A proposal for more transparency in higher education pricing is being resisted by the educrat class:

All she wants, [Secretary of Education Margaret] Spellings says, is better information made available to families, taxpayers and policymakers so they can make better decisions about how they spend their money. And given how little is really known about how well students are served by higher education, she says, she doesn’t see why anyone would find that unreasonable.

“If you want to buy a new car, you go online and compare a full range of models, makes and pricing options,” she says. “The same transparency and ease should be the case when students and families shop for colleges, especially when one year of college can cost more than a car.”

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“The secretary does not seem to appreciate the extent to which colleges are already voluntarily looking at how to measure their effectiveness. We don’t need a federal one-size-fits-all solution,” says Richard Ekman, president of the Council of Independent Colleges, a Washington-based non-profit that represents small private colleges.

“If the federal government wants to help parents, it could start by providing more money for low-income students.”

Spellings has heard that before. She calls it the “give us more money and leave us alone” strategy.

In an interview in her office recently, she said, “There’s a little reality check going on here, which is that the American people want and expect more from every institution, every consumer good.”

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One reason some college leaders are balking, he says, is because, historically, “institutions define for themselves how they’re going to measure progress.”

But some college leaders acknowledge that higher education has been disappointing in that regard. In his book, Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More, out last January, Harvard’s former (now interim) president Derek Bok cites numerous studies and examples to build the case that higher education has not made a systematic effort to improve student learning.

And, he recently told or a group of higher education numbers-crunchers, “We have a long way to go before convincing the federal government that we don’t need some nudging from the outside.”

One reason educators don’t want to divulge greater detail about where the money of taxpayers, parents and students goes is that it will become painfully obvious how much of it is being put towards political activity and other frivilous ends.

When gas prices were rising during the summer, virtually every news article I read quoted some academic about the need for greater government regulation. Yet, despite a college education being one of the most vital and expensive services in our society, academics demand a free pass from outside oversight.

It’s interesting that so many academics become strong supporters of free markets the minute the spotlight shines on them.