Education Secretary Arne Duncan says that higher education in the United States needs more accountability and for schools to “deliver what they promise to students.”

According to the Washington Post, Duncan gave a speech at the University of Maryland Baltimore County where he made the calls for accountability and for states to discontinue the “pattern of disinvestment.”

““[T]he widespread cutbacks that states have made in their higher education budgets desperately need to be reversed,” he said. “In all, 47 states cut per-student spending between 2009 and 2014, by an average of about 13 percent. Over the past 25 years, state per-student spending is down 25 percent, after adjusting for inflation! For each dollar states put in higher education today, the federal government invests more than two.”

Duncan, in essence, is saying that the federal government cannot continue to invest lost state dollars back into higher education because many states aren’t focusing on higher education as they should.

He also mentioned in the speech that changing the system, or the culture, will be tough to accomplish.

Duncan is correct in noting that the system will not change overnight, and if he wants to alter how things work, he has a short window.

He has served as President Obama’s education secretary since the beginning of Obama’s presidency. That means that once Obama’s time in the White House is done, Duncan will likely be out as well.

Hopefully the legacy, and changes that he’s working on now, will encourage the next individual chosen to serve in the same capacity to attack the same challenges.