The formation of a Commission on the Future of Higher Education, also known as the Spellings Commission, was announced on September 19, 2005, by U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings. The nineteen-member commission was charged with recommending a national strategy for reforming post-secondary education, with a particular focus on how well colleges and universities are preparing students for the 21st-century workplace, as well as a secondary focus on how well high schools are preparing the students for post-secondary education. In the report, released on September 26, 2006, the Commission focuses on four key areas: access, affordability (particularly for non-traditional students), the standards of quality in instruction, and the accountability of institutions of higher learning to their constituencies (students, families, taxpayers, and other investors in higher education). After the report's publication, implementation of its recommendations was the responsibility of U.S. Under Secretary of Education, Sara Martinez Tucker (appointed August 2006).

A significant motivation behind the Spellings Commission's formation was the fear that the American higher education system is deteriorating and failing to prepare the American workforce for the rigors and competitiveness of the globalized marketplace. The Spellings Commission opens its report by stating that “higher education in the United States has become one of our greatest success stories.” but moving into the 21 century, the commission bluntly states in its preamble how [foreign higher education systems] are passing us by at a time when education is more important to our collective prosperity than ever.^[1] The commission emphasizes the relationship between industry, education, and the government.

Presidential commissions on education have been relatively common since The Truman Report in 1947. Other notable groups include President Eisenhower's "Committee on Education Beyond the High School," (1956), President Kennedy's Task Force on Education (1960), and President Reagan's National Commission on Excellence in Education, which produced A Nation at Risk (1983).

The published report (pdf) (first available on September 26, 2006 as a pre-publication copy), was titled A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education. It proposed several solutions to the problems facing higher education today, corresponding to the primary concerns of the commission: access, affordability, quality, accountability, and innovation.

Commission member David Ward refused to sign the final version, citing "several issues of serious concern" including the report's tendency to attribute problems with multiple causes entirely to the state of higher education.

After the publication of the report, it has been the target of criticism from prominent individuals in higher education, including Robert Berdahl, president of the Association of American Universities (and not a commission member), who stated that the report lacked a "nuanced understanding" of the realities of higher education.

Privacy advocates have criticized the call for a national student database, which Spellings and the commission have argued should include information on individual students' performance.

Microsoft's Gerri Elliot, a commission member, sparred with other commission members over the inclusion of a discussion of the benefits of open source software and open content.

The Higher Education Consumers Resource^[2] took exception to the report, citing inadequate research on root cause of the problems. With over 80% of all Americans having successfully completed 12 years of school, that fewer than 25% go on to successfully complete a college degree is meaningful. In Ohio alone, there are eight colleges that graduate less than 35% of the full-time freshman class within six years. This indicates serious institutional barriers to success within those institutions.^{[citation needed]} Higher Education Consumers Resource believes academic and career advising from independent sources not beholden to the college or university is one step towards reducing dismal successful college completion rates.

But the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education's "Measuring Up 2006: The National Report Card on Higher Education"^[3] focuses on most of the same areas as Spellings Commission report. The "report card" looks at individual states and assesses the status of their higher education since 2000. Although the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education is not directly affiliated with the commission, there is significant overlap in not only the areas of concern, but in some of the membership (notably James B. Hunt, Jr. and Arturo Madrid). Spellings is quoted as saying that she is proud her report has similarities to the National Center's report.

One of the most controversial proposed implementations of the report's recommendations is the proposal for a federally managed system to record the progress of individual college students. The Department of Education has proposed revamp or expand the current Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System,^[4] arguing that a database is necessary to sufficiently assess the status of universities and college students nationwide. University and pro-privacy advocates fear that such a plan would require universities to submit much more information causing vast increases in cost and time commitment to the universities and could be regarded as an invasion of students' privacy. The Department of Education addresses some of these anxieties on a "Myth vs. Fact" page^[5] posted to the DOE web site on September 29, 2006.

Some universities are beginning to use and modify learning management systems to create information systems that provide for a means of articulating institutional, classroom and personal learning outcomes at all levels as well as means to consistently rate performance toward those objectives. Alternative solutions are being researched, while the Spellings commissions was seeking funding for test projects in the 2008 federal budget. "Goal Aware Tools"^[6] development effort^[7] is one such attempt.

Additionally, some disciplinary organizations, such as the National Council of Teachers of English^[8] and the Council of Writing Program Administrators,^[9] have begun to demonstrate the ways in which member institutions engage in assessment practices designed to improve student learning. They make the case, advanced in documents like the NCTE-WPA White Paper on Writing Assessment in Colleges and Universities,^[10] that good assessment is locally contextualized, based in the principles of the discipline, and must be used to improve teaching and learning at the local level.

Since the US Department of Education published the Spellings Commission report on September 26, 2006, Spellings has pushed for progress in implementing the recommendations, progress that faces the challenge of working with limited time before the 2008 presidential elections. This push for tangible changes in the remainder of her term has included:

• The appointment of Sara Martinez Tucker as U.S. Under Secretary for Education by the U.S. Senate. Tucker was nominated by President George W. Bush in August 2006, but not confirmed until December. With Spellings, Tucker has created a more limited list of short and long-term goals for implementing the Commission Report's recommendations, a list headed by plans to increase the efficiency of the financial aid system, to create greater access to higher education, and to ensure that high school students are better prepared for college.
• Plans to simplify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), and to notify students before the spring of their senior year whether or not they would qualify for aid.
• A push to make comparative evaluation of individual universities' performance more possible, particularly through revamping or expanding the current Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (a push that has been met with some resistance by higher education interests).

The Higher Education Opportunity Act (enacted August 2008) has stated:

Nothing in this section shall be construed to permit the Secretary to establish any criteria that specifies, defines, or prescribes the standards that accrediting agencies or associations shall use to assess any institution’s success with respect to student achievement.