[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 80 (Tuesday, May 14, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2809-S2810]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
STRENGTHENING ACCOUNTABILITY
Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that a copy
of my opening statement at the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and
Pensions Committee be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Strengthening Accountability
Mr. ALEXANDER. When I was president of the University of
Tennessee, I asked David Gardner, who was then president of
the University of California, why his university was
considered one of the best in the world. He told me:
First, autonomy. We basically have four branches of
government, he said, and one of them is the University of
California.
Second, competition and choice--large amounts of state and
federal money following students to the campus of their
choice.
Third, a commitment to excellence by institutional leaders
and faculty.
As a former university president, I am very much aware that
despite that autonomy, our country's 6000 colleges and
universities report to a lot of bosses--they are accountable
to a great many individuals, boards, governments and other
entities.
First, they are accountable to the students who may take
their federal and state grants and loans to any accredited
institution that will admit them;
Next, to 44 federally recognized accrediting agencies whose
certification of quality is necessary before institutions are
allowed to accept students who bring $30 billion in new Pell
grants and $100 billion in federal student loans each year;
To ensure that these billions of dollars are spent wisely,
the federal government measures how many students default on
their loans;
For the 80 percent of students who attend public colleges
and universities, states have governors, state legislators,
laws, and state higher education authorities;
Every institution, public or private, also has its own
board of trustees or directors;
And in addition, there are specific federal rules for the
for-profit institutions, which about five percent of students
attend, in order to stop fraud against students and
taxpayers;
And when making a list of bosses, no former university
president should leave out the faculty--most faculty members
I have known take great pride in maintaining institutional
excellence.
So any president of an American higher education
institution has a lot of bosses and
[[Page S2810]]
a lot of people to whom he or she is accountable. And that
has been a mostly successful approach.
Most surveys show that the United States has most of the
best colleges and universities in the world. The dream of
many of the best students from around the world is to attend
American colleges and universities.
Still, I hear often from students asking if college is
worth their time and money.
I believe there are steps we can take to make our higher
education institutions more accountable--to provide those
students, and the taxpayers backing their loans, with a clear
yes, college is worth it.
In March, at our first bipartisan hearing during this
Congress on updating the Higher Education Act, we looked at
how to simplify how 20 million families apply for federal
student aid. Last week, we held a bipartisan hearing about
how to create a safe environment for students attending
college.
Today's hearing will be looking at ways to ensure that
students are earning degrees worth their time and money and
that taxpayers are paid back the hundreds of billions that
they have loaned students to earn degrees.
To hold colleges accountable for the $130 billion a year in
grants and loans, in 1990, Congress created the Cohort
Default Rate, which applies to all colleges and universities.
This measure makes a college ineligible to receive federal
student aid if, for three consecutive years, more than 30
percent of its borrowers are in default or over 40 percent in
any one year.
However this cohort default rate has proven to be a poor
instrument of accountability, since it does not take into
account the one third of borrowers who are not yet in default
but don't make payments on time.
Over the last decade, only 20 schools have become
ineligible for federal student aid under the Cohort Default
Rate, according to the Congressional Research Service. And
then there are two federal accountability rules that apply
only to for-profit institutions.
One, the 90-10 rule, which requires that at least ten
percent of a for-profit's revenue come from non-federal
sources; and
Two, the Gainful Employment Rule, which looks at how much
debt a graduate has compared to his or her salary.
This comparison of debt to salary has proved to be a
confusing and ineffective measure of accountability because
it is too complex and does not account for students who take
out loans but do not complete their degrees.
So we need a more effective measure of accountability.
But I do not want the federal government acting as a sort
of National School Board for Colleges--telling states and
accreditors and boards of directors at institutions how to
manage the 6,000 colleges and universities.
Four years ago, this Committee passed the Every Student
Succeeds Act, which reversed the trend towards a national
school board for elementary and secondary education.
For the same reasons, Washington should resist the urge to
send thousands of federal bureaucrats to evaluate our
colleges and universities, which would, in effect, create a
national school board for colleges. Instead, Congress should
create a new measure of accountability that looks at whether
students are actually repaying their loans.
This would be a more effective and simpler way to ensure
that taxpayers aren't financing degrees that are priced so
high and worth so little that students are never able to pay
back their loans.
This proposal is much like the Gainful Employment Rule--but
it would apply to every program at every college--public,
private, and for-profit and would include students who took
out loans but dropped out before graduating.
For some programs, this new measure should provide colleges
with an incentive to lower tuition and help their students
stay in school to finish their degrees and find a job so they
can repay their loans.
A second step to improve accountability would be for the
federal government to make the data it collects from colleges
more useful to students and families. The Department has
struggled for years under all administrations to make such
information easily accessible to students and families.
As we work on updating the Higher Education Act, we first
need to identify what information schools actually need to
report, and second to provide direction to the Department on
how to make that information accessible and useful to
students.
And third, we should strengthen the 44 federally recognized
accrediting agencies upon which we rely for certifying that
students are receiving a quality education.
For example, instead of requiring that accreditors have a
standard of ``student achievement,'' Congress could more
clearly require that accreditors measure whether students are
both learning and succeeding, but leave the specific ways of
measuring those to accreditors and institutions.
Our goal needs to be to help students know that their
degrees are going to be worth their time and money and to
help taxpayers know that the federal government isn't
financing programs that do not provide students with a
valuable education.
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