In this provocative volume, higher education experts explore innovative ways that colleges and universities can unbundle the various elements of the college experience while assessing costs and benefits and realizing savings.

Stretching the Higher Education Dollar traces the reform continuum from incremental to more ambitious efforts. Topics include effective strategies for reallocating resources to capture efficiencies, opportunities with massive open online courses (MOOCs), and ideas for building low-cost degree pathways from the ground up.

Though the pace of change in higher education is fast and furious, Stretching the Higher Education Dollar offers promising ideas for navigating the new fiscal, political, and technological environment.
About the Author:

Andrew P. Kelly is a resident scholar in education policy studies at AEI. His research focuses on higher education policy, innovation in education, the politics of education reform, and consumer choice in education. Previously, he was a research assistant at AEI, where his work focused on the preparation of school leaders, collective bargaining in public schools, and the politics of education. His research has appeared in Teachers College Record, Educational Policy, Policy Studies Journal, Education Next, and Education Week, as well as popular outlets such as Inside Higher Ed, Forbes, The Atlantic, National Review, and The Huffington Post. He is coeditor of Getting to Graduation: The Completion Agenda in Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012); Carrots, Sticks, and the Bully Pulpit: Lessons from A Half-Century of Federal Efforts to Improve America's Schools (Harvard Education Press, 2012); and Reinventing Higher Education: The Promise of Innovation (Harvard Education Press, 2011). In 2011, Kelly was named one of sixteen "Next Generation Leaders" in education policy by Education Week's Policy Notebook blog.

Kevin Carey is director of the education policy program at the New America Foundation. An expert on preK-12 and higher education issues, Carey has published articles on education and other topics in magazines including The New Republic, Washington Monthly, The American Prospect, and Democracy. He writes monthly columns on education for The Chronicle of Higher Education and The New Republic and edits the annual Washington Monthly College Guide. Carey's research topics include higher education reform, college graduation rate improvement, college rankings, community colleges, and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. His writing was anthologized in Best American Legal Writing 2009 and received an Education Writers Association award for commentary in 2010. He appears frequently on media outlets including CNN, C-SPAN, and NPR. Before joining New America, Carey worked as the policy director of Education Sector and at the Education Trust. Previously, he worked as an analyst in the Indiana Senate and as Indiana's assistant state budget director. He also teaches education policy at Johns Hopkins University.