[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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