[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 86 (Thursday, May 24, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6833-S6834]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ACCOUNTABILITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, our country does not have just some of
the best colleges and universities in the world. It has almost all of
them. Our higher education system is our secret weapon in America's
competition in the world marketplace. It is the cornerstone of the
brainpower advantage that last year permitted our country to produce
thirty percent of the world's wealth, measured by gross domestic
product-- for just 5 percent of the world's people.
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, to her credit, established a
commission 2 years ago to examine all aspects of higher education to
make certain that we do all we can to preserve excellence in this
secret weapon and access to it. Among other things, the commission
called for more accountability in higher education.
The commission got the part about accountability right. We in
Congress have a duty to make certain that the billions we allocate to
higher education are spent wisely.
Unfortunately, the commission headed in the wrong direction when it
proposed how to achieve accountability. In its report, and in the
negotiated rulemaking process, the Department of Education proposed a
complex system of accountability to tell colleges how to accept
transfer students, how to measure what students are learning, and how
colleges should accredit themselves.
I believe excellence in American higher education comes from
institutional autonomy, markets, competition, choice for students,
federalism and limited Federal regulation.
The Department is proposing to restrict autonomy, choice, and
competition.
Such changes are so fundamental that only Congress should consider
them. For that reason, if necessary, I will offer an amendment to the
Higher Education Act to prohibit the Department from issuing any final
regulations on these issues until Congress acts. Congress needs to
legislate first. Then the Department can regulate.
Instead of pursuing this increased Federal regulation, I have
suggested to the Secretary a different course.
First, convene leaders in higher education--especially those who are
leading the way with improved methods of accountability and assessment
and let them know in clear terms that if colleges and universities do
not accept more responsibility for assessment and accountability, the
Federal Government will do it for them.
Second, establish an award for accountability in higher education
like the Baldrige Award for quality in American business. The Baldrige
Award, granted by the Department of Commerce, encourages a focus on
quality in American business. It has been enormously successful,
causing hundreds of businesses to change their procedures to compete
for the prize. I believe the same kind of award--or awards for
different kinds of higher education institutions--would produce the
same sort of result for accountability in higher education.
Finally, make research and development grants to states,
institutions, accreditors and assessment researchers to develop new and
better appropriate measures of accountability.
This combination of jawboning, creating a Baldrige-type prized for
accountability and research and development for better assessment
techniques will in, my judgment, do a better and more comprehensive job
of encouraging accountability in higher education than anything Federal
regulation can do.
If I am wrong, then we in Congress and the U.S. Department of
Education can step in and take more aggressive steps.
Are there some things wrong with the American higher education
system? Of course.
And in my testimony in Nashville last year before the Secretary's
Commission on the Future of Higher Education I detailed some of them.
One is the failure of colleges of education to prepare school leaders
to raise our k-12 system to the level of our higher education system.
Two is the growing political one-sidedness that has infected many
campuses. Too often true diversity of thought is discouraged in the
same of a preferred brand of diversity.
Third, is the rising cost of tuition and large amount of students
debt although costs are lower than most Americans realize and the
reason for the increase is primarily the State failure to fund higher
education because of all the money that is being soaked up by rising
medicaid costs.
Fourth, there is no doubt that colleges and universities are not as
efficient as they should be. Campuses are too vacant in the summer.
Faculty teaching loads are too light. And semesters are too short to
justify the large expenditures.
Fifth, no one in Washington takes a coordinated look at the tens of
billions of dollars spent for higher education. Secretary Spellings is
the first to do this, and I applaud her for it, although I had hoped
the result would have been less regulation, not more.
Finally, deregulation. There is too much Washington DC, regulation.
Instead of debating how many more regulations we need, if we really
are serious about excellence and opportunity, we should be debating
which regulations we can get rid of.
The question is whether you believe that excellence in higher
education comes from institutional autonomy, markets, competition,
choice for students, federalism and limited Federal regulation or
whether you don't.
I believe it does. In fact, I have spent most of my public career
arguing that we should borrow these principles from higher education
where we have excellence and try them in k-12 where we too often don't.
There is plenty of evidence that America's secret weapon is our
system of colleges and universities. More Americans go to college than
in any country. Most of the best universities of the world are in our
country, attracting 500,000 of the brightest students from outside
America--many of whom stay to create more good jobs for Americans.
Just a few short weeks ago, after two years of work, the Senate
passed the America Competes Act. It authorizes investing $62 billion
over 4 years to help our country keep its brainpower advantage so we
can keep jobs from going to India and China.
In China, India, in Europe and Latin America countries seeking to
improve the incomes of their citizens are seeking to emulate our
college and universities because they know that better schools and
colleges mean better jobs. The former Brazilian President, Fernando
Henrique Cardoso, recently told a group of Senators that the strongest
memory of the United States he would take back to his country is the
American University. ``The uniqueness, strength and autonomy of the
American university,'' Dr. Cardoso said, ``There is nothing like it in
the world.'' ``Autonomy'' is the key word in Dr. Cardoso's response.
Deregulating higher education and preserving the autonomy of its
institutions--not more Washington, DC, regulation--is the key to
preserving the quality of this secret weapon in our effort to keep our
high standard of living.
The United States system of higher education is a remarkable system
of 6,000 autonomous institutions. Some are public, like the University
of Tennessee of which I was once President. Some are private like
Vanderbilt and New York University, from which I graduated. Some are
Catholic. Some are Jewish. Some are non profit. Some are for profit.
Some, like UCLA, are research universities.
Some are trade schools like the Nashville Auto Diesel College which
graduate 1300 of the best auto mechanics in the world each year. Some
are 2-year community colleges or technical institutes.
Some, like the University of Texas, have 100,000 students. Some, like
Valley College in West Virginia have 34 students.
Some like Harvard, have 20,000 applicants for 1,700 freshman places.
Some,
[[Page S6834]]
like University of Phoenix, accept every student who applies. Some
teach sports management and some teach classics.
The largest university is online. In some colleges, most students
graduate in four years. In others, most never actually graduate because
they are there to learn skills on their way to a new job.
The average tuition private school is $22,218, for a public four year
college the average is $5,836, for a public 2-year community college
the average is $2,272.
More than half the students who attend these 6,000 institutions have
a federal grant or a loan to help them to pay for college.
That means that this year taxpayers will spend $13 billion giving 5.2
million students Federal Pell grants providing up to $4,310 each--which
pays the entire cost of attending many 2 year schools and almost three-
fourths the cost of a public four year school.
Many States and private institutions and individuals provide generous
additional scholarships and loans.
Mr. President, 56,000 Tennessee students each year receive up to
$3,800 if they attend a 4-year institution or $1,900 if they attend a
year institution.
Georgia's HOPE scholarship and grant programs benefit over 200,000
Georgia students a year, giving them grant and scholarship aid to
attend a college or university.
In addition, 14 million students will borrow 66 billion more dollars
this year by taking out federal guaranteed loans to help pay for
college.
I once asked David Gardner when he was president of the University of
California why his institution was one of the world's finest. Without a
moment's hesitation he said, ``First, autonomy. Fundamentally the state
of California gives us the money, then our board decides how to spend
it. This authority has permitted us to set high standards.'' And then
he said, ``We have a large amount of federal and state dollars that
follow students to the educational institution of their choice.''
So, autonomy, excellence choice--Federal dollars following students
to the schools of their choice. That is the California formula for
excellence. It is the American formula for excellence since the GI bill
for Veterans was enacted in 1944, and veterans were given the
opportunity to attend the college of their choice.
Congress could have given the dollars to institutions. Instead, it
created this marketplace and fueled it even further with the addition
of Pell grants and loans--all following students to the institution of
their choice.
Who, then, is the regulator of this marketplace?
Well, first, the marketplace itself. Students armed with scholarship
dollars may choose or reject courses and colleges. Colleges must
compete to attract faculty. Most Federal grants are awarded
competitively after review by peers. Such competition and choice has
permitted both excellence and a breadth responding quickly to a
changing world that a more highly regulated system never would have.
For example, the fastest growing institutions are 2-year colleges and
for-profit institutions--the institutions in the closest touch with the
rapidly changing global workplace.
The second regulator is the Federal Government. This stack of
regulations I have here represent the 7,000--yes, 7,000 regulations--
that each one of the 6,000 colleges and universities who accept federal
aid must deal with in order to accept students with Federal grants or
loans.
The president of Stanford has estimated it costs 7 cents of every
tuition dollar just to deal with federal regulations and loans.
Universities have compliance officers and divisions to keep track of
regulations from almost every Cabinet agency in Washington.
Then there are the State regulators. The Governor is chairman of the
board of all Tennessee public universities. Of course, the State
legislature has its say when it passes budget funding public
universities. The Tennessee Higher Education Commission reviews
budgets, duplicitous programs and standards--and it also has some rules
for private universities.
Fundamentally the autonomous college or university regulates itself.
As president of the University of Tennessee system of institutions, I
had overall responsibility for admissions and standards of quality for
faculty and students established by the board of trustees to which I
reported. A chancellor supervised each campus. The faculty senate on
each campus played a major role.
Then there is also the self-accreditation system--an elaborate, time
consuming review of programs in each department for the purpose of
determining whether that department held true to its mission and its
level of quality.
With these multiple layers of regulation, higher education needs
less, not more regulation from Washington, DC. In fact, I believe the
greatest threat to excellence of higher education is overregulation,
not underfunding.
Not long ago, the president of the North Carolina higher education
system--Erskine Bowles--visited me along with several of his presidents
of public and private institutions. That system has for years been one
of the Nation's best. Their message was, ``Of course accountability is
important. We believe in it. But we are the ones to do it and we are
doing it.''
The best way for Congress to assure the quality of higher education
is to determine that State regulators and accrediting agencies are
doing their jobs.
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