exceptions for those who are providing a service and not simply looking to turn a profit. iba is also concerned about housing a consumer education tool whether it's a link or an actual real tool. currently access to benefit -- this is a serious access problem, since a significant number of oif veterans are no longer serving. for these veterans access to e benefits is too costly to make it useful. to remedy this, iva recommends that in addition to be housing -- we applaud the president's directive to establish consumer complaints, we are concerned about how the consumer intake will be handled. in order for this to be -- va is

the face of veterans within the government. these bills will rep restore free market control to the for-profit provision. the post-9/11 gi bill is the most significant veteran's benefit since world war ii, as veterans advocates, educators and lawmakers, we all have a shared responsibility to be sure that every veteran is able to choose their future wisely and

to answer their questions. >> members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting student veterans of america to speak on the president's executive order and it's impact on student veterans and institutions of higher learnings. i served both in iraq and a afghanistan as a marine, i used tuition assistance while i was in the service and while i was headed to the middle east for my second deployment. i used both montgomery gi bill to -- i now support student veterans as executive director of student veterans of america. student veterans of america has 450 chapters assessing veterans in their educational experiences on a daily basis. this direct contact gives a perspective of the obstacles --

and reintegrate with the civilian workforce. as you are likely aware, we recently conducted an annual review of all of our chapters, both for profit and nonprofit. 47 of those schools legitimize their status as veteran friendly schools or recruit student veterans. we revokeded their membership per our charter. the issues addressed in the executive order carry great significance for our nation's veterans, service members and their families. it reflects highly on the subcommittee that such attention is being paid to address and resolve the challenges -- regarding the specific provisions of the president's executive order, student veterans of america strongly

supports any action that protects student veterans, their families and their benefits. any school that attempts to gain from the generous post-9/11 gi bill without providing outstanding education and outcomes for the student veterans must be vigorously prosecuted. we know from our exten pive experience with this population, that there is simply too much bad or misleading information out there. requiring a student to -- student veterans to make well informed decisions. sba supports the requirement of every student veteran to have an academic adviser and academic plan. this is common place in most reputable schools, and those institutions that don't have

this in place--sba strongly supports -- without data and stat tis tics, it will be impossible to know the true impact of the post-9/11 gi bill. this is also critical to congressional oversight. the programs that are in place today will be lost without retroactive -- we have consistently asked for a formal, well publicized process for student veterans to raise issues with their educational institutions to the appropriate federal reports, given the amount of federal dollars being made available, it is essential to create a centralized complaint center that allows the student veterans to raise legitimate concerns about bad actors in the post secondary education space. sba supports kwuniform policies having consistency across all bases will help allow that good

schools have access and predatory ones are kept out. finally while it's not specifically addressed in this executive order, sva would like to take a moment to call for an amendment to the so-called 90/10 rule. sva supports -- common sense dictates that schools that are required to receive no more than 90% of their income from the federal government should not be able to skirt this rule biceping the over rage in veteran's benefits. >> they have just called votes, i think we're going to -- i'll take five minutes to ask questions, we'll go vote and then we'll come back and finish up questioning now. first question, like to ask is

mr. galluche, you had mentioned data categories, but what additional date that categories -- that data add to the process, if there are any? >> thank you, mr. chairman for that question. some of the data points that i think is specifically talking about data points on student veterans, and information on a student veteran population at a school. michael and myself had an opportunity to sit in on a recent technical review panel to discuss information on student veterans. there's some basic items that the vfw believes a student veteran would want to know before they attend an academic institution, these have to do with unique veteran's services, such as veteran's programs or advisors on campus, and the

number of veteran beneficiaries on campus, that includes service members, veterans and their dependents who are eligible for benefits. is there a better metric than the graduation rate as it's currently reporteded through the iped system. for a n-- graduation rate isser sell vachbt. neither of us are considered successful graduates through our gi program even though both of us received a degree and both of us used the gi bill. we're kicking around ideas as to what would be a better method to track, expanding the cohort beyond first time, full-time and items like that. and unfortunately we feel that might be a conversation at a later date as we're implementing

this executive order. >> mr. tarantino, did you want to add anything? >> i just wanted to add to this, the thing about college navigator, it's an outstanding research tool. the information that's on college navigator is extremely extensive, but it doesn't do -- we're talking about gathering data, it's less about gathering new data, although we do need to figure out how to properly assess graduation, because according to the department of education, i'm a double college dropout. we do need to figure out how to count that metric. and putting -- when you look at it in that light, when you frame the argument like that, it suddenly becomes a lot clear, we

need a yelp for higher education. if i can figure out what everybody thinks about this sushi restaurant been five blocks, i should be able to figure out what consumers or colleges are available in the state i live in. >> could you add something to college navigator that we could make this a better tool that's available for veterans. >> i think completion, how many students started each individual program, how many people entered the history department, and left with a history-degree. how many of these people -- that's kind of available at college navigator, but it's not broken down by program. it's less about finding new data and figuring out a way to present it to consumers. if you don't have something to present to consumers that they can read that's simple and

quantifiable, the data you're collecting is useless. >> you think finding college navigator information is difficult, or is it easy enough to find it or is it on the website that's not useful? >> it's not only difficult, but it's also highly inconsistent among the data tests. i talked about a liberal arts college, a nonprofit liberal arts college in northern california that represented a pretty standard demographic distribution of students, but when you looked at graduation rates, the only graduates were asian females. you find this all over college navigator, even with the same data set, the data is inconsistent. if you pick out core data, how much am i going to have to go into debt, how many people finished the degree, then you can pull that out of college

navigator and make that for consumers and that would provide a lot of clarity as to which schools are meeting mission and which schools are not. >> first of all i want to get all of you on the record. each one of these veteran's service organizations that you represent were signatories to this education bill of rights proposal that i referenced earlier, is that correct? and am i correct that each one of your organizations still stands by that original endorsement of a requirement of a product to protect veterans who are pursuing higher education? >> i want to follow up on your last point, mr. tarantino, because sometimes we talk about educational policy, it's frequently divorced from the real world. looking at myself, i started at iowa state university with a major in aerospace engine

yearing, switched to civil engine yearing, switched to journalism and graduated with a degree in political science. what you enter with, your degree, target and your actually degree that you were an abject failure. the point is that i was able to take that degree and go on and do something and find employment. to me that's the definition of a successful college education. i'm less concerned about what we enter in and what -- are we giving students the value we need for those educational dollars, to give them the ability to have a college degree and an opportunity to earn income and take care of themselves and their families. to me, that's the focus of what we should be talking about it. and mr. galluch, you were talking about what type of data would be necessary, i'm also interested in knowing what

employment was obtained and the correlation between the two, whether that degree actually resulted in a benefit out in the workforce, or whether you have somebody with a liberal arts degree who is counting cars on a highway. to me that has himpact for how e spend these dollars. one of the things you mentioned was proper implementation, you mentioned two questions, what are to the outcomes consumers need to make sound choices. do you have recommendations on what you think? or do any members of the panel on what your members feel should be part of those outcomes? >> i can say there's a lot of them actually in legislation. i think the -- you reporting outcomes that are in specifically though the webb bill in the senate, as well as the murray bill is a pretty good list of very simple metrics that someone would need to use. like i said, a lot of this is

already available, but it's not reported in a digestible manner. if you go to college navigator, and i suggest everyone try this, pick four like schools, four technical schools, four liberal arts schools, whatever, do the comparison feature, look at them side by side to compare schools, you'll find that those 270 data points are not the same thing or some schools are reporting data that's a little bit suspect and doesn't quite match up. when you look at the comparison piece, you're now looking at a truncated college navigator. i'm not an 18 going to find myself, i found myself getting shot at in iraq. i'm going there with a specific program, i'm going there with a mission and i need to know

what's going to -- >> you testified about this in your opening remarks. there's a new reality out there for young men and women who are entering armed forces, they are pursuing higher education while they're serving their country, you did that yourself. so if we don't have a system in place that allows that transparency, allows that consistency of transparency, we are depriving you of the opportunity to get a head start on the rest of your life, because we certainly have the technology available now to allow you to do that. but we need to make sure we have the metrics right and we have the access points right, or we're going to be holding people back who want to make use of that time to move forward. >> well, absolutely ranking member. i would tellal you, when i left the military, i didn't know what college navigator was. i never heard of it, never used

it. now in my current position, it's a wonderful research tool. it has no bearing for consumer education nor is it helpful with student veterans as far as picking an academic institution or picking an academic program. i will tell you some things that do need to be there we're talking about data points. i know that some institutions would find themselves in a precarious situation for these graduation routes. transfer out rates for student veterans, because a lot of them go to community colleges first, we get our feet wet, we tend to try to figure out what which want to do and go to a community college or an online institution and take a few credits. so transfer out rates might be helpful for folks who don't go and complete a degree at one institution of higher learning,

that's one thing specific on a data point that i think can be helpful to many of these institutions of higher learning. >> at this time, we're going to recess, we're going to go vote and then we'll be back. we have one 15-minute vote which is about over, and three five-minute votes after that, two votes after that. hopefully we should be back here in about 30 minutes.

we're going to reconvene. then -- frostberg state university and is representing the american association of

state college and universities. and i want to give a special welcome to our next witness, ms. margaret vectal who is representing the national association of veteran program administrators. welcome. and it's always great to have a fellow hoosier testify. it's those hoosier values that we like to talk about. and also, i want to thank you for your years of service in the united states air force. and next we have mr. varmic nasareum, and finally ms. judith flink in illinois. okay, we're going to start with ms. flink, because i believe she may have to step out. so you're recognized for five

minutes. >> mr. chairman and members of the committee, my name is judith flink, i represent the student services for the three campuses of the university of illinois. i have worked in the university business office and been actively involved in higher education for over 30 years. i'm testifying today on behalf of the national association of college and business -- more than 2,100 public and nonprofit colleges and universities. the mission is to promote sound administrative and advances in -- shares the president's goals as outlined in his executive order providing principals of excellence . we affirm that these students, and indeed all students deserve high quality academic and support services that enable

them to make informed decisions about their education. we strongly support safeguards against abusive and deceptive recruiting practices. before elaborating on our specific concerns, i want to take the opportunity to suggest that the agency's task of administrating the executive order actively consult with institutions and the organizations that represent them as they develop the necessary rules. with my positive experience on the department of education's advisory committee and as part of negotiated rule making for doe, i can personally attest to the success of such dialogue. i would therefore propose the creation of an official advisory group or groups with a defined membership and structure to work in partnership and develop workable solutions as we implement new va and dod policy and procedures. i believe this will go a long way to bring consensus and

efficiency to colleges and most important to service members we serve. to illustrate, since implementation of the post-9/11 gi bill have had the pleasure of-processing chapter 33 tuition benefits. these meetings always end with both sides walking away better informed about how each of us operate. well, most of the time. regarding the executive order, we believe most but not all of the president's principles align with existing u.s. department of education requirements. those principles if implemented by the dod and va according to to the guidelines will not reflect additional cost or burden on our institutions. we do have concerns. section 2 a requires institutions to provide prospective students with a

broad range of information on an individualized standard form. prospective students routinely do not identify themselves, making it difficult for institutions to know who should be -- the va as not developed procedures to communicate with schools about veterans and their eligibility for educational benefits. soakation 2 -- used for returning unearned title 4 student aid refunds. outside of satellite 4 aid, colleges and universities set their own refund poll i. this the policies differ, then this will cause budgetings challenges for institutions of higher educations. section 2g provides for v -- the intent of this provision is not

all together clear to us. if it is similar to the agreement recently reached by institutions and dod on its memorandum of understanding, if not further discussion will be necessary. section 3 requires schools to track student outcomes which may be difficult to measure and may be misleading. veterans and service members are often nontraditional students with educational goals that may differ from the traditional students. in conclusion, the commitment of

>> thank you very much mr. chairman and members of the committee. i'm delighted to return back and speak on this issue that's important to you and important to us. we're honored to say that 250,000 students have attended our institution. as a sector, we have engaged the subcommittee and others to identify and develop protocols that meet the needs of our veterans. on january 31, letters to the president, to this committee, and to -- ensuring quality educational experience. increased educational counseling and a protocol -- we have also been working with others on this committee and in the senate to develop a bipartisan consensus around the best protocols of

veteran's educational experience. so you can imagine that we were a bit surpriseded and disappointed. today's hearing is to look at the impact of that proposed executive order. our position remains one of constructive engagement in pursuit of consensus and common sense policies. you may remember from my earlier testimony before this committee, we must find new and better ways to calculate academic progress and graduation rates for veterans as well as all adults, part-time students and others returning to school. if we can identify such metrics, we do everyone a favor, starting with the veterans. today only 18% of post second tear students are captured by the iped's calculations. we need to know legitimate

complaints of -- the letter yesterday from chairman miller and senator byrd to the -- appropriate data collection, this process must be fair and it must be focused on seeking resolution. we want every complaint by a veteran to be heard, but we don't want it to be a vehicle for anonymous complaints who have a political interest very different from the veteran students. we're concerned because one-third of the way to the deadline, as of monday, no institution or organization on behalf of higher ed had been invited for such discussions. moving forward, we ask that such additional criteria be developed

with current regulatory and enforcement powers and consideration. the current authority as you know covers many federal and state authorities, including but not limited to, the department of education, state licensing authorities, national regional--the securities and exchange commission. veteran's administration's authority under the 9/11 gi bill, the department of defense and others, we ask that the current authority would go after those engaged in misconduct before we indict an entire sector. you should also know that our sector is currently taking the misrepresentation issue one step further. our board requested a student -- guidelines for our member hit and we're now creating a self-regulatory organization to deal additionally with a specific concern. in conclusion, and by chance, mr. chairman, long before this hearing was