[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 121 (Wednesday, July 29, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6127-S6128]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               INNOVATION

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of 
my remarks at the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and 
Pensions hearing on Reauthorizing the Higher Education Act: Exploring 
Barriers and Opportunities within Innovation be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                              Innovation 

       This is our sixth hearing during this Congress on the 
     reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. This morning we 
     are talking about innovation in higher education.
       Ranking Member Murray and I will each have an opening 
     statement, then we will introduce our panel of witnesses. 
     After our witness testimony, senators will each have 5 
     minutes of questions.
       Clark Kerr, the former president of the University of 
     California, wrote in his 2001 book, ``The Uses of the 
     University'' that of 85 human institutions founded before 
     1520 and largely unchanged today--about 70 are universities.
       As for the other 15 institutions--well, among them are the 
     Catholic Church, and the Isle of Man.
       Kerr wrote: ``Universities are among the most conservative 
     of all institutions in their methods of governance and 
     conduct and are likely to remain so.''
       If that's true, maybe we ought to pack up this hearing on 
     innovation in higher education and head home?
       Let's keep our seats for a minute.
       The world around the universities is changing--especially 
     the students who attend them.
       First, there are more people attending.
       Right around the end of World War II, only about 5% of the 
     population 25 years old and up had earned a college degree.
       When the first Higher Education Act was signed in 1965, 
     only about 10% of this population had a college degree.
       Now, about 32% of Americans 25 and up have a college 
     degree.
       Second, American colleges and universities are now serving 
     the most diverse group of students ever--
       40% are 25 years or older and come to college with 
     experiences in the workforce.
       Of the 21 million students in higher education, only one-
     third are full-time undergraduates under 22 years old.
       Only 18.9 percent of first-time, full-time students live on 
     a campus and students are increasingly coming from a wide 
     array of backgrounds and are the first in their family to 
     attend college.
       Third, employers need workers with postsecondary degrees.
       Labor economist Dr. Anthony Carnevale of Georgetown 
     University tells us, if we don't change the trend, we'll be 
     about 5 million short in 2020 of people who have the proper 
     post-secondary skills.
       Congress needs to help colleges and universities meet the 
     needs of a growing population of today's students--one that 
     has less time to earn their degree, wants flexibility in 
     scheduling their classes, and needs to start earning an 
     income sooner. And Congress may also need to consider new 
     providers of education that don't fit the traditional mold.
       I have two questions for today's hearing:
       First, how can Congress help colleges find new ways to meet 
     students' changing needs, and how can we end practices by the 
     federal government that discourage colleges and universities 
     from innovating?
       And second, should the federal government be considering a 
     new definition for the college or university? There are many 
     new learning models that are entering the landscape, thanks 
     to the internet. We need to consider what role they play in 
     our higher education system, and whether federal financial 
     aid ought to be available to students who are learning 
     outside our traditional institutions.
       On the first question, how we can stop discouraging 
     innovation, I want to focus one example of innovation--
     competency-based learning:
       One of the most promising innovations that traditional 
     colleges and universities are making is through something 
     called competency-based learning.
       These competency-based models allow students to progress 
     through their studies as they demonstrate competency, 
     enabling skilled and dedicated students to finish degrees 
     more quickly and often at significantly less cost.
       For example, a working mom studying at the University of 
     Wisconsin has an associate's degree in nursing and wants to 
     get her Bachelors in Nursing to increase her earning 
     potential. Through the university's new Flexible Option, 
     she's able to earn credits and finish tests and assignments 
     on her own time, including between her shift and her son's 
     baseball game. Because the degree program is based on her 
     ability to demonstrate knowledge of the subjects--rather than 
     her ability to sit through courses twice a week--she might 
     finish a Biology course in 8 weeks, but take only 3 weeks to 
     finish a Mathematics course.
       But it's possible that government regulations may be 
     stifling this new model of learning.
       The report by the Task Force on Government Regulation, 
     which was commissioned by a bipartisan group of four Senators 
     on this Committee to examine higher education regulations, 
     told us that ``government regulation is a barrier to 
     innovation.''
       And in one example, they cited a 2010 Department of 
     Education regulation that established a federal definition of 
     a credit hour as a minimum of 1 hour of classroom instruction 
     and 2 hours of outside work.
       The government relies upon this definition of ``credit 
     hour'' in determining how to award grants and loans to 
     students.
       Concerning the credit hour definition, the Task Force wrote 
     ``by relying on the concept of `seat time,' the Department's 
     definition has discouraged institutions from developing new 
     and innovative methods for delivering and measuring 
     education, such as competency-based models which don't rely 
     on credit hours.''
       When Kentucky Community and Technical College System began 
     a competency-based program in 2009, federal time requirements 
     related to the credit hour, which are building blocks of 
     semesters and academic years, got in the way. Now when 
     students finish within the last 5 weeks of the semester they 
     have to wait till the following semester to continue their 
     studies.
       In 2005, Congress established a provision in the higher 
     education law for competency-based education known as 
     ``direct assessment.'' This provision permitted programs at 
     colleges and universities to use ``direct assessment of 
     student learning, in lieu of

[[Page S6128]]

     measuring student learning in credit hours'' as a way to 
     distribute federal aid. The law said that each program had to 
     be approved by the institution's accreditor and the Secretary 
     of Education.
       Despite this flexibility granted in the law, accreditors 
     and the Education Department have given approval for 
     receiving financial aid to just 6 institutions to offer one 
     or more of these programs.
       Shifting gears, a second barrier to innovation may be 
     accreditation.
       In this committee we have begun looking at the 
     accreditation system, recognizing that it must improve, but 
     that it also may be a barrier to innovation.
       Accreditation is very old-fashioned in many ways--it is 
     still regional, despite the fact that institutions compare 
     themselves to peers across the country and may have little in 
     common with those in closest proximity.
       It also hasn't kept up with new ways students are learning 
     and the new ways teachers are teaching. Today, some 
     institutions are modifying a professor's traditional role in 
     teaching and evaluating learning.
       I'm sure there are many other examples of government 
     discouraging institutions from innovating and I hope our 
     witnesses can speak to some of these and ways to make policy 
     more flexible for innovations to come.
       On the second point--whether we should consider the role of 
     new providers of higher education:
       I have said that the American higher education system of 
     today is like the American automobile industry of the 1970s.
       First, it offers a remarkable number of choices of the best 
     products in the world at a reasonable cost.
       Second, it is not doing enough about challenges that will 
     require major adjustments if, 20 years from now, it wants to 
     be able to make that same claim of superior choices at a 
     reasonable cost.
       Like the Japanese auto manufacturers that ultimately 
     brought the American auto industry to its knees for a time, 
     there is an emerging market of new or upstart providers of 
     affordable higher education.
       These are organizations that aren't necessarily colleges, 
     like we are accustomed to, but are providing higher education 
     that may offer students a similarly high-quality education at 
     a lower cost.
       For example, students are learning technology, software-
     coding or product design in as little as 12 weeks at places 
     like General Assembly, a school that hires industry experts 
     from places like Apple and Cisco to teach adult students 
     skills that today's employers value.
       Or they're taking general education classes like college 
     algebra from online organizations like StraighterLine under a 
     monthly subscription fee with credentialed teachers, or 
     attending a MOOC--a Massive Open Online Course that's free 
     and delivered by professors at many traditional colleges.
       Some organizations such as Mozilla Foundation are 
     developing open-source ``digital badges'' that allow more 
     types of organizations to identify and recognize an 
     individual's subject matter mastery and competency.
       But there's no place for any of these innovators in today's 
     Higher Education Act or accreditation system. The definition 
     of what is a college has largely remained consistent since 
     1965.
       Some senators, the President and Secretary Duncan are 
     interested in understanding how to enable an environment 
     where these new providers of higher education can compete 
     with traditional higher education and potentially offer 
     students a lower cost, high quality education.
       In 2013, President Obama said in documents accompanying his 
     State of the Union that Congress should consider ``a new 
     system . . . that would provide pathways for higher education 
     models and colleges to receive federal student aid based on 
     performance and results.''
       What he and others are proposing is that students could use 
     federal aid at these new organizations that aren't 
     traditional colleges.
       A bill from Senator Lee would allow states to create 
     parallel accreditation pathways to broaden the kinds of 
     classes students could attend while also receiving federal 
     aid. Under the bill, students could receive aid for attending 
     specialized programs, apprenticeships, professional 
     certifications, competency tests, even individual courses. I 
     believe Senators Bennet and Rubio are working on legislation 
     that has a similar goal.

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