn, will draw prospective public sector workers to private organizations in order to earn more to pay off loans. He said this effect has already caused a shortage of public lawyers.

But while the nation continues to discuss the issues surrounding affordability, Haberman said California has already been laying groundwork for many statewide changes that parallel those proposed by Spellings. His organization is building a public database of information to be available to prospective students and their families. This sort of data allows for analysis of basic trends important to prospective students, including duration of study and graduate success, allowing them to find the institution that best fits their preferences.

“We are moving very much in the same direction (as the federal government),” Haberman said.

He said the commission has worked to develop a public unit-specific record, compiled of aggregate non-specific student records, which will help in the evaluation of an institution’s effectiveness. This system is very similar to the one proposed by Spellings, though Spellings’ commission recommended that testing of students also be part of the nationwide public database. The system would require vast data collection on individual students, which some critics fear will require long-term tracking of students and invade their privacy.

But Haberman said the system his organization is developing is completely private, as there is no actual identification of individual students in collecting the data.

“California is out ahead of the curve in the process of developing that accountability structure,” he said.

In addition to developing this system, Haberman said his organization will be addressing measures and conducting data analysis, and it looks to make recommendations for reform to both the California legislation and the governor this January.

Spellings said she will hold a summit in the spring to go over all the recommendations to her plan.

With reports from Bruin wire services.