[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 37 (Wednesday, March 4, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1298-S1300]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        ASSOCIATION OF PRIVATE SECTOR COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed 
in the Record a copy of my remarks to the Association of Private Sector 
Colleges and Universities.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

        Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities

       Our nation is home to the world's greatest system of 
     colleges and universities. From the beginning, federal policy 
     has been to give grants and loans to students and let them 
     choose from among all types of institutions--public four-year 
     universities, community colleges, for-profit colleges, and 
     private non-profits.
       For example, students can study automobile technology at 
     Nashville's auto diesel school or forensic psychology at 
     Argosy University or computer information systems at DeVry 
     University.
       Student choice and competition are the drivers of American 
     higher education's success. And an important participant in 
     American higher education has always been our for-profit 
     colleges and universities.
       The students served by for-profit colleges underscore their 
     importance. Nearly 2,100 institutions educate 3.3 million 
     students representing, approximately 12 percent of all 
     college enrollments, 1.8 million Pell students and 1.9 
     million federal loan borrowers. More than half of enrollments 
     are students of color. Fifty percent of students are juggling 
     school with children. More than a third of these students are 
     working full-time while going to school. For-profits 
     accounted for 44 percent of certificates, 20 percent of two-
     year associate's degrees and 7 percent of bachelor's degrees 
     granted in the United States in 2012.
       The President along with many governors and state 
     legislatures are setting goals to increase the number of 
     citizens with college degrees or certificates. Governor 
     Haslam in Tennessee has an ambitious goal called Drive to 55, 
     to see 55 percent of Tennesseans with degrees or certificates 
     by 2025. The president has called for America to have the 
     highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020.
       The only way to achieve these goals is to include all 
     sectors of higher education, including for-profit colleges 
     and universities. Yet this administration has taken aim at 
     the for-profit sector, and has created regulations 
     specifically targeting your colleges and universities.
       My view is that our policies should equally apply to all 
     institutions of higher education, no matter the sector. There 
     are bad apples in the for-profit sector--but there are bad 
     apples in every sector of higher education.
       So let me begin to describe my priorities for all sectors 
     of higher education, which includes your colleges and 
     universities:
       1) Make it easier for students to go to college (FAST Act)
       2) Make it simpler for colleges and universities to educate 
     (Task Force on Regulation)
       3) Make sure that accreditation ensures quality 
     (Accreditation)
       4) Make it harder to overborrow (FAST Act, Skin in the 
     Game)
       5) Make sure colleges are collecting useful data for 
     students, families and policymakers (Consumer Data)
       These are my priorities as we work over the next few months 
     to reauthorize this law and ensure that 20 years from now, 
     our colleges and universities still remain the best in the 
     world in the quality of education they provide.
       Number one, make it simpler for colleges and universities 
     to educate. Today we have a government form so complicated 
     and confusing that it discourages as many as 2 million 
     Americans from attending college each year. This is the 
     dreaded FAFSA--the Free Application for Federal Student Aid--
     which consists of 108 questions on topics ranging from your 
     spouse's federal tax exemptions to the net worth of your 
     parents' investment farms.
       I have joined with a bipartisan group of senators to 
     introduce legislation that would simplify the FAFSA form to 
     just two questions--1) What was your household income two 
     years ago? 2) What is your family size?
       Four experts before our committee testified that these two 
     questions would provide about 95 percent of all the 
     information the federal government needs to determine award 
     amounts.
       It would also make the process, as much as the questions, 
     less intimidating for parents. Because our bill would ask for 
     household income from two years ago--as opposed to last 
     year's income--it would restore sanity to the parents of 
     applicants who are often being asked to provide the 
     government with their income totals before they've even 
     received their W-2s for the year.
       One mentor with Governor Haslam's Tennessee Promise 
     program, a woman named Cathy Hammon, says the form has a 
     ``chilling effect''--intimidating parents who may themselves 
     never have attended college, and have no experience 
     navigating the process. She says this: ``It's the very youth 
     we worry about the most that struggle with it.''
       The FAST Act would also restore year-round Pell 
     availability. This gives students common-sense flexibility. 
     According to a study by New America, under today's Pell 
     schedule: ``If a student attends a college that treats the 
     summer as the start of the year, receives Pell Grants as a 
     full-time student in that summer, and then attends full-time 
     in the fall, she will not have enough aid to attend full-time 
     in the spring.'' That doesn't make sense and it doesn't help 
     students. So our proposal would let them use Pell all year.
       Number two, make it simpler for colleges and universities 
     to educate.
       Over a year ago, Vanderbilt University hired the Boston 
     Consulting Group to determine how much it costs the 
     university to comply with federal rules and regulations. The 
     answer: $150 million, or 11 percent of the university's total 
     non-hospital expenditures last year. Vanderbilt Chancellor 
     Nick Zeppos says that this adds about $11,000 in additional 
     tuition per year for each of the university's 12,757 
     students.

[[Page S1299]]

       The Higher Education Act totals nearly 1,000 pages; there 
     are over 1,000 pages in the official Code of Federal 
     Regulations devoted to higher education; and on average every 
     workday the Department of Education issues one new sub-
     regulatory guidance directive or clarification. No one has 
     taken the time to ``weed the garden.''
       The result of this piling up of regulations is that one of 
     the greatest obstacles to innovation and cost consciousness 
     in higher education has become--us, the federal government.
       A conspicuous example of this is the Gainful Employment 
     regulation. It's a perfect symbol of what's wrong with our 
     regulatory process that the Administration needed nearly 945 
     pages to define a two-word phrase that has been in the higher 
     education law in one form or another since 1965.
       What's especially concerning about the regulation is--
       First, the rule is designed to almost exclusively impact 
     and penalize for-profit colleges and universities. It 
     selectively ignores concerns about student loan debt levels 
     across all sectors of higher education.
       The Department of Education's own National Center for 
     Education Statistics reports that 26% of graduates from 
     public, four-year colleges and 39% of graduates from private, 
     four-year colleges would not be considered ``gainfully 
     employed'' using the Department's metrics. It seems 
     ridiculous that this regulation could shut down a nursing 
     program at a for-profit institution but not one in exactly 
     the same circumstances at a non-profit or public institution.
       Second, the rule's complex debt-to-income ratios over-
     emphasize a graduate's income right after college. This is 
     especially shortsighted for educational programs that hold an 
     important public benefit such as education or social work, 
     but don't result in early-career, high-paying salaries.
       Third, this regulation has nothing to do with the quality 
     of the education being provided. It simply relies on 
     arbitrary government definitions of affordable student loan 
     debt. What would be the result? More than 800,000 students 
     will be kicked out of their programs at a time when many 
     public colleges are unable to accommodate more students.
       This simply isn't a good regulation and I think the 
     Administration knows I'll do what it takes to oppose it. I've 
     cosponsored legislation by Richard Burr and Virginia Foxx to 
     overturn the gainful employment regulation, and other 
     regulations that are equally ill advised. I led a letter 
     signed by several of my colleagues opposing the proposed 
     regulations, and I am prepared to offer an amendment to 
     restrict funds from being used to implement the rule. As we 
     approach the rewrite of the Higher Education Act, I intend to 
     do what I can to prohibit the Department from implementing 
     this regulation and treat all institutions equally.
       This is just one example of regulatory excess.
       And when it comes to bad regulations, let me make clear: we 
     cannot just blame President Obama and Education Secretary 
     Arne Duncan. They have contributed to the problem, but so has 
     every president and every education secretary--and that 
     includes me--since 1965 when the first Higher Education Act 
     was enacted.
       More than a year ago, four members of the Senate education 
     committee--two Democrats and two Republicans--asked a group 
     of distinguished educators to examine the current state of 
     federal rules and regulations for colleges and universities. 
     We asked them not just to tell us the problem, but to give us 
     specific solutions.
       They last month sent to us, ``Recalibrating Regulation of 
     Colleges and Universities,'' a remarkable report in which 
     they outline 59 specific regulations, requirements and areas 
     for Congress and the Department of Education to consider--
     listing 10 especially problematic regulations. In their own 
     words, America's 6,000 colleges and universities live in a 
     ``jungle of red tape'' that is expensive and confusing and 
     unnecessary.
       So with this reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, 
     Ranking Member Murray and I will work on a process that takes 
     full advantage of the recommendations in this report so we 
     can include many of them in the reauthorization of the Higher 
     Education Act.
       But the bottom line is that regulations are taking good 
     money away from educating students and performing research 
     and all sorts of other things colleges and universities ought 
     to be doing.
       We won't let that happen again with this reauthorization.
       Number three, make sure that accreditation ensures quality.
       Our higher education system today is governed by what's 
     known as the ``triad'':
       The federal government, which ensures that colleges and 
     universities have the fiscal and administrative capability to 
     participate in federal aid programs.
       The state governments--governor, legislature, state boards 
     of education--that authorize institutions of higher 
     education, oversee public institutions, and provide 
     substantial public funding.
       Finally, and perhaps most important, is the accreditation 
     system.
       The system also has one other major check, the student 
     consumer--who is able to choose from over 6,000 colleges and 
     universities, and ideally is unlikely to waste their time and 
     money on a worthless degree. When it comes to ensuring 
     academic quality--the choice is this: Either we have 
     Washington regulate our over 6,000 colleges and universities, 
     or we let them self-regulate through accreditation. I much 
     prefer accreditation.
       That does not mean our system of accreditation is problem-
     free. Today, accreditors meddle in areas that are none of 
     their business. And sometimes they're too stuffy to allow 
     some of the innovation that needs to come in education. We 
     need to take a hard look at the system and the role it serves 
     for the American taxpayer.
       We need to answer questions, such as:
       Are accreditors focused on the right things such as student 
     learning and quality?
       Does the current structure of regional accreditation make 
     sense in today's world when higher education is increasingly 
     national in scope?
       Are federal rules and regulations on accreditors getting in 
     the way of their ability to asses and ensure academic 
     quality?
       But we need to keep in mind that this system is far 
     preferable to any regulatory body created by the federal 
     government.
       Number four, make it harder for students to over-borrow.
       There's a lot of discussion about student debt in the 
     United States, but when you drill down on who's really got so 
     much debt: It's a very small contingent of mostly graduate 
     students. For most Americans, college is a good investment 
     that will pay off.
       Three out of four of our college students attend a public 
     2- or 4-year college and university. Of those, about two out 
     of five of all students attend community colleges where the 
     average tuition and fees are under $3,300. Those students 
     receive an average of $4,850 in grants and scholarships. So 
     the average community college student in America is receiving 
     about $1,500 more in grants and scholarships than what it 
     costs in tuition and fees to attend college.
       Thirty-seven percent of all of our college students attend 
     public 4-year universities. The average in-state tuition and 
     fees is about $8,900. Those students receive in average 
     $5,800 in grants and scholarships. We're not talking loans, 
     so they have to pay $3,100 on average, in tuition and fees.
       And then we have students who attend 4-year colleges that 
     are private. That's about 15 percent. Their average tuition 
     and fees are $30,000 but the scholarships and grants take 
     that down to $12,500. At for-profit colleges and 
     universities, the average cost is about $15,000.
       About 2 percent of federal borrowers have more than 
     $100,000 in debt. Graduate students are typically the 
     problem.
       The FAST Act would discourage over-borrowing by limiting 
     the amount a graduate student is able to borrow. It would 
     also help undergraduates from borrowing too much, by limiting 
     borrowing based on enrollment. For example, a part-time 
     student would be able to take out a part time loan only.
       In addition, my proposal would allow institutions to limit 
     borrowing based on evidence that students completing the 
     program have difficulty repaying their loans.
       I would also like to give schools more ability to counsel 
     students on borrowing. Many in Congress are concerned with 
     students borrowing more than is necessary while attending 
     college and anecdotal examples of increased institutional 
     counseling has led to reduced borrowing by students.
       I believe that the institution, especially if we give you 
     the ability to counsel students and limit borrowing, should 
     bear some responsibility for this borrowing--after all you 
     are the ones charging these students. However, I am seeking 
     your input on this topic. Some of your members, as well as 
     the association itself, have talked with me and my staff 
     about this topic. I hope those discussions continue.
       Number five, make sure the data colleges are collecting are 
     useful for students, families and policymakers.
       Before we rewrite this law, we need to know what 
     information consumers actually find useful as they shop for 
     schools, how much information is too much and what is the 
     role of the federal government.
       The federal government collects thousands of data points 
     annually on schools, yet still cannot answer some of 
     policymakers and students basic questions. In the future, 
     Department of Education should only collect data that is 
     useful to consumers or to policymakers regarding how well our 
     federal programs are working. Consumers nor policymakers are 
     able to absorb all of the data currently collected.
       This is a prime area to reduce institutional burden. So we 
     need to determine what information is truly needed. That may 
     mean collecting new and different data that better fulfills 
     federal responsibilities to taxpayers and drives the free 
     market which makes our country and higher education system 
     number one.
       It is also important to ensure that the Department is not 
     allowed to manipulate this data to create opaque, 
     inappropriate or contrived metrics such as recently happened 
     with cohort default rates and gainful employment, and will 
     more than likely occur in the forthcoming ratings system.
       I look forward to the upcoming reauthorization. Senator 
     Murray and I are working very well in moving a fix to No 
     Child Left Behind and I see no reason why the Higher 
     Education Act will be any different. I intend to move to this 
     bill this spring after we complete Senate action on No Child 
     Left Behind. We will hold several hearings before holding a 
     mark-up of a reauthorization early this summer. I look 
     forward to continuing to work with you as the process 
     unfolds. Thank you for everything you have done to be helpful 
     so far and for providing opportunity to those seeking a 
     higher education.

[[Page S1300]]



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