[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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