[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
STRENGTHENING AMERICA'S HIGHER
EDUCATION SYSTEM
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHER EDUCATION
AND WORKFORCE TRAINING
COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
AND THE WORKFORCE
U.S. House of Representatives
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, MARCH 17, 2015
__________
Serial No. 114-5
__________
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OMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE
JOHN KLINE, Minnesota, Chairman
PJoe Wilson, South Carolina Robert C. ``Bobby'' Scott,
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Virginia
Duncan Hunter, California Ranking Member
David P. Roe, Tennessee Ruben Hinojosa, Texas
Glenn Thompson, Pennsylvania Susan A. Davis, California
Tim Walberg, Michigan Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona
Matt Salmon, Arizona Joe Courtney, Connecticut
Brett Guthrie, Kentucky Marcia L. Fudge, Ohio
Todd Rokita, Indiana Jared Polis, Colorado
Lou Barletta, Pennsylvania Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan,
Joseph J. Heck, Nevada Northern Mariana Islands
Luke Messer, Indiana Frederica S. Wilson, Florida
Bradley Byrne, Alabama Suzanne Bonamici, Oregon
David Brat, Virginia Mark Pocan, Wisconsin
Buddy Carter, Georgia Mark Takano, California
Michael D. Bishop, Michigan Hakeem S. Jeffries, New York
Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin Katherine M. Clark, Massachusetts
Steve Russell, Oklahoma Alma S. Adams, North Carolina
Carlos Curbelo, Florida Mark DeSaulnier, California
Elise Stefanik, New York
Rick Allen, Georgia
Juliane Sullivan, Staff Director
Denise Forte, Minority Staff Director
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHER EDUCATION AND WORKFORCE TRAINING
VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina, Chairwoman
David P. Roe, Tennessee Ruben Hinojosa, Texas
Matt Salmon, Arizona Ranking Minority Member
Brett Guthrie, Kentucky Hakeem S. Jeffries, New York
Lou Barletta, Pennsylvania Alma S. Adams, North Carolina
Joseph J. Heck, Nevada Mark DeSaulnier, California
Luke Messer, Indiana Susan A. Davis, California
Bradley Byrne, Alabama Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona
Carlos Curbelo, Florida Joe Courtney, Connecticut
Elise Stefanik, New York Jared Polis, Colorado
Rick Allen, Georgia
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on March 17, 2015................................... 1
Statement of Members:
Adams, Hon. Alma S., a Representative in Congress from the
State of North Carolina.................................... 3
Prepared statement of.................................... 5
Foxx, Hon. Virginia, Chairwoman, Subcommittee on Higher
Education and Workforce Training........................... 1
Prepared statement of.................................... 3
Statement of Witnesses:
Bennett, Mr. Michael J., Associate Vice President, Financial
Aid Services, St. Petersburg College, St. Petersburg,
Florida.................................................... 40
Prepared statement of.................................... 42
Bergeron, Mr. David A., Vice President, Postsecondary
Education, Center for American Progress, Washington, DC.... 26
Prepared statement of.................................... 28
Daniels Jr., Mr. Mitchell E., President, Purdue University,
West Lafayette, IN......................................... 9
Prepared statement of.................................... 11
Keller, Dr. Christine M., Vice President, Research and Policy
Analysis, Executive Director, Voluntary System of
Accountability and Student Achievement Measure, Association
of Public and Land-Grant Universities, Washington, DC...... 17
Prepared statement of.................................... 19
Additional Submissions:
Kline, Hon. John, Chairman, Committee on Education and the
Workforce:
Prepared statement of Warren, Mr. David L., President,
National Association of Independent Colleges and
Universities........................................... 78
Mr. Daniels:
Purdue Moves............................................. 73
Purdue Impacts........................................... 75
Polis, Hon. Jared, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Colorado:
Prepared statement of The United Steel, Paper and
Forestry, Rubber Manufacturing, Energy, Allied
Industrial and Service Workers International Union
(USW).................................................. 83
Statement of Administration Policy....................... 85
STRENGHTENING AMERICA'S HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEM
----------
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce
Training,
Committee on Education and the Workforce,
Washington, D.C.
----------
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:06 a.m., in
Room 2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Virginia Foxx
[chairwoman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Foxx, Roe, Guthrie, Messer,
Curbelo, Stefanik, Allen, Adams, DeSaulnier, Davis, Courtney,
and Polis.
Also present: Representatives Kline, Rokita, and Scott.
Staff present: Lauren Aronson, Press Secretary; Janelle
Belland, Coalitions and Members Services Coordinator; Amy Raaf
Jones, Director of Education and Human Resources Policy; Nancy
Locke, Chief Clerk; Brian Melnyk, Professional Staff Member;
Daniel Murner, Deputy Press Secretary; Krisann Pearce, General
Counsel; Jenny Prescott, Legislative Assistant; Mandy
Schaumburg, Education Deputy Director and Senior Counsel; Emily
Slack, Professional Staff Member; Alissa Strawcutter, Deputy
Clerk; Tylease Alli, Minority Clerk/Intern and Fellow
Coordinator; Austin Barbera, Minority Staff Assistant; Eamonn
Collins, Minority Education Policy Advisor; Denise Forte,
Minority Staff Director; Rosa Garcia, Minority Senior Education
Policy Advisor; Scott Groginsky, Minority Senior Education
Policy Advisor; Christian Haines, Minority Education Policy
Counsel; and Tina Hone, Minority Education Policy Director and
Associate General Counsel.
Chairwoman Foxx. Good morning. A quorum being present, the
Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training will
come to order.
Welcome to the first hearing of the Subcommittee on Higher
Education and Workforce Training in the 114th Congress.
I would like to thank our witnesses for joining us today.
We appreciate the opportunity to learn from you about how to
strengthen America's postsecondary system as Congress works to
reauthorize the Higher Education Act.
Today, too many Americans struggle to realize the dream of
higher education. Our current system is unaffordable,
inflexible, and outdated, and has resulted in too many students
unable to complete college, saddled with loan debt, and ill-
equipped to compete in our modern economy. In recent years,
more federal regulations, a lack of transparency, and a
dizzying maze of student aid programs have only contributed to
the problem.
Students and families deserve better. The upcoming
reauthorization of the Higher Education Act provides Congress
an opportunity to help every individual, regardless of age,
location, or background, access and complete higher education
if they choose.
To inform the reauthorization process, the Education and
the Workforce Committee have held more than a dozen hearings.
After receiving feedback from students, institutions,
innovators, administrators, and researchers, the committee
established a set of key principles that will guide our reform
of the postsecondary education law.
First, we must empower students and families to make
informed decisions when it comes to selecting the institution
that meets their unique needs. Today's higher education
resources are incomplete, inaccurate, and often complicate the
financial aid process, misguiding students about their academic
and financial options. Developing a more streamlined and
transparent system, as well as enhancing financial literacy
services, will help students better understand the higher
education landscape and make choices based on easy-to-
understand, relevant information.
Second, we must simplify and improve student aid.
Currently, the federal government operates more than 10 aid
programs, each with its own set of rules and requirements.
Many students, particularly first-generation and low-income
students, are overwhelmed by the complexity of the current
system, which can ultimately deter them from accessing the aid
that will help make college a reality. Consolidating this
patchwork of aid programs will simplify the application and
eligibility process and help more students understand, manage,
and repay their debt.
Third, we must promote innovation, access, and completion.
In recent years, as the postsecondary student population has
changed, many institutions have developed new approaches to
delivering higher education, including competency-based
curriculums and online classes. The federal government should
make every effort to support these innovations, as they have
enabled more Americans to earn a degree or certificate faster,
with less cost, and without additional disruption to their
daily lives.
Finally, we must ensure strong accountability while
limiting the federal role. The current administration has
subjected institutions to onerous requirements and regulations,
which have created a costly and time-consuming process,
hampered innovation, and jeopardized academic freedom.
Eliminating ineffective federal burdens will provide states and
institutions the flexibility they need to deliver effectively a
high-quality education to their students.
We are confident, with guidance from higher education
leaders such as you, these pillars will translate into
meaningful federal reforms that reflect the evolving needs of
students and the workforce. We welcome your policy
recommendations on how we can strengthen America's higher
education system to serve students, families, workers, and
taxpayers better.
I look forward to hearing from you and from my colleagues
on this important issue.
With that, I now recognize my North Carolina colleague, and
Democrat colleague, the ranking member of the subcommittee
today, Congresswoman Alma Adams, for her opening remarks.
Prepared Statement of Hon. Virginia Foxx, Chairwoman, Subcommittee on
Higher Education and Workforce Training
Today, too many Americans struggle to realize the dream of higher
education. Our current system is unaffordable, inflexible, and
outdated, and has resulted in too many students unable to complete
college, saddled with loan debt, and ill-equipped to compete in our
modern economy.
In recent years, more federal regulations, a lack of transparency,
and a dizzying maze of student aid programs have only contributed to
the problem. Students and families deserve better.
The upcoming reauthorization of the Higher Education Act provides
Congress an opportunity to help every individual - regardless of age,
location, or background - access and complete higher education, if they
choose.
To inform the reauthorization process, the Education and the
Workforce Committee has held more than a dozen hearings. After
receiving feedback from students, institutions, innovators,
administrators, and researchers, the committee established a set of key
principles that will guide our reform of the postsecondary education
law.
First, we must empower students and families to make informed
decisions when it comes to selecting the institution that meets their
unique needs. Today's higher education resources are incomplete,
inaccurate, and often complicate the financial aid process, misguiding
students about their academic and financial options. Developing a more
streamlined and transparent system, as well as enhancing financial
literacy services, will help students better understand the higher
education landscape and make choices based on easy-to-understand,
relevant information.
Second, we must simplify and improve student aid. Currently, the
federal government operates more than 10 aid programs, each with its
own set of rules and requirements. Many students, particularly first-
generation and low-income students, are overwhelmed by the complexity
of the current system, which can ultimately deter them from accessing
the aid that will help make college a reality. Consolidating this
patchwork of aid programs will simplify the application and eligibility
process and help more students understand, manage, and repay their
debt.
Third, we must promote innovation, access, and completion. In
recent years, as the postsecondary student population has changed, many
institutions have developed new approaches to delivering higher
education, including competency-based curriculums and online classes.
The federal government should make every effort to support these
innovations, as they have enabled more Americans to earn a degree or
certificate faster, with less cost, and without additional disruption
to their daily lives.
Finally, we must ensure strong accountability while limiting the
federal role. The current administration has subjected institutions to
onerous requirements and regulations, which have created a costly and
time-consuming process, hampered innovation, and jeopardized academic
freedom. Eliminating ineffective federal burdens will provide states
and institutions the flexibility they need to effectively deliver a
high quality education to their students.
We are confident - with guidance from higher education leaders such
as you - these pillars will translate into meaningful federal reforms
that reflect the evolving needs of students and the workforce.
We welcome your policy recommendations on how we can strengthen
America's higher education system to serve students, families, workers,
and taxpayers better. I look forward to hearing from you and from my
colleagues on this important issue.
______
Ms. Adams. Thank you, Chairwoman Foxx, for holding this
hearing on the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. In
Ranking Member Ruben Hinojosa's absence, I will be serving as
your Democratic co-chair of today's subcommittee hearing, and I
am glad to do so.
I wish to acknowledge the ranking member of our full
committee, Congressman Bobby Scott, and thank him for being
here for this important hearing, which marks the beginning of
our efforts related to reauthorization of the Higher Education
Act.
To our distinguished panel of experts, welcome, and thank
you for joining us this morning.
Today's committee discussion will focus on ways Congress
and the federal government can strengthen America's higher
education system. For committee Democrats, increasing
affordability, accessibility, and student success in higher
education are key priorities for the reauthorization of the
Higher Education Act this Congress.
Attaining a college degree is more important than ever.
According to a recent report of the Georgetown University
Center on Education and the Workforce, by 2018, 65 percent of
all jobs will require some form of postsecondary education.
In light of this, I am deeply concerned that children
living in poverty will be left behind without a college degree.
As this committee considers the reauthorization of the Higher
Education Act, we must ensure that all students, including low-
income students that are often students of color, have access
to a high-quality postsecondary education and are equipped with
the knowledge and 21st century skills that are needed to
succeed.
First, the reauthorization must address college
affordability and strengthen federal student aid programs. In
my view, increasing the purchasing power of the Pell Grant,
restoring the year-round Pell Grant program, can make college
more affordable for millions of students.
Today, approximately 8.4 million students benefit from the
nation's federal Pell Grant program. The maximum Pell Grant
award of $5,700 in 2014, however, covers less than one-third of
the cost of a public 4-year institution. A restoration of the
year-round Pell Grant program could help to accelerate degree
completion for Pell recipients and reduce college costs.
So I am pleased that my colleagues on the other side of the
aisle recognize the value of incentivizing flexibility,
continuous enrollment, and college completion for Pell Grant
recipients.
And with regard to federal direct loans, it is vitally
important that students and families maintain access to student
loans with low interest rates and affordable repayment options.
To reduce student loan defaults and protect student borrowers,
we must do a better job of improving loan servicing and help
struggling borrowers to rehabilitate their loans.
We must also ensure that parents have access to Parent PLUS
loans. As you are aware, the changes made to Parent PLUS loan
programs in 2011 made it more difficult for nearly 28,000 HBCU
students and their families to afford the cost of a college
degree.
And let's be clear, the federal government cannot do this
alone. states and institutions must do their part to rein in
college costs and make college more affordable.
To be sure, the federal government can strengthen the
federal-state partnership on higher education by incentivizing
states to bolster state investments in higher education and
state financial aid programs. This type of partnership could
help make college more affordable and accessible for students.
And while our nation has one of the most comprehensive and
reputable higher education systems in the world, disparities
among institutions persist. For example, HBCU's and minority-
serving institutions continue to be under-resourced. HBCUs
represent 3 percent of the nation's institutions of higher
learning but graduate nearly 20 percent of African Americans
who earn undergraduate degrees.
In addition, the institutions graduate more than 50 percent
of African American professionals and public school teachers.
Having earned an undergraduate and master's degree from an
HBCU, as well as having taught at one for 40 years, I clearly
understand the longstanding contributions that these
institutions have made to higher education. And because of my
experiences, I am especially pleased to co-chair the bipartisan
congressional HBCU caucus, with my colleague, Bradley Byrne.
Given their vital importance to underrepresented and low-income
students, the federal government must continue to support and
invest in these institutions.
In particular, the reauthorization of Higher Education Act
must ensure that HBCUs and minority-serving institutions have
the capacity and the resources they need to thrive and provide
students with access to a high-quality education.
And finally, our nation's higher education system must
improve completion rates for all students. We must move away
from linear measurements of success that do not take into
account the unique circumstances that face low-income students
that are often students of color. Without a college degree, it
becomes more difficult for students to access good jobs and
careers and to improve their lives.
So moving forward, I look forward to working with my
colleagues on both sides of the aisle to reauthorize the Higher
Education Act in this Congress.
Chairman Foxx, with that, I yield back.
Prepared Statement of Hon. Alma S. Adams, a Representative in Congress
from the State of North Carolina
Thank you, Chairwoman Foxx, for holding this hearing on the
reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA). In Ranking Member
Ruben Hinojosa's absence, I will be serving as your Democratic Co-Chair
of today's subcommittee hearing.
I wish to acknowledge the Ranking Member of our full committee,
Congressman Bobby Scott, and thank him for being here for this
important hearing, which marks the beginning of our efforts related to
the reauthorization of Higher Education Act.
To our distinguished panel of experts, welcome and thank you for
joining us this morning.
Today's committee discussion will focus on ways Congress and the
federal government can strengthen America's higher education system.
For committee Democrats, increasing affordability, accessibility and
student success in higher education are key priorities for the
reauthorization of the Higher Education Act this Congress.
Attaining a college degree is more important than ever. According
to a recent report by the Georgetown University Center on Education and
the Workforce, by 2020, 65 percent of all jobs will require some form
of postsecondary education.
In light of this fact, I am deeply concerned that children living
poverty will be left behind without a college degree. As this committee
considers the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, we must
ensure that all students, including low-income students that are often
students of color, have access to a high quality postsecondary
education and are equipped with the knowledge and 21st century skills
they need to succeed.
First, the reauthorization must address college affordability and
strengthen federal student aid programs. In my view, increasing the
purchasing power of the Pell grant and restoring the year-round Pell
program can make college more affordable for millions of students.
Today, approximately 8.4 million students benefit from the nation's
federal Pell grant program.
The maximum Pell grant award of $5,730 in 2014, however, covers
less than one third of the cost of a public four-year institution. A
restoration of the year-round Pell grant program could help to
accelerate degree completion for Pell recipients and reduce college
costs. I am pleased that my colleagues on the other side of aisle
recognize the value of incentivizing flexibility, continuous
enrollment, and college completion for Pell grant recipients.
With regard to Federal Direct Loans, it is vitally important that
students and families maintain access to student loans with low-
interest rates and affordable repayment options. To reduce student loan
defaults and protect student borrowers, we must do a better job of
improving loan servicing and help struggling borrowers to rehabilitate
their loans.
We must also ensure that parents have access to Parent PLUS loans.
As you are aware, changes made to Parent PLUS Loan Program in 2011 made
it more difficult for nearly 28,000 HBCU students and their families to
afford the cost of a college degree.
But let's be clear, the federal government cannot do this alone.
States and institutions must do their part to rein in college costs
and make college more affordable. To be sure, the federal government
can strengthen the federal-state partnership in higher education by
incentivizing states to bolster state investments in higher education
and state financial aid programs. This type of partnership could help
to make college more affordable and accessible for students.
While our nation has one of the most comprehensive and reputable
higher education systems in the world, disparities among institutions
persist. For instance, HBCUs and Minority Serving Intuitions continue
to be under-resourced. HBCUs represent only three percent of the
nation's institutions of higher learning, but graduate nearly 20
percent of African Americans who earn undergraduate degrees. In
addition, the institutions graduate more than 50 percent of African
American professionals and public school teachers.
Having earned both an undergraduate and master's degree from an
HBCU, as well as having taught at one for 40 years, I clearly
understand the long-standing contributions that these institutions have
made to American higher education and to society.
Because of my experiences, I am especially pleased to co-chair the
bipartisan Congressional HBCU Caucus with my colleague Bradley Byrne.
Given their vital importance to underrepresented and low-income
students, the federal government must continue to support and invest in
these institutions.
In particular, the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act must
ensure that HBCUs and Minority Serving institutions have the capacity
and resources they need to thrive and provide students with access to a
high quality education now and into the future.
Finally, our nation`s higher education system must improve college
completion rates for all students.
We must move away from linear measurements of success that do not
take into account the unique circumstances that face low-income
students, that are often students of color.Without a college degree, it
becomes more difficult for students to access good jobs and careers and
improve their lives.
Moving forward, I look forward to working with my colleagues on
both sides of the aisle to reauthorize the Higher Education Act in this
Congress.
Chairman Foxx, with that, I yield back.
______
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you, Congresswoman Adams.
Pursuant to committee rule 7(c), all members will be
permitted to submit written statements to be included in the
permanent hearing record, and without objection, the hearing
record will remain open for 14 days to allow such statements
and other extraneous material referenced during the hearing to
be submitted for the official hearing record.
It is now my pleasure to introduce our distinguished
witnesses, and I recognize Mr. Rokita and Mr. Messer to
introduce our first witness--or, Mr. Messer first?
Mr. Messer. I will certainly follow the wishes of the
chair. My apologies. I thought Mr. Rokita was going first, but
I am glad to greet my good friend, Governor Daniels. And he is
a close enough friend of mine that I know he is no fan of long
introductions, so I will try to keep my comments brief.
You know, of all the praise and accolades I could give our
good governor, now the former governor, now the president of
Purdue, I would just focus on one, and that is that Mitch
Daniels gets things done, that everywhere he has been, from his
distinguished business career at Eli Lilly to his time as
governor of Indiana, where we balanced budgets, had record
levels of investment in infrastructure, and reformed government
so much so that the consumer experience at the Bureau of Motor
Vehicles is actually liked by the residents of Indiana now, as
you can get in and out in less than 10 minutes, to his time now
at Purdue, where he has frozen tuition and received national
accolades for that--freezing tuition at the 2012-2013 levels--
established innovative programs with Amazon that save students
up to 30 percent on their textbooks, even creating a
competency-based degree at Purdue Polytechnic--at the Purdue
Polytechnic Institute.
Mitch Daniels is somebody who, throughout his career, has
demonstrated that he knows it is important what we say, but
even more important what we do, and that at this time when many
are cynical about public policy, the real anecdote to that
cynicism is to deliver results. This is a man I know who
delivers results.
I am proud to call him my friend. I was proud to call him
the governor of Indiana. And I am today very proud to call him
the president of Purdue.
Thank you for being here today.
Mr. Rokita. Thank you, Chair.
Let me add to that introduction simply by saying grateful
for former Indiana governor and now president of Purdue
University, Mitch Daniels, for being here. We served together,
he as governor and myself as secretary of state, for a good
number of years, and together we supported each other's work,
and I am very proud to be a part of the largest transportation
infrastructure investment program in Indiana's history,
economic development issues, as Representative Messer
mentioned, but also thorny political issues, like reforming
Indiana's congressional districts and even a photo ID that
makes sure every vote--at the polls that makes sure every vote
counts equally.
They are all examples, as Congressman Messer pointed out,
of a simple motto that says, ``Leaders lead.'' And that
certainly was Governor Daniels, and now I--we continue to
support former Governor Daniels as President Daniels, as he
leads Purdue University in the heart of Indiana's 4th District.
Under President Daniels' leadership, it is important to
note that tuition at Purdue University has been frozen, and
until Mitch did that I don't know of any other university that
even attempted it. And now dominoes are falling and other
universities are replicating it. I am sure we will hear from
the other witnesses today about that.
And I hope that other university leaders have the courage
to not only emulate some of the ideas occurring at Purdue
University, but to even improve upon them. And I am sure we
will hear more examples and ideas from President Daniels
directly, so I invite committee members to welcome a great
Hoosier and American, Purdue University president and former
Indiana governor, Mitch Daniels.
And I yield back.
Chairwoman Foxx. You may want to take them on the road with
you.
Mr. Daniels. I am the one who is grateful. Grateful to
the--
Chairwoman Foxx. I am pleased to introduce our remaining
witnesses.
Dr. Christine Keller is the vice president of research and
policy analysis at the Association of Public and Land-Grant
Universities, APLU, here in Washington, D.C. She also directs
the Voluntary System of Accountability on behalf of APLU and
the American Association of State Colleges and Universities,
and oversees the cross-sector Student Achievement Measure
project on behalf of multiple higher education associations.
Before joining APLU, she was the assistant director of
institutional research and planning at the University of Kansas
and the associate dean of continuing education at Sterling
College in Sterling, Kansas.
Dr. David A. Bergeron is the vice president for
postsecondary education at the Center for American Progress
here in Washington, D.C. Previously, Mr. Bergeron served more
than 30 years at the U.S. Department of Education. During his
years with the department, Mr. Bergeron acted as the secretary
of education's chief advisor on higher education issues,
administered more than 60 grant and loan programs annually, and
was responsible for the federal postsecondary education program
budget and the legislation, regulations, and other policies
affecting the department's postsecondary education programs.
Mr. Michael J. Bennett is the associate vice president of
financial assistance services at St. Petersburg College in St.
Petersburg, Florida. Mr. Bennett has worked as a financial aid
administrator for the past 34 years. He is a former chair of
the National Association of Student Financial Aid
Administrators and the former president of the Eastern
Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators and the New
Jersey Association of Financial Aid Administrators.
I now ask our witnesses to stand and raise your right hand.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Let the record reflect the witnesses answered in the
affirmative.
Before I recognize you to provide your testimony, let me
briefly explain our lighting system. You have 5 minutes to
present your testimony.
When you begin, the light in front of you will turn green.
When 1 minute is left, the light will turn yellow. When your
time is expired, the light will turn red.
At that point I will ask that you wrap up your remarks as
best you are able. Members will each have 5 minutes to ask
questions.
I would like now to recognize the Honorable Mitch Daniels
for his comments.
TESTIMONY OF HON. MITCHELL E. DANIELS, JR., PRESIDENT, PURDUE
UNIVERSITY, WEST LAFAYETTE, INDIANA
Mr. Daniels. Grateful to the chair, to Congresswoman Adams,
and to the committee for this chance to be here today.
Thanks, of course, to my good friends, and our congressmen
at Purdue, Todd Rokita and Luke Messer.
Thank you very much for the chance to come say, first of
all, on behalf of the American higher education system, that at
a time in which our national leadership is under challenge in
various dimensions, one area in which we are unquestionably the
leader of the world is in the quality of our higher ed system.
And yet, questions are being asked about that system we have
not heard before. They are legitimate, and the system calls out
for modernization and change.
And the timing of this hearing, the timing of the renewal
of the act under consideration here could hardly be better. The
United States government can help in many ways with the
concerns of cost and accommodating new modes of learning better
suited to today's young people, better suited to the national
economy.
The two areas--and I was so grateful to hear both of our--
the leaders of the committee speak to these--two areas I would
single out, among others, in which the Congress can be of great
help.
First of all, in lowering the barriers to innovation. Comes
slowly enough in higher ed, but many, many universities--and I
believe ours is one--are eager to adapt and to new
technologies, to new needs in the marketplace.
Many of the rules in place, many of the aspects of the
current law get in the way; for instance, at Purdue we are very
eager to begin using summer or making it possible for our
students to use their summers more extensively than they have
historically to proceed to degrees in fewer than 4 years, and
here--Congresswoman Adams mentioned certainly one way in which
the Congress could help, by liberalizing the grant programs
that we have. The same applies to competency-based education,
allowing students and helping students to move forward at their
own rate and not on the arbitrary agrarian calendar we
inherited.
There are a host of regulations which have grown up over
the years. All, I am sure, are well intentioned. I recommend to
the committee's attention the tremendous report by the American
Council on Education, which details the difficulties that these
regulations now cause and has a host of specific requests for
greater flexibility.
They impose enormous cost on the system. At our university,
based on the work done at Vanderbilt and elsewhere, it is
entirely credible to assert that as much as $200 million is
consumed in complying with the entire complex of regulations.
We could send 20,000 Hoosier students to school for free with
that amount of money.
So this is a--really a marvelous opportunity that is in
front of the nation, and I would like to say that at our
university we accept the assignment to play our part. We have
worked to make the school more accessible and affordable.
We have frozen tuition, and we are in the second year of at
least a 3-year hold. Those students who arrived at Purdue when
I did will--those who graduate in 4 years will never see a
tuition increase, and that is a first for us in a long, long
time.
We have reduced the cost of room and board 10 percent. We
have acted more recently to reduce the cost of the third most
expensive item, which is textbooks. Meanwhile, we are making
very substantial investments in new modes of teaching, some of
which I have mentioned here.
So we thank very much this committee and those other
members of Congress who will work with you. We do have the
finest system anywhere.
It is absolutely imperative to our national success that we
make it more accessible, more affordable, and more accountable
than it has been. This is a marvelous opportunity not to be
missed.
[The testimony of Mr. Daniels follows:]
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Chairwoman Foxx. Dr. Keller?
TESTIMONY OF DR. CHRISTINE M. KELLER, VICE PRESIDENT, RESEARCH
AND POLICY ANALYSIS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, VOLUNTARY SYSTEM OF
ACCOUNTABILITY AND STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT MEASURE, ASSOCIATION OF
PUBLIC AND LAND-GRANT UNIVERSITIES, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ms. Keller. Good morning. Chairwoman Foxx, Ranking Member
Adams, and members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting
me to speak this morning.
Access to meaningful postsecondary data for decision-making
has become increasingly important for consumers, policymakers,
and institutions. I am pleased to share with you this morning
lessons we have learned through our experiences with the
Voluntary System of Accountability and the Student Achievement
Measure.
The VSA is an initiative by public 4-year universities to
supply basic data on the undergraduate student experience
through a common Web report, the ``College Portrait.''
Developed in 2007, the VSA is jointly sponsored by APLU and the
Association of State Colleges and Universities. We currently
have 270 participating institutions.
The VSA champions the importance of providing information
in a comparable and understandable way to students, families,
and policymakers. Each institution's college portrait includes
data in areas such as college cost, financial aid, degree
programs offered, and educational opportunities such as
undergraduate research or study abroad.
The VSA remains the only national initiative that publicly
reports direct evidence of student learning.
The Student Achievement Measure, or SAM, was created with
one goal in mind: to provide a more complete national picture
of student progress and outcomes than the current federal
graduation rate. By tracking only outcomes for full-time
students who graduate from their first institution, the federal
graduation rate is increasingly outdated for today's mobile and
diverse students. Using SAM, institutions can track the
graduation of full-time, part-time, and transfer students, as
well as students still enrolled and working toward a degree or
certificate.
Currently, SAM has 559 participating institutions and shows
the outcomes of the half million more students than the federal
graduation rate. SAM is sponsored by all six of the
presidential higher education associations and represents
public, private, 2-year, and 4-year institutions.
Overall, our experience with the VSA and SAM provide three
lessons that are particularly relevant for HEA reauthorization.
One: Build a foundation of trustworthy data. Reliable
information is the foundation for any reporting system.
It is true that the perfect metric or data source rarely,
if ever, exists. However, it is equally true that the data
needs to be reliable enough to represent a realistic set of
outcomes. When a data source or metric no longer meets that
standard, it should be replaced--for example, the federal
graduation rate.
Lesson two: Leverage the data already collected and
reported. Too much data can be overwhelming to external
audiences and a burden for institutions.
It is important for those of us who collect and disseminate
data to work together to better align definitions, enhance
comparability, and minimize reporting burdens. Before adding
other data elements at the federal level, for example, we
should question what data elements to remove as well as what
information is already reported at the state level or through
national systems.
Lesson three: Report key limited information at the federal
level. APLU recommends minimizing the federal data collected to
focus on a few key elements related to access, affordability,
progress and completion, and post-collegiate outcomes, ensuring
that the most relevant information is readily available to all
students. Additional contextual information could be made
available through institutions' Web sites, links to state
dashboards, or national data initiatives such as the VSA.
In closing, thank you for the opportunity to offer some of
the lessons we have learned. I look forward to your questions.
[The testimony of Dr. Keller follows:]
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Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you very much.
Mr. Bergeron?
TESTIMONY OF MR. DAVID A. BERGERON, VICE PRESIDENT,
POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS,
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mr. Bergeron. Thank you, Chairwoman Foxx, Ranking Member
Scott, and Ranking Member Adams, for the opportunity to appear
before the subcommittee today.
Many years ago, when I was--when the Pell Grant program was
in its second year, I was fortunate enough to receive a grant
to cover most of the cost of attending the University of Rhode
Island. My parents could not afford to have two children in
college, and a year later a third, enrolled even in a public
college, at the same time. If it hadn't been for that support,
I wouldn't be here testifying today, and I know there are
millions of other students who followed me since then,
receiving support.
Bit about the Center for American Progress: CAP is an
independent, nonpartisan policy institute that is dedicated to
improving the lives of all Americans through bold and
progressive ideas. Postsecondary education plays a critical
role in enabling citizens to climb the ladder of economic
mobility.
The federal investments in higher education have paid
dividends. Since the 1970s, the college-going rate for low and
middle-income students has grown dramatically, and enrollment
now reaches 28 million students per year. Without investments
in Pell Grants, student loans, and other federal programs like
the support that is provided to historically black colleges and
universities, these increases in enrollment and college-going
rates among students from low and middle-income families would
not have been possible.
College education continues to be the best deal for
students who graduate, but investments in higher education also
pay dividends for the broad society. Workers who have some
college earn more than those who just have a high school
diploma, and studies have shown that for every 1 percent
increase in the share of a population of a state that holds a
bachelor's degree, the earnings of those who drop out of high
school or drop out of high school also increased by 1.9 and 1.6
percent, respectively.
There are troubling signs, making it urgently important for
us to do more. First, experts show a shortfall--project a
shortfall in the number of college-educated workers of 5
million by 2020, when 65 percent of all jobs will require a
bachelor's degree, or an associate's degree, or some other
education beyond high school. This is especially true for
middle school jobs that require more than high school--a high
school diploma but less than a bachelor's degree.
Second, the growing levels of student loan debt, as
institutions continue to charge more. And I applaud the efforts
made by Governor Daniels to restrain increases at Purdue. And,
as was noted, many other institutions are following his lead.
The tuition increases in recent years have left significant
gaps in funding for students and families, and private loans
have often been used to fill that gap.
One of the reasons that we have seen these gaps in funding
is because states have reduced their support to their public
community college and 4-year community--colleges and
universities, in which three-quarters of our students enroll
today.
To combat the erosion of state support, which has resulted
in increases in tuition and fees and student loan debt, the
Center for American Progress has called for the creation of a
public college quality compact that would ensure that students
have access to affordable education and are able to earn
credentials and degrees. President Obama's proposal to make the
first 2 years of college free at community colleges is an
important step forward, as our work has shown that community
colleges bore the brunt of the spending cuts in public higher
education in recent years.
But we need to go further. The center has called for the
creation of a College for All program that would ensure that
all families would have access to financial aid and through
which students would repay some of that aid in--through wage
withholding.
Finally, we have called for improvements to the quality
assurance system in American higher education. Today we rely on
accrediting agencies and--to ensure that our institutions of
higher education deliver high-quality programs, but too often
our institutions fail our students and they saddle the students
with too much debt. And we also hear from employers that those
who graduate just don't have the basic skills that are needed
for the workforce.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here today, and I am
happy to answer questions.
[The testimony of Mr. Bergeron follows:]
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Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you, Mr. Bergeron.
Mr. Bennett?
TESTIMONY OF MR. MICHAEL J. BENNETT, ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT,
FINANCIAL AID SERVICES, ST. PETERSBURG COLLEGE, ST. PETERSBURG,
FLORIDA
Mr. Bennett. Chairwoman Foxx, Ranking Member Adams, and
members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to
testify. I am very proud to be here today as a financial aid
professional who has spent the last 34 years in a profession
that has an undying commitment to serving students and
families.
The United States has the most diverse system of higher
education in the world, and that is what makes it unique,
enviable, and strong. However, it is this very facet that makes
a one-size-fits-all model of student aid impossible. The
varying types of institutions, student demographics, and
reasons for pursuing a postsecondary education make it
impossible to enact a simple financial aid policy.
My focus will be on the simplification of 3 areas:
application process, loan repayment, and over-borrowing and
loan counseling.
When we talk about the need to simplify the federal student
financial aid application process we are not simply talking
about the number of questions on the FAFSA, but the efficiency
and experience of the entire application process. Most of us
would agree that 110 questions is excessive. By eliminated
questions not related to student aid and fully utilizing
technology and existing federal and state systems, we could
eliminate a number of the questions, making the process much
easier for our neediest students.
However, we must work together to be sure there are not
unintended consequences such as states and institutions being
forced to develop their own forms if they don't have enough
information to make their awards. The fewer data elements we
collect the more homogenous everyone appears, making it
impossible to differentiate those who appear needed from the
truly needy.
We currently use a prior year income to determine financial
aid eligibility, but a move to 2 years back--what we refer to
as prior year income--has several advantages.
Under PPY, students would be able to file the FAFSA earlier
than they do now and it would be based on an accurate tax
return. Verification burden for both students and institutions
would be dramatically reduced through an increased use of the
IRS Data Retrieval Tool. Students would receive notification of
financial aid packages earlier, allowing financial aid
administrators to spend more time counseling students.
The secretary of education already has the authority to
adjust the year of tax data used to determine federal
eligibility. In this reauthorization we want to see that
``may'' turned into a ``must.''
Currently, there are eight repayment plans available to
students, and I join others in recommending one plan based on
income, where delinquent borrowers could be automatically
enrolled, payments would be a certain percentage of
discretionary income with a forgiveness term, and a standard
10-year repayment plan of which 70 percent of student/parent
borrowers are already in. These changes wouldn't eliminate loan
defaults entirely, but simplifying repayment for students would
certainly decrease default rates.
Currently, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act is being
interpreted to prohibit student loan servicers and schools from
using technology to make students aware of their repayment
options via their cell phones, texts, and social media. That
must change.
Most are not aware that financial aid administrators are
currently prohibited from requiring additional counseling and/
or limiting borrowing for federal loans. Loans are considered
to be entitlement dollars, and a school is not able to require
additional counseling even if their records show that the
student could be in serious financial trouble.
An example: the transfer student that is able--about to
borrow more than half of their undergraduate aggregate limit
and has not yet completed an associate's degree or 60 credit
hours. We must provide financial literacy, additional
counseling, and the availability of personalized services.
Related, we urge Congress to amend the Higher Education Act
to provide authority to institutions to limit annual and
aggregate student loan levels to certain broad categories of
non-protected classes of students to address over-borrowing.
For example, many of us at low-cost institutions would want to
be able to prorate loans for all part-time students.
To further address the needs of nontraditional students,
accelerated learning, and to reduce student borrowing, Congress
should work to make Pell Grant more flexible by allowing
students to access the Pell Grant year-round and authorize a
``Pell-Well,'' which would allow students to draw down funds as
needed over 6 years of full-time equivalency.
In closing, I believe that access, simplification, and
accountability can coexist in our student aid programs. As a
financial aid administrator, I have felt responsibility to my
country, state, trustees, and most of all, the students and
families we have served since the day we opened our doors.
Let's continue to work closely, ensuring that there is
training, guidance, and the very best systems, programs, and
experiences for our nation's students and families.
[The testimony of Mr. Bennett follows:]
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Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you very much, Mr. Bennett.
I now recognize Dr. Roe for 5 minutes.
Mr. Roe. Thank the chairman. And also, Chairman Foxx, I
want to thank the members who offered me condolences and
support during this very difficult time in my life and the
passing of my wife last week.
Governor Daniels, I want to welcome you. And the reason I
can understand you is you spent the first 6 years of your life
in Blountville, Tennessee, which is about 10 miles from where I
live now, and that is why you have got so much common sense. I
am sure that is the reason. You have a Tennessean by birth.
Mr. Daniels.--but we lived on the Blountville Highway.
Mr. Roe. I know exactly where you lived. We are glad to
have you back today.
One of the things I want to address fairly quickly is I had
the privilege of serving on two foundation boards of state
colleges--Austin Peay, where I went to college; and East
Tennessee State University, where I live now, in Johnson City,
Tennessee. I have a huge commitment to the public education
system. My father was a factory worker; my mother, who is still
living, lives with me, 92 years old, was a bank teller.
I was able to go to college and medical school with a
factory-working father--I lived at home, worked--and graduate
with no student loan debt. I think about that today.
Now, look at the cost today, and our governor in Tennessee
and our legislatures recognize, and we 100 percent agree with
all your testimony, to be competitive it is going to require
skills right now that we don't have in Tennessee. So he
proposed the Tennessee Promise, where any student who graduates
from high school can go to community college for free in our
state or to technical school. And we paid for that using our
lottery money.
And if you look in our state--and Governor Daniels, you are
to be commended for freezing tuition. Higher education now has
gotten to be outrageous.
When my wife was in the hospital I had a chance to speak--
and I taught at the medical school, but I had a chance to speak
to several medical students who would come by. One student had
graduated with a $290,000 debt. The average graduate of the
University of Tennessee has over $22,000 in debt, which is a
lot less, but in professional education it is becoming
impossible.
Young people making decisions about what kind of doctors
they want to be not on what they want to be in their heart, but
can they pay the loans back. That is very bad for the future of
this country.
So we are looking to you, as the thought leaders in
education, to be able to help us. And I think the state level
is where it starts; I don't think it starts at the top down.
And I have jotted just a few things down. I think Dr.
Keller mentioned and Governor Daniels mentioned, where
regulatory costs--you mentioned the Vanderbilt study I am
familiar with. If you would sort of extrapolate on that a
little bit, and what would you recommend to get rid of those so
we can get rid of some of those costs for you all.
Mr. Bennett, I could not agree more. I know you probably
have seen students get into trouble. You mentioned several
things that make absolute sense to me.
A more flexible Pell Grant, again, makes sense. It makes
sense to financially counsel a 19 or 20-year-old about what
debt you are taking on. I mean, you don't--when you are 19 or
20, if it is Monday, Friday is a long time. You are not
thinking about ever being 30 or, heavens forbid, my age.
So I think those recommendations we need to do. By 2020, I
heard the comment that 65 percent, for us to be competitive in
the world, are going to need some form of education past high
school. We believe that in our state, so I want to just mention
those things.
And I think, Mr. Bennett, you are also recommending--
Senator Alexander has done the same thing--this questionnaire
with hundreds of questions, ridiculous. We need to simplify
that for you and the students.
I will just stop and let you all--any one--Governor
Daniels, you can start and, Dr. Keller, you can go ahead with
the three things I--that you all recommended to us.
Mr. Daniels. Well, amen to all that, Congressman. And I
will simply say that the--we can make a difference here.
Debt among Purdue students is down 18 percent, which
translates to $40 million. That is our undergraduate--current
undergraduate population in the last couple years.
Some of that is because the cost was contained, but a lot
of that is because of counseling of the kind Mr. Bennett and
others have spoken to here. It is awfully important, and being
reminded that there are actually constraints on these very
important conversations certainly points us to one important
lever we have for short-term improvement in the burden that
these--too many of these young people do leave with.
The FAFSA, which I have taken to carrying around because
people don't believe it when you talk to them about it, to show
them. My suggestion about the FAFSA is not to start by asking,
``What can we prune?'' but ask the question, ``What must we
have?'' If there are 110 now--I know there are at least two
questions there we have to have, but I am not sure how many
more than that there are, and it is very, very encouraging to
hear members of both sides speaking as consistently as you have
about these questions and others.
Mr. Roe. Thank you. I yield back.
Chairwoman Foxx. The gentleman's time is expired.
I now recognize the ranking member of the full committee,
Mr. Scott?
Mr. Scott. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.
And I would like to ask Mr. Bergeron the first question,
and that is the Pell Grants, as I understand it, many years ago
paid about 85 percent of the cost of attending a state college;
now it is under a third. And further, no Pell--no summer Pells.
Can you tell me the consequences to the low-income college-
going rate with the trend in Pell Grants?
Mr. Bergeron. So, thank you, Congressman Scott.
You know, when we look at what happens to low-income
students attending our public colleges, today, as a result of
the Pell Grant not keeping up with the cost, there is a gap of
about $7,000 in their aid budget that they need to fill. And
often our low-income and middle-income students really don't
have the ability to do that. They can't go out and find jobs to
fill that gap.
And so in the last several years, as we have seen college
costs at public institutions increase as states have
disinvested, we see the great progress we have made in getting
more of our low and middle-income students to go into college
beginning to slow. And so that is a troubling trend, given the
data we see that suggests that more and more of our jobs are
going to require some college education.
And so we need to find a way to address that growing gap.
Summer Pell, two Pells in an award year, is a way to begin to
address that problem by encouraging our students to accelerate,
but we honestly need to do a lot more for our low-income
students if we expect them to go into college.
Mr. Scott. Can you say a word about the importance of the
TRIO programs, especially Upward Bound?
Mr. Bergeron. So I have to say this with a little bit of
care. My wife has worked with the Federal TRIO programs for
many years at the U.S. Department of Education, where we met--
Mr. Scott. Well, since we are doing full disclosure, when I
was in college I was an Upward Bound counselor.
Mr. Bergeron. You know, yes, I have to say that programs
like Federal TRIO, particularly Upward Bound, have made a huge
difference. The most significant impact I see in the Upward
Bound program is the pushing our low and middle-income--low-
income, first-generation students to immediately enroll in a 4-
year college. When they get to a 4-year college they are much
more likely to complete that 4-year experience and walk out the
door with a degree with a minimal amount of debt because they
are in institutions that are committed to their success.
And so I think programs like TRIO are critically important.
Mr. Scott. Thank you.
President Daniels, there has been some suggestion that cost
of college has only gone up with inflation but the price that
people have to pay has skyrocketed because the states are
paying less of the total cost of the education. Can you make
a--can you comment on that?
Mr. Daniels. Well, first of all, all the data I have ever
seen shows that the cost of college has risen much, much faster
than the cost of inflation. In fact, the only two items in
the--in most indices that have risen faster than the cost of
health care, which we are all very cognizant, are college
tuition and college room and board.
And a lot of factors have been driving that. The so-called
amenities arms race. Colleges don't look like they did 20 or
even 10 years ago.
There has clearly been, however, as we discussed here, some
upward cost pressure generated by the need to comply with
federal rules that are complex, that are often redundant, and
in many cases, on the receiving end, appear unnecessary. So,
you know, there--a lot of criticism, I think rightfully, has
been directed at the increase in administrative costs on
campuses. I think it doesn't--
Mr. Scott. Several decades ago, it is my understanding that
states were paying about two-thirds of the cost of the public
education; now it is down to about one-third.
Mr. Daniels. Yes--
Mr. Scott. That would account for about--
Mr. Daniels. And that has been a--
Mr. Scott.--doubling the cost--
Mr. Daniels.--depending on the states. You know, the state
I come from was third in the nation in maintaining its support
for higher ed, but there are many other states where drastic
cuts have occurred.
I will say that, given the rising cost of tuition and other
fees, it would have been very hard to keep up, in many states,
to keep up with the per-student increase.
Mr. Scott. Thank you.
Mr. Daniels. Not excusing or defending--
Mr. Scott. Well, if they are down to one-third and were
paying two-thirds, that would, by itself, with no other
increase, account for a doubling of the price of college.
Mr. Daniels. If that were the only factor that would be
true, but it is only one among many. And I think the
responsibility for the difficulty students are having now has
to be shared.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you.
Mr. Guthrie, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Guthrie. Thank you, Madam Chair.
It is interesting, I had some students in my office
yesterday. The student government associations from the ACC
schools are in town, and I have an ACC school, Louisville, in
my state, and so I met with them yesterday and they came about
costs of college. I have two kids in college and one on the
way, so cost of college is something that myself and the
parents I am around, because I am around parents my kids' age,
talk about quite a bit.
And, you know, I know that the president talked about in
the State of the Union, which was mentioned about making
college--or community college free for the first 2 years, and
he mentioned Tennessee. Well, Tennessee made choices. They made
choices to use lottery revenues that they made.
And also the president I think was going to change the
529s, which I will tell you there are a lot of people that
incomes are too high to get a lot of financial help but not
high enough to write $50,000 checks on an annual basis just out
of income that need savings programs. So, you know, you are
doing--states make choices.
Kentucky chose to do their lottery money through
scholarship to students; Georgia, the HOPE Scholarship, which
was trying to make 4-year college free. I think they have had
to walk back on some of that. I don't know the details of it
directly.
But it gets to what Mr. Scott was saying, that states make
choices. And, you know, Kentucky chose to expand Medicaid, and
Medicaid that will have substantial impact on this year's
budget because of what we think is a significant woodwork
effect. It is not 100 percent to 2 or 3 years in the future; it
is real money now.
I was in state government. Our first budget in 2000--first
budget I was there in 2000 the biennium 2-year budget was $13
billion almost. Last year it was almost $19 billion. So we have
gone up a little over--almost $6 billion and cut colleges.
And then the students' number one want to know what the
federal government is going to do for affordability of college,
and we all need to be in it together because it is expensive.
But you can't have states making those kind of decisions,
choosing to spend state tax dollars elsewhere and then rely on
the federal taxpayer to come in and solve it all.
And it seems like we always look just a little north of the
river, when you were governor, and now that my colleague, Mike
Pence, is governor. So my question is, you said your room and
board is down 10 percent and you have frozen tuition, you are
investing, debt is down 40 percent, and from your experience
as--from your state experience and now, how has the state
budget interacted, how have you been able to do that when most
schools across the country--so if one school can do it, why
can't others?
Mr. Daniels. Well, our university, again, is more fortunate
than some, because state support, which it dipped slightly 1
year during the recession, has otherwise risen modestly and,
compared to other states, has held up better than most. But I
think you put your finger on the problem.
I am referring back to my last job, really, here, but one
reason in Indiana, for instance, education is a larger share of
the state budget than in any other state in the union--about
two-thirds of the entire state budget. More than 50 percent to
K-12 and about 12 or 13 percent to higher ed, last I looked.
And the only reason that is possible is because choices
were made. The Medicaid program did not explode and eat the
rest of the budget, as it often has. Corrections have been
carefully managed. And so it has left a little more room.
But that has not prevented tuitions from rising very, very
swiftly--faster than inflation. And I know it is driven in many
cases by competitive pressures, trying to attract a different
kind of student today. I know it is driven, as we have talked
about here, in large part--one study has shown that a third of
the increase in administrative jobs is related to federal
compliance and--federal and state compliance, I should add,
plays some role there.
So a mix of factors, but I think that even as we are here
asking that the committee and the Congress seize this
opportunity to modernize the law, I think those of us in higher
ed have to accept a significant amount of the responsibility to
modernize our own practices.
Mr. Guthrie. Well, thank you. Did you have substantial--and
universities in Kentucky have done a--not the University of
Kentucky alone, universities in Kentucky have done a
substantial job in raising outside resources, as well, which is
something that I don't think we did 20 to 30 years ago, focused
on, at state universities, anyway, is raising financial outside
contributions, so it is good.
You also said if we--the $20 billion rules could--$20
billion worth of rules could educate 20,000 Hoosier students, I
guess some Boilermakers, too?
Mr. Daniels. Well, that is right.
Mr. Guthrie. I know you are using that generic for
Indianans, right?
Mr. Daniels. Well, yes, I meant--what I really meant was
that at our in-state tuition is different than our out-state
tuition. Our in-state tuition is just south of $10,000, so that
is where I get a figure like 20,000 of our--
Mr. Guthrie. I think all of you and all of us want to make
college more affordable in whatever role we have, but it is
particularly at the state level, we need to make sure that our
state policymakers don't just look to us to bail out students.
Thank you.
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you.
Congresswoman Adams?
Ms. Adams. Thank you very much.
Mr. Bergeron, you talked a bit about the important role
HBCUs play in our higher education system. From my experience I
know that those schools are well-equipped to support the unique
needs of their students, and so as we look toward reauthorizing
the Higher Education Act, I believe that we have to be more
thoughtful about how we measure the success of these
institutions.
Research shows us that HBCU graduation rates compare
favorably with other institutions when student level factors
are taken into consideration. But our current success measures
do not make special consideration of colleges and universities
who primarily serve low-income, first-generation students who
may not otherwise have attended a 4-year institution.
So I wonder if you could share your thoughts on how we
should account for the differences in student populations when
we determine the success of our institutions of higher
education and what we can do to highlight the successes that
are taking place at HBCUs.
Mr. Bergeron. So, thank you, Congresswoman Adams.
I think one of the things that is really important for me
is that historically black colleges enroll about 375,000 of our
undergraduates today. That is an impressive number for that
sector when you think about the relative size of those
institutions. They tend to be smaller; they tend to be more of
learning communities that support the best success of their
students.
And so one of the things that we know about them is that
they are very intensive institutions, in terms of the education
they provide. That is one of the reasons that they are
successful.
But they are institutions that enroll students who come
from low-income and from disadvantaged backgrounds, and--who
need extra support. And so the institutions are structured that
way.
You know, when I wrote about what does value look like in
higher education about a year ago, one of the things I said
there is that we need to give special consideration, special
focus on institutions that provide access and are affordable,
and that is exactly the type of institution that I am talking
about. And we should assess them in relationship to other
institutions that are like them. We shouldn't judge them
against institutions that are well--that have tremendous
resources and which enroll students who are less disadvantaged
and less well-prepared.
And so I have argued for assessing them within categories
that are similar and serve similar types of students. My
colleagues at the American Public Land-Grant University
Association have been arguing for an input-adjusted metric. I
am not vehemently opposed to such a metric. It troubles me a
bit.
We talk about it quite often. They are just my next door
neighbors over on H Street, and so we have great opportunities
to chat about this. But we do need to do something to take that
into consideration, to make those comparable across different
types of institutions and--
Ms. Adams. Thank you very much. I was one of those
students, so I appreciate your comments.
Mr. Bennett, I want to ask you a question about Parent PLUS
loans, because they are an important part of our financial aid
package for many of our students. Now, according to UNCF,
United Negro College Fund, since 2011 HBCUs have lost over $155
million in federal support due to the restrictions on Parent
PLUS loans, which I think now are a minus.
But when the problem first surfaced in 2012, initially
400,000 students across the country, including 28,000 at HBCUs,
were rejected for these Parent PLUS loans that they had
received in previous years. Parents should not take out
excessive debt, but these loans have a low default rate
compared to Stafford Loans, and the government really recoups
almost all that they put in.
In light of these factors, what do you believe we should do
about it? Should we return to the pre-2011 Parent PLUS
borrowing requirements that might help students? What are your
thoughts?
Mr. Bennett. I think you explained it very well, that when
those borrowing requirements changed a lot of people lost
access to those loans. So at our institution we are relatively
low-cost, so we do not do a large number of PLUS Loans. I
wouldn't want to give the wrong information; I don't know if
someone else could help me out on this.
Ms. Adams. Do we have a second for someone else--Mr.
Bergeron?
Mr. Bergeron. So I was involved in Parent PLUS when I was
at the department and very aware of the disruption that
occurred. You know, the concern we have to have is that we
don't want parents to take on excessive debt, and so we need to
be looking not just at their, you know, their credit history,
but their ability to repay the amounts of money that they are
borrowing and treat it much more like a traditional credit
program.
That, I think, would go a long way to address your concern.
Ms. Adams. Thank you. I am out of time.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you.
Ms. Stefanik, you are recognized for 5 minutes?
Ms. Stefanik. Thank you, Chairwoman Foxx.
Thank you, to the panelists who are here today.
This issue is near and dear to my heart for the obvious
reasons. I think I have a few decades closer to college than
some of my colleagues here.
So I wanted to start off--that is not--wisdom. You have
wisdom. I have innovation.
I wanted to ask Governor Daniels about your efforts and
your record of being able to freeze tuition by rethinking your
budget. Can you describe some of the specific tactics that
Purdue has employed to reduce costs and maintain that tuition
freeze? And the follow up is, can those tactics be applied to
other higher education institutions?
Mr. Daniels. Well, we don't claim, first of all, to have
done anything really dramatic yet. We think we have a lot more
work ahead of us.
But just to give you a few examples, many institutions--and
ours is typical in this respect--have been very I would say
balkanized, or the people say stovepiped. There are a whole lot
of things being done in multiple places that can be done in
one.
A great example with a lot of zeroes attached is
information technology, and as we consolidated and centralized
that we not only saved a lot of money but we believe we are
providing better service than ever, higher quality. No one had
looked at our health care plan for a long time, and we were
able to modernize that in a way that has reduced premiums for
the vast majority of our faculty and staff, but also by
introducing consumerism into the plan, has shown some above-
projection savings so far in reducing utilization.
But, you know, what I would say is that certainly on a
campus like ours--let me just make this point. We are a land-
grant university, proud member of the APLU.
And we were put there by a predecessor Congress for two
reasons. One was to teach the tools of a growing economy to
more citizens; but the main goal was to throw open the gates of
higher education beyond the wealthy, beyond the elites and the
privileged. And we still feel that responsibility very acutely.
And across our campus when we said, ``Let's try something
different. Let's try to break from this pattern of annual
increases and see how we can manage,'' we go tremendous buy-in.
We opened hotlines and hundreds of staff suggested ideas large
and small. Many people voluntarily decided to forego a pay
increase.
And so we have had, I think, a good collegial spirit about
this. It is part of the ethic of who we are.
But I would not over-claim at this point. We have managed
some progress, but we are still not an inexpensive school to go
to. We still worry about students--making sure that students at
any income level who can meet our standards can come to Purdue.
Ms. Stefanik. I think there are a number of lessons that
are learned from what you have been able to do even though it
is a tuition freeze and we are not completely grasping the
long-term challenges of college affordability. It is a model
for other higher ed institutions across the country.
And if I have a few more--do I have time for a follow up?
Okay.
I wanted to ask you about your flip-the-classroom efforts.
And to me, that is a tool of a growing economy in rethinking
how we deliver education. Can you expand on that?
Mr. Daniels. Sure. We didn't innovate it, but we are trying
to apply it as fast as we can and have been recognized for
this.
We are talking here about--it is really a spectrum of
changes, but you used the term that we are--people do use, the
``flipped classroom,'' meaning that in one form the student
will no longer attend lectures with hundreds of students all
hearing the same things at the same time; that lecture will be
available electronically to be viewed at a time and place that
the student chooses, to be viewed over and over again if it
didn't--wasn't understood the first time. Then the classroom
time is spent testing understanding or perhaps working on
projects to see if that learning can be applied.
And we have data at Purdue, because we have done this in
more courses than most places, that says it does work. We have
data that says students warm to the learning experience more
than the traditional mode.
However, just to make this point, it is not--it is probably
not less expensive to do. For instance, the square footage you
need per student to operate this mode, as opposed to 400 people
in one giant lecture hall, is greater.
So it can be in tension with our affordability goals, but
so be it. The real goal--we always say at Purdue, ``Higher
education at the highest proven value,'' and the quality of the
education is the numerator; cost, which we do pay a lot of
attention to, is just half of that equation.
Ms. Stefanik. Thank you very much.
I yield back.
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you.
Mr. Courtney, you are recognized.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
And again, it is nice to see actually a group of witnesses
from diverse backgrounds where there is some overlap, in terms
of just the ideas that are being put forward, and that
provides, I think, the committee with a lot of good, you know,
foundation for hopefully a bill that is going to move forward
this year. It is a couple years late and it is time to move.
And, you know, FAFSA reform, financial counseling and
education, year-round Pell Grants, again, that has been a
recurring theme here today, and I want to thank all the
witnesses for doing that.
You know, one of the issues that I think Dr. Roe mentioned,
or problems, and it is--we all hear it up here, and you do even
more so, is the horror stories of high debt upon graduation--
$290,000. What I think is frankly even more horrifying is when
people are graduating with high debt and what you would I think
almost call junk degrees, because the, you know, ability to
convert that into gainful employment in many instances makes it
just a trap that is going to be for a lifetime.
And, you know, when we talk about the Department of
Education's Title 4 budget, which is about $150 billion a year,
you know, we have got to come up with some systems here to make
sure that at the front end of the system, when people are
making decisions, that they understand, you know, what is going
to be there at the end of the process. And, you know, I realize
that there--this is a tricky business, you know, it is a very
diverse system of higher education. Connecticut, just like all
the other states, has, again, you know, an outstanding array
and can't all be judged with a one-size-fits-all.
But, you know, Mr. Bergeron, I mean, at some point this has
got to be provided for kids, you know, when they are making a
life decision that is the equivalent of buying a house if not
more. And I just wonder if you could sort of, you know, respond
to that.
Mr. Bergeron. I think you are absolutely right. We are
calling on our young people to make very complex decisions with
very limited information about what is going to happen in the
future, and it is really tough.
My daughter graduated last May from Tulane University, and,
you know, she was very fortunate. As I mentioned, my wife works
for the Department of Education; I worked there for many years.
I know more about higher education than most people in the
country, and it was hard to guide her in her choice, especially
because we don't know a lot about what happens to students
after they graduate--what are their earnings outcomes, you
know, what is their success transferring to--going on to
graduate school, medical school.
And so we have got to develop the kinds of information, the
kinds of data systems that support our understanding of those
transitions, and to understand what happens afterwards, in
terms of their entry into the world of work.
When I was at the department I worked on gainful employment
regulations--very controversial issue, something that has
caused a lot of dissent around the country. But what we were
trying to get at there, and what I think is critically
important, is that we understand what the earnings are for our
graduates. At a program level, at an institution level, we need
to know that for profit colleges, the issue of--that we were
dealing with then; but we need to know it more broadly so that
students can make better-informed decisions.
Mr. Courtney. And I just think it is something that, you
know, my experience with the land-grant college in Connecticut,
University of Connecticut, which sadly didn't make it to the
playoffs this year, the big dance, but, you know, they embraced
the notion that they are going to be held accountable. And
again, with the amount of money that is coming out of the U.S.
Department of Education--and frankly, I think that is not an
unreasonable requirement to put into place.
The last thing I just want to sort of touch on is, again,
Governor Daniels, your comments on page two regarding the sort
of economic fallout of the high debt that 20, 30, and frankly,
even older Americans are carrying is, again, a bigger issue
even than their own predicament; it is hindering economic
growth in this country.
And that is why, frankly, I think we--I was looking at this
morning's 10-year treasury notes are 2.13 percent; 30-year
mortgages, 3.86 percent. There are a lot of people carrying
even Stafford Loans at 6 and 8, you know, in terms of the PLUS,
and we have got to come up with a system to refinance down.
That is how we get through, you know, economic downturns in
the, in terms of allowing middle-class families to refinance
their houses. We have got to have a mechanism to bring down for
all individuals, not just those covered by income-based
repayment.
And I just want to, again, be on record. We are going to be
introducing a bill in a few days, which is going to basically
allow that process to happen for both public and private
student loans out there, which, again, I think will benefit the
entire economy.
And I was just reminded by my good friend from Colorado
that the UConn women Huskies, however, will make sure our state
is well-represented, and he just saved me from getting into a
lot of trouble. So did my ranking member, who is watching my
back.
I yield back.
[Laughter.]
Chairwoman Foxx. I won't touch that--
[Laughter.]
Mr. Messer, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Messer. Well, thank you, to the panel.
And I think this is such an important conversation. You
know, for most of the last several decades, from a federal
policy perspective--and much longer, as the governor mentioned,
from the--dating back to the beginnings of the land-grant
institutions, our federal policy has focused on student access
to higher education and not necessarily being very focused on
student success.
And, you know, for most of the last several decades that
was okay because having some college meant that you were better
off than no college at all, and every actuarial table that
looked at it showed that. And that has changed now.
In today's economy if you don't have a degree in a value-
added subject matter that contributes to the economy you are
not better off economically, and you could be worse off, if you
are saddled with tens of thousands of dollars of student debt.
And so I think we have to focus on not just access, which is
important, but in delivering success for the students that are
accessing the system.
And from my days working with now President Daniels and
former Governor Daniels, one of the keys, I believe, to that is
metrics, measuring. You get what you measure in life.
And so I was hoping that the governor could talk a little
bit about the Gallup-Purdue Index and how it measures student
success, exciting innovation, could you talk about that a
little?
Mr. Daniels. We agree strongly with the point that Mr.
Bergeron made and others have made that--and when I talked
about higher education at the highest proven value, the point
is that until fairly recently people were not studying or
quantifying the outputs. Oh, we looked to see that college--we
saw that college graduates tended to earn more money and so
forth, but we didn't know much more than that.
And yes, we started out at Purdue simply looking for a way
to measure more accurately the success of our graduates, which
we suspect was high but couldn't prove, and wound up in a
project with Gallup, which led to the largest benchmark survey
ever taken of college graduates, and there are a lot of
interesting things we can all learn and will continue to learn
from that--the idea then being that schools that wanted to,
like ours, could go out and parallel, contemporaneously,
measure their own graduates.
We were delighted to see that in every measure of well-
being--it is not limited to financial--that Boilermakers were
doing even better than the average college graduate. So thank
you for leading the witness.
But I will just say one other thing before switching off,
that we pay a lot of attention to the metric of default rates
because, as various members of the panel have said, the first
question is how much is being borrowed; but the final question
is, can the borrower successfully manage that financially in
their life? And that goes a lot to the quality of the education
and maybe the nature of the degree they got. And so that is the
one we pay the most attention to.
And the last point, I am sure well known to people here,
but if you graduate from our school--you graduate from our
school you have almost a 0 percent chance of defaulting; it is
down around 1 percent now. The problem that we have to watch is
those who came to our school, as you were talking about
Congressman, and did not finish. That is where a higher rate of
default is, and that is where I think some of these real
lifetime hardships are being experienced.
Mr. Messer. And, Governor, could you talk a little bit
too--one of the ways to tackle student debt is in constructing
programs where students don't graduate in 5 years or 6 years,
but potentially even in 3 years.
Mr. Daniels. The reason we are so interested in 3-year
degrees is that not only can a student move through more
quickly and affordably, but don't underestimate the importance
of one extra year in the workforce, earning money and
compounding over a lifetime. It is a material factor, too.
So yes, any changes that take obstacles out of the way or
facilitate that, most welcome.
Mr. Messer. Great.
I want to take a minute and ask--talk to Dr. Keller. I
don't have--not much time with the yellow light, but could you
talk a little bit about--from, you know, your testimony you
mentioned federal transparency efforts, trying to get better
information to student consumers and how it can be so complex
now it is difficult for students to wade through it.
Ms. Keller. Yes. I would say that we do need to take the
time to think about what is out there and really what metrics
are really important, and we have mentioned several of them
today--success in progress, earnings after graduation,
employment, enrollment in graduate school, amounts of debt. So
let's find out what those really important metrics are and take
the time and effort to have those and deliver them to students
when they need them rather than just putting them on a Web site
and hoping that some will come and see them.
Mr. Messer. Yes. Thank you.
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you.
Mr. DeSaulnier?
Mr. DeSaulnier. Thank you, Madam Chair. Nice job on the
pronunciation.
And I just want to thank all my colleagues and the
witnesses. It is wonderful to be here, and this tone of a
debate about something that is so important.
So I have a couple questions, and I want to start, first of
all, by saying as a member who is further removed from my
memories of college than some of my colleagues, but having
spent the weekend talking to my two sons, I guess that brings a
more vivid perspective in another way. And I want to talk a
little bit about not just the cost but the opportunities when
people get out of college right now for a bachelor's degree,
having spent 45 minutes with one of my sons yesterday as he is
looking for work 5 years removed from college.
So first of all, the urgency, I think just the numbers are
staggering, that around 37 million student loan borrowers with
outstanding student loans in 2013; that $1.2 trillion with over
7 million debtors in default in 2014 student loan debt; the
biggest growth in the program came in the past decade, as
student debt rose an average of 14 percent a year, to $966
billion in 2012 from $364 billion in 2004; that as of the first
quarter in 2012 the average student loan balance for all age
groups was almost $25,000; and that student loan debt is
growing by $3 per second right now in this country. So the
urgency of what we have in front of us and the cooperative
spirit I am hearing in terms of the importance of doing
something that creates more flexibility and more opportunity.
Mr. Bergeron, I--in my lifetime I have been fortunate
enough to own and manage businesses in both Palo Alto and
Berkeley, coming from Northern California, and it always struck
me doing that is the interconnectivity between the economy on a
retail level, that the governor has talked about, and higher
education.
So it strikes me we have the idea of introducing a bill
that would actually tie the prime rate to student loans, so I
wonder if you have any comments about your idea of ``college
for all,'' if that would be helpful.
Mr. Bergeron. When we think about student loan debt and its
impact on the economy, you know, the ability of people to--who
have student loans to buy houses, buy cars, start new
businesses, which is a critical driver of our economy, you
begin to realize that it is really important that we stem the
increase. So first of all, we need to find ways to reduce the
cost of higher education, the kinds of things that we have been
talking about, to slow that.
But then we also have to deal with that $1.2 trillion, $1.3
trillion in student loan debt outstanding. So the kinds of
things we need to be thinking about are, you know, trying to
figure out strategies to refinance that debt, lower the
interest rate on that debt so that it is more manageable for
students and families.
Really important that we find ways to provide for greater
range of repayment options even in the private loan programs.
Things like income-based repayment that exist within the
federal student loan system really don't exist within the
private student loan market, and a lot of the concerns with the
really high loan balances are people with a mix of federal and
private loans, so we need to address that.
And then to your point, we need to really think seriously
about what to do about interest rates. When you use income-
based repayment plans you--each borrower ultimately gets a
personalized interest rate that they can then figure out when
graduate when they last pay off that loan.
But it is really, you know, frightening to people to see
that balance grow month to month, and so we really have to slow
that increase by doing something about interest rates. Clearly
the federal government can borrow at very low rates. Somebody
mentioned the T-bill rate at 2.1, and there is no reason for us
to be charging borrowers so much more than that in today's
economy. We need to really bring that down.
Mr. DeSaulnier. And then just a second general comment, if
I could start with the governor.
So we have meetings in my district with both students who
go to a private school in the district of St. Mary's of
California and go to the University of California, Berkeley,
that is just outside of the district. The two telling things is
all these kids do the right thing.
In 2008 I remember these compelling stories about, ``I got
a 4.0 in high school; I did extracurriculars. I always thought
I would have a place in school. Without a Pell Grant or a Cal
Grant I would not be able to be here. One of my parents lost
their job in the recession.''
So there is that part, and then the second part is the
issue that I was dealing with my son is you get out of college
and, unlike our generation, the likelihood of making a livable
wage is pretty removed.
So, Governor, just briefly, if you could respond to those
two things?
Mr. Daniels. Well, I don't know what to add, really, to
what has been said. I think that the--it should trouble us all
that--for a variety of reasons, and I think that the one we are
here--gathered about here today is a big one, but not nearly
the entire story.
We do have a mismatch in the country, and the structural
changes in the economy seem to me to be widening it, between
the jobs the economy is calling for and the--at least in
numbers that it would take to maintain a large middle class.
And, you know, our answer, as just one institution, has
been--we are making strategic investments. We are already one
of the most STEM-centric, so to say, universities in the
country, up there in a category with some of your great schools
in your state. We are investing more heavily in that. We think
it is consistent with our land-grant assignment originally--in
the antique language, agriculture and the mechanic arts.
Chairwoman Foxx. Governor?
Mr. Daniels. The mechanic arts have come a long way, but
this is really where the economy, we think, is based these
days.
We are making a lot of investments in--to get larger there
and to train more people--
Chairwoman Foxx. Governor?
Mr. Daniels.--from our state or elsewhere. That is our
contribution and we know it is only a partial answer.
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you.
Mr. Allen?
Mr. Allen. Thank you, Ms. Chairman.
And I come from the 12th District of Georgia and we have
got some very fine higher education institutions there. Very
proud of those folks that they serve.
I have been in the business world all of my life, and what
intrigues me is--well, I--really two things. One is the fact
Dr. Brooks Keel, at Georgia Southern University, testified
before this committee last year about worker readiness, and for
the--you know, for the 21st century.
But what I did when I went to school--and of course, you
know, every mom and dad has told their children this story--
well, I worked my way through college. Is that out of style
now? I mean, one of the things that we looked at when we hire
people is work experience, and really, it is more real-world
work experience.
For example, I worked in a steel fabricating facility as a
welder, and, frankly, was well paid for that and was able to
work two shifts, and I loved to work. And it, of course, taught
you the value of hard work, made you study hard, and all that
kind of stuff.
But, you know, I hear about these student loans and the
massive debt that we are building here, and then I also hear
about these statistics of young people who are either
unemployed or underemployed and really, at this stage, don't
really know what they want to do.
I was fortunate in that work placed me a position that I
said, ``Hey, this is my sweet spot; this is what I want to
do,'' and was able, then, to go on and get an education and
into--start a business.
So is there any possibility that we are going about this
thing the wrong way? In other words, should we promote--I know
I looked at co-oping at one time because I wanted to get as
much work experience. And I will tell you, when we look at
resumes of college graduates, that work experience counts a lot
when we are going to hire a new graduate.
So, Governor, would you care to comment on that?
Mr. Daniels. Thanks. Well, first of all, I--high
percentages of our students are working while they are in
school; I don't think we are unusual in that respect.
Second, while the co-op type experience has a long history
at Purdue, it lends itself, I think, especially well to a
school like ours, but we are acting to expand it as rapidly as
we can. And you are quite correct--back to this Gallup-Purdue
Index, one of the most--clearest findings was that those
college graduates who had some such work experience--internship
if not a full co-op type experience--while in school were doing
substantially better than those who had not had that
opportunity.
So we know it works, and we are working hard to expand it.
We have a number of companies that you have all heard of
locating facilities on our around our campus and hiring our
students to do real work, paying them rather well--better than
we can to work in our cafeterias. But we can't do enough of
this fast enough.
Now, I will say that the run-up in costs--college costs--
has probably outstripped the ability of most students, no
matter what kind of job they are able to secure, to defray as
much of their college cost as you did or I did or people
earlier on were able to do.
Mr. Allen. As far as the business community, is there--do
we have the business community plugged into our colleges the
way they should be plugged into the colleges?
Dr. Keller, or any member of the panel who would like to
take that question?
Ms. Keller. I know that one strong focus of a part of APLU
is exactly that, is to provide a forum and an opportunity for
our presidents to meet with the presidents of business, because
that helps on several different fronts.
One is back to the workforce readiness. What are the skills
that employers need and how do you find that out? By having
conversations with people. Also, finding out ideas about
affordability and processes and new models that we can take to
the businesses.
So definitely. That is a very strong priority for us at
APLU.
Mr. Allen. Any other comments?
Mr. Bennett. We have 10 campuses throughout our county and
work very closely with business--
Mr. Allen. Okay.
Mr. Bennett.--identifying their need and looking short-term
programs to get our students through and working.
Mr. Allen. Because there are needs out there, and I believe
my time is up, Ms. Chairman.
Chairwoman Foxx. Your time is up.
Mr. Polis, you are recognized.
Mr. Polis. Thank you, Madam Chair.
This first question is for Mr. Daniels.
Western Governors University has a strong presence in
Indiana, strong presence in my State of Colorado as well. And
as you know, Western Governors operates on a different model
from many other universities, a model that includes competency-
based education, where students advance based on how much they
know, not how much time they spend in a classroom.
I would like you to address your own experience with
Western Governors as well as how competency-based education can
reduce costs and improve the quality of curricular delivery.
Mr. Daniels. Yes. Thank you, Congressman. I was drawn into
WGU initially as a board member, became very much an admirer of
its system, and particularly the niche it fills.
We brought it to Indiana. I would call it a private label
operation, called it WGU Indiana, and it grew very rapidly, and
I know for a period of time represented something like a third
of all the growth in the entire WGU system.
Why? Because it really addressed an unmet need. The average
student is 36 years old, more likely to be female and minority
than the rest of our population, juggling family and work and
other things, and able to study at his or her own rate, and
with proven success, including measurement of post-graduation
employment and how well they are doing.
So I was proud of that association and have watched their
continued growth and really with interest, and it really was
where I was first exposed to the--both the advantages and the
efficacy of competency-based education, which we are now trying
to introduce in a more traditional context of Purdue.
Mr. Polis. And I want to go to Mr. Bergeron with regard to
that.
If you could talk about how we can learn from Western
Governors and how competency-based education could work for
other universities to help reduce costs?
Mr. Bergeron. Thank you, Congressman.
So competency-based is a really--a dramatic game-changer
innovation, in my view, in higher education. You know, the
adoption by Purdue and the University of Southern New Hampshire
and so many other institutions of that approach really is
critical.
And as we go forward and think about reauthorizing the
Higher Education Act we really need to think about ways to move
the conversation from the one where we have been stuck at,
which is around what does the credit hour mean, to really what
do we really expect our students to know and to be able to do
when they graduate, and find ways to measure that as they
progress.
And if we can do that and effectively refocus our financial
aid system on that, I think we will have a much more productive
higher education system, and students, candidly, coming out
with a lot less debt because they haven't wasted time studying
things that aren't really helpful to their long-term goals and
to their long-term development.
Mr. Polis. Another cost-reducing innovation are open
textbooks. As we have heard, not only do college costs continue
to rise, but so do textbook costs. After somehow coming up with
the tuition, all of a sudden a student is hit with another $500
or $800 a semester to pay for textbooks.
I want to address this first to Mr. Bergeron and then
anybody else, how we could look at a policy that encourages
open textbooks, where textbooks are openly licensed and free to
students and faculty, and how that might help save money for
students as well.
Mr. Bergeron. So one of the things that exists in the
federal aid system is the--this notion of cost of attendance,
which includes books and supplies and other expenses. But that
is on the student budget side.
You know, we could think about changing the priorities so
that, you know, it is more embedded in what institutions
receive, in terms of payments, so that they are not passing
those costs on to students, as consumers. I think that would
dramatically change the economics of the textbook industry in a
positive way in making textbooks more affordable to all
students.
Mr. Polis. It is fair to point out that the beneficiaries
of the current economics of textbooks are not the people who
write those textbooks, and in many cases, any compensation is
nominal if it exists at all. And there would be, I think,
widespread cooperation among those who write textbooks to do so
in an open source manner, which can equally enhance their
prestige just as a proprietary textbook can.
And I want to encourage the committee to look at additional
ways that we can encourage open source textbooks to reduce the
cost of textbooks in higher education.
And I yield back.
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you so much.
Mr. Curbelo?
Mr. Curbelo. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman.
Governor Daniels, thank you for your testimony, and I thank
all the other witnesses, as well.
I am a major proponent of accountability in education. I
have been a witness to the positive effects of the modern day
accountability and education reform movement as a school board
member in Miami-Dade County, where I served for 4 years. In
fact, I credit the modern day education reform movement with
saving our public schools from mediocrity and, in some cases,
failure.
I have been following your proposal and your project at
Purdue to implement the Collegiate Learning Assessment Plus,
and I wanted to get your thoughts on that, because I have
shared this concept with some friends in higher education. Some
have been open to it; others say that a standardized test for
higher ed is going to result in standardized colleges and
universities; and some other criticisms are that each
university is unique and offers a unique product, and that this
type of accountability would, in fact, degrade the purpose of a
college education.
So I was looking forward to getting some of your thoughts
on that.
Mr. Daniels. Just as we thought that one aspect of proving
the value of our educational product was to measure more
rigorously the success of our graduates' year 5 and 10 and more
years out, we also believe that the second aspect of that is to
measure the growth on campus--intellectual growth of students
while on our campus. This is not new, and in this respect, we
are following the lead of many other colleges who are working
on it.
It is not simple. There will be no perfect instrument. But
over and over, I think, across the spectrum of education we
have seen people resist accountability suggestions on the basis
that they are not ideal and they are not perfect, and so we
can't let it be the enemy of the good.
I don't know if the CLA Plus is the best single instrument
out there at the moment. It only purports, of course, to
measure overall critical learning, not any specific
disciplinary progress that a student may have made. So it ought
not lead to any homogenization. There is no reason for that. I
don't know how it could be used to do that.
But we are working with faculty experts at our campus. We
are going to move forward, I do believe, in measuring student
growth. It may well include, at least as a first project, the
use of that instrument, but we will be looking at all ways in
which we should do it.
We simply embrace the responsibility to demonstrate that
for this still expensive cost, a student really progresses at
our school and leaves much better prepared for life and
citizenship than they would otherwise have been.
Everything we know about Boilermakers tells us that.
Gallup-Purdue told us part of that, and now we accept the
responsibility to find some way to say the same thing about the
on-campus years.
Mr. Curbelo. As you pointed out in your testimony, a lot of
young people are increasingly asking the question: What is the
true value of a college degree? What is the purpose of going to
college?
Do you think that, as policymakers, encouraging the use of
these types of instruments can help answer that question for
young people--what can you get out of a 2-year degree, out of a
4-year degree? How will it help you become more qualified for
the jobs and the opportunities of this century?
Mr. Daniels. I do. I think it is a legitimate question for
people to ask. It may be that not every institution everywhere
can produce the proof, but I think it is fair to ask that we do
so.
I want to go back to something that came up in the previous
question about--was--are businesses plugged into schools. I
think they are extremely interested in seeing more job-ready,
life-ready graduates.
I am worried about businesses unplugging, in the sense that
they--at some stage they may say, ``Since we can't trust the
value of these diplomas young people are showing up with, we
are going to go find our own way to certify readiness, our own
measurements. And if you can pass that, we will be less
interested in how many years you spent in a traditional college
setting.''
That would be a real danger, and we ought to beat the
marketplace to that before it reaches such a conclusion.
Mr. Curbelo. Thank you very much.
I yield back, Madam Chairman.
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you very much.
Mrs. Davis, you are recognized.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, to all of you, for being here. I wasn't able to
be here for the earlier remarks, but I hope I won't ask too
many of the same questions.
Mr. Bergeron and Mr. Bennett, we recently had one of our
many workshops for students and for families on FAFSA, and I
know you were talking about that earlier. As you have looked at
that over the years, have you created your own? Have you tried
to--what is the big challenge in trying to simplify this?
Because that is really what families are asking for, and you
may have addressed this earlier.
What do you think? I mean, why is it that we can't move
forward with this?
Mr. Bennett. I think that Governor Daniels, when he
mentioned he carries the financial aid application with him, I
do too. It is the number of questions, and currently we are not
using all the data systems that are available to us to make
that experience simpler for families.
In addition to simplification of the form, if we go back to
prior year and we have the completed tax return, everything
becomes much better--much simpler for families, increases
access, and that is what we should be focused on.
Mrs. Davis. Have you picked up a political challenge here
somewhere that we are not able to break through? I know the
Senate is interested in this, as well.
Mr. Bergeron. So if I might, I think the primary challenge
today to moving to prior year, or even, in our proposal,
telling families what federal aid they would be eligible for
when their son or daughter is entering high school is really a
question of costs. The reason it is difficult to move to prior
year is that it will increase the cost of the Pell Grant
program. It potentially could change the cost of the student
loan system.
And I think that fear of those costs are what keep us from
moving forward. But I think there is tremendous unanimity of
opinion that we need to be moving in that direction.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
If I could just turn to you, Governor Daniels, you have
such a unique perspective in many ways, being president of the
university now and having--
Mr. Daniels. You mean because I know less than all these?
Yes. You are right.
Mrs. Davis.--having been governor. So I just--I wanted to
ask you whether--do you--from where you sit today, would you do
things differently as governor in seeking what many governors
have to do--cuts to higher education and really impacting the
local situation?
Mr. Daniels. You know, the thing I wish I had done better
is been more successful. We made a huge effort to infuse more
dollars into higher education. It also involved our--would have
involved our lottery, although in a different fashion than was
done in Tennessee and was mentioned in Kentucky. I wasn't
successful in persuading enough people to go that route, and I
wish somehow that I had been.
You know, the second time we tried it, by the way, was--
looked a lot like the president's proposal, a lot like the
Tennessee proposal that is out there now. We were going to, in
essence, create an endowment to enable, on a means-tested
basis, low-income students to attend community college or take
the same dollars to another state school.
You know, it is--if I can just observe, it is fun to sit
here under the portrait of George Miller. Another errand I have
here in town tomorrow is--he and I co-chaired the Aspen
Institute's annual competition, and tomorrow we will be naming
the best community college in the country.
This is really important. A lot of innovation is going on
and must go on at that level, and--
Mrs. Davis. I would agree. I think--
Mr. Daniels.--we will be--yes, we will be celebrating that,
and I would associate with those who, in different ways, are
trying to make it possible for more students to at least start
their postsecondary careers there.
Mrs. Davis. Yes. Could you comment also, though, on K-12?
Because we know that if students are well prepared they are
going to do better in school, that is going to mean that they
graduate quicker, as well.
And if I could just tag on, you have been successful, I
believe, in trying to do--have some more visibility around
sexual assault at the university. What do you recommend? We
obviously are very concerned about having advocates there for
victims.
Mr. Daniels. Sure. Well, first of all, in K-12, yes, this
is the undeniable truth. I remember at the very first meeting
that I convened of all of the--this is my last job--of the
Indiana public university presidents and I asked, ``What can
the state do?'' they started with that, ``Please send us more
people who are--young people who are ready for college.''
We are still struggling. Now, Indiana was second to
Tennessee in the most recent years of improvement in K-12
performance, so, you know, the needle can move, but it is got a
long way to go.
And another reason community colleges are so important is
we still have too many people who get what we call a high
school diploma who need remediation in basic reading and math.
We have given that assignment in our state to the community
colleges. It is a huge and important burden that they have, and
another reason we have to boost them.
Mrs. Davis. Yes. All right.
My time is up.
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you very much.
It is now my turn, I think, to ask some questions. I always
wait till the end so my colleagues who want to go away can go
away if they need to.
I need to probably give some disclosure also on the issue
of TRIO programs. I began an Upward Bound program at
Appalachian State University and wrote the grant to get a
special services program there, and was at Appalachian when
Appalachian was doing so many innovative things.
This was back in the 1970s. We were doing dual enrollment
with high school students and getting college credit; we did
Upward Bound; we did special services. There were just all
kinds of programs. I thought we were going to catch on a long
time ago in higher education and haven't, frankly. I have been
a little surprised at that.
And I have said here a couple of times, in 1962 I took a
course on TV when I was living with my grandparents in New York
City--got up early every morning, took a course on TV. I didn't
try and take it for credit. I thought, again, that was going to
bloom in higher education. Has not.
I have, again, been waiting for all these innovations to
come along. I was out there when they were happening.
And God is giving me good lessons. My grandson is a senior
in high school this year and he is struggling with the Common
Application form and the FAFSA. His mother is pulling out her
hair trying to do all this.
So despite what Congresswoman Stefanik said, some of us are
a little more familiar with what is going on today in higher
education than she might think.
So, but I am wanting to ask a couple of questions.
Dr. Keller, you have talked a little bit about how our
measures for success--what we get from the department now are
so narrow. Talk a little bit about what type of students the
metric through the Student Achievement Measure would give us
that we are not able to capture now, and a little bit more
about why this would be significant.
Ms. Keller. Absolutely. Thank you, Chairman Foxx.
The Student Achievement Measure, in fact, would cover all
of the students who are enrolled within higher education and
seeking a degree or certificate. So that would include part-
time students; that would include students who are transfer
students to a particular institution; that would include full-
time students, and the full-time first-time students. So with
the Student Achievement Measure you have the ability to track
the outcomes of all of those students.
And we think this is very, very significant. A couple of
data points to illustrate: Over half of the bachelor's degree
recipients attend more than one institution before they
graduate. Only about 30 percent of students enrolled in
postsecondary education fit the traditional student model.
We believe it is so important, if we want to hold
institutions accountable, to have good measures. If we want to
provide good and clear information for students to make
informed decisions, we need to be using the right measures in
order to do so.
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you very much.
Mr. Bennett, what--I don't know if your organization has
done this or not, and I apologize--what income and asset
questions should remain or be added to the FAFSA? You have
talked about the year before the year prior, but what do we
want to do to make sure that the neediest students get the
grants that they need? How can we guarantee that?
Mr. Bennett. Well, I think we guarantee that by knowing
that you can't just go down to two questions. And, as Governor
Daniels said, I think you start off with talented people in the
room and go through the exercise of, what do we need in terms
of both income and assets to measure a family's financial
strength, and then try to use the existing systems, like IRS
Data, and have that automatically happen, versus families
having to complete 108 questions.
I think we can use our federal and state systems much more
efficiently to make that experience for students and families
easier to apply for this process.
Chairwoman Foxx. Well, we certainly hear this complaint, as
other people have said, from absolutely everybody who speaks.
And shame on us if we can't do something to fix that.
Thank you very much.
I would now like to recognize Congresswoman Adams for any
closing remarks she would like to make?
Ms. Adams. Thank you, Chairwoman Foxx.
I would also like to thank all of our witnesses for their
testimony and for your thoughtful responses.
Since the last time the Higher Education Act was
reauthorized in 2008 there have been a lot of changes. College
enrollment has steadily increased, but so have the related
costs of going to school.
I believe that higher education should be accessible to
everyone regardless of their race, their ethnicity, their
religion, or any other factors that make us unique. But in
order to be accessible, it must be affordable.
So if we don't address the costs of higher education, it
will surely hurt our economy. As many of you have said, more
employers are seeking employees with some form of postsecondary
education.
It will also continue to saddle students with enormous
amounts of student loan debt that prevent them from
participating in other parts of our economy. I have a daughter
who went to school in Greensboro, and I wanted her to get a
good education so she could leave home and take care of
herself, and I am sure that we want that for our children so
that they can be productive citizens.
But we must ensure that we are equipping institutions, like
our HBCUs, with the tools and the resources necessary to serve
the unique needs of their student populations and not penalize
them for serving these students, nor should we penalize
students because of their parents.
Now, increasing federal investments in successful college
readiness programs like TRIO, like GEAR UP, can help increase
college participation and improve student success.
We have a higher education system that is envied around the
world and we should be proud of that. However, we have to
continue making strategic investments or we will begin to see
our international counterparts outpace, as they have done in
primary and secondary education.
Now, I think that we have had a pretty good, thorough, and
healthy discussion today. I am pleased that we have had that
and I hope that we can continue this conversation in future
hearings.
I look forward to working with my colleagues to get deeper
into these issues so that we can come together and reauthorize
Higher Education Act in a bipartisan manner.
And, Madam Chairman, I yield back.
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you very much.
I want to thank our witnesses again for being here today.
You have been--provided us lots of food for thought.
I want to make a couple of comments on some of the things
you have said and then add a few points.
I think, Governor Daniels, I was impressed with what you
said about your coming into your office with the mentality of
saving. I think in too much of higher education, as you pointed
out, the rate of increase for tuition and fees has gone up much
higher than the rate of inflation in our country.
And I think over the years there has been a mentality in
higher education that is that we are doing the Lord's work,
therefore, we should get all the money that we want--not that
we need, but that we want. And I really think that part of what
needs to happen is that there be a different mentality in
higher education in terms of, I think, setting--being good role
models for all of us and our country.
And so I think coming in with a strong ethic about
providing what it is we have traditionally thought higher
education should be providing. Do you need climbing walls to do
that? I am not sure--or all those things that you have talked
about that have added to the cost.
I think that is part of the basis of what our institutions
have to do, and I think the legislators are more and more
looking at that, and I hope more and more governors are going
to be looking at that.
You mentioned that in your research you found that those
who work part time do better both in school and when they
graduate. We have known that for 100 years in this country. We
have known that people who work 15 hours a week while they are
in college do better academically and have a much better chance
of getting a job.
Why do we ignore the research? We continue to do research,
we continue to do--you know, over and over and over again, to
prove what we have known for a long, long time.
I contend higher education is the only institution in this
country that has not changed in 150 years. We are still
operating on the agrarian model.
You know, started out a few months, we got up to 9 months.
So we still take the summers off for people to go home, work on
the farm. That just isn't happening anymore. So going to year-
round programs is, I think, so important.
Talking about doing the flipped classrooms is so important,
I think, where students--if completion is our issue it seems to
me we ought to do all we can to help them get the information
that they need.
I am very keen on this issue of telling students what
obligation they are taking on when they borrow money--parents
and students. So, you know, we blame the system, but I think if
we have students have a piece of paper, you ask them to read it
in front of you, you ask them to sign it, there is an
obligation there that those students and those parents are
taking on.
We bemoan the fact that there is a large default rate, but
if we don't expect a sense of responsibility on the part of
people then we have a problem. And we should be telling people,
I think, that they don't need all that money that they--that is
approved for them, and explain to them what their obligation
is.
And, Mr. Bergeron, I am really impressed to hear you say
that after your work on gainful employment in the department
that you think that should be applied to everyone. I think that
is a monumental statement that you said today, and I have long
felt that is the way we should do it. It brings us right back
to our accountability issues.
And I think what the governor said--I have agreed with him
for a long time on the issue of pretty soon business and
industry is going to say, ``You are not doing the job that we
want you to do, Higher Education. We are going to do an
alternative.'' Many of them already are doing that.
But I think higher education has to look within itself to
look for the ways to heal itself and ask the federal government
and state governments to be partners with them, but not to look
to the federal government for all the solutions, because I
think many of the solutions lie within the institutions
themselves.
So I am very grateful to all of you for being here today
and presenting alternatives to the way things are being done
now, and always, always with the focus that we--the taxpayers
and the students and the parents deserve better of us. And I
believe we have a moral obligation to show what we should be
doing and not just to talk about it.
So I hope as we develop the reauthorization for the Higher
Education Act that we will be role models and that we can count
on your support as we implement the recommendations that you
made.
There being no further business, the hearing is adjourned,
and I have no gavel so--
[Additional submissions by Mr. Daniels follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
[Whereupon, at 12:02 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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