commitment yesterday to visit ecpi college in virginia beach. this school is important to this conversation because no less than 30% of their student body are veterans. the primary reason veterans choose this school and i spent literally a half an hour visiting with the veteran, because they move the veteran from the field to the workplace as quickly as possible. during my visit with the school, the veterans tell me their number one complaint was not about the school, it was about the va's problems in processing their payments in a timely and proper manner. what these individual schools are doing on their own to make absolutely sure that they engage

in the best education practices and the best interests of the veterans. that moves them from the field of battle, into education and into the workplace as soon as possible. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> for over five years i have served as vector -- rirtded from the united states air force after 20 years of service and i am now the -- nafta's -- institutions from all education sectors and we advocate for what we believe are the best

interests of student veterans at our institutions, our expertise lies in the administration of veteran's programs at colleges, universities and other providers. as a voluntary organization, nafta does not police it's membership. our mission is to provide professional development to member institutions, disseminating best practices and advocate on behalf of our institutions. we believe that the institutions should be forth right with all students. like so many others, nafta has been dismayed at news reports of unscrupulous treatment of unsuspecting veterans and we strongly condemn any abuses these veterans -- we believe there are no doubt costs and

burdens in entering this executive order, we cannot address any initiative that seeks to prove that veterans are appropriately recruited. nafta is pleased that the president has taken such a direct interest in the educational needs of our nation's veterans. we recognize that the climate in this executive order to provide personalized financial advising will be exceptionally challenging to implement. this advise can only be provided if the -- determine all possible aid alternatives. at present, eligibility information is generally not provided to institutions. nafta as longed a voe kited for direct access from the v.a., for example and we will continue to do so. the timing will also make implementation of this requirement difficult. students can not even apply for certain federal benefits until they are already enrolled in

classes, schools can not predict in advance how much funding might be provided to veterans prior to enrollment. furthermore, many benefits are actually -- many financial awards must be ajusted whenever the student received other edge -- net cost which must be readjusted whenever any other tuition prestricted awards are received. we recognize the challenges involved with implementing the services required in this executive order. we hope and expect that as policies are development we might contribute to the conversation --. regarding student outcomes, all schools are interested in the success of their student.

requiring disclosure by schools should not be a substitute for solid oversight, however. the agencies administering these programs are in need of further oversight resources to provide the training and enforce the existing executive order, the va needs assistance with compliance taxes now that the gi bill has become so complex.

mr. chairman, this concludes nafta's statement. i would like to thank you and the members of subcommittee for your leadership on issues of critical importance to america's veterans. >> thank you, mr. chairman, mr. ranking member, distinguished members of the committee. my name is -- i am associate executive director with the american association of collegiate registrars and admissions officers, we are delighted to be participate in this discussion. i have submitted written testimony for the record.

but i would like to take this opportunity to in plain language raise four specific issues for the subcommittee's attention. and i shall do so dogmatically because of the shortness of time. the -- pervasive problem with waste, fraud and abuse. this is not anything against the profit motive. we endorse the profit motive, the building we so it in was built by somebody we hope was doing it for profit and did a good job. but when you compare how we put up buildings in this country, with building codes and inspections and heavy penalties if somebody undersizes the beams, we understand that the profit motive needs to be framed with proper oversight. but i'm here to suggest to you

as somebody who spent almost a quarter century looking at this stuff, we have a lot of procedural and very burdensome regulations, we do not have substantive safeguards to enshurj that an entity purporting to be a college or university is actually doing any teaches. and that is equivalent to buildings falling on people's heads on a daily basis. and the basic reason here is simple. when you put a building up or you take a color tv home, there are very obvious performance tests on the basis of which you know what you got. education is a lifetime experiential service, you can show people all kinds of promises on the front end that they will only learn 20 years later didn't actually pan out. so that's one point. i raise an issue that has been raised before by my other colleagues about the 90/10 rule.

this subcommittee should pay particular attention to that because what the 90/10 rule does is it makes every dollar of va benefits worth 9 extra dollars. so vets are walking around with big targets on their backs, because their dollars are the means by which these entities have almost no other purchasers. this is really the issue, what are they selling that nobody else is willing to reach into their pocket and put a dollar of hard earned cash on the table for. veterans earned their benefits, but these are federal benefits and these benefits are being used to -- for profit market based profit making the right way, but it's a funny kind of capitalism we're talking about, it's capital i'm consisting of 100 cents on the dollar coming from the feds, there's something wrong there. my colleagues talked about the

glut of data in the navigator. i am mechanically challenged. when i buy a car, all i want to know is where the key goes, and where the gas goes, i can't even take it to the oil level being right. so that's the reason, unless you want to get a phd on mechanical engineers, we can read consumer reports to understand what car is right for us. very tough to do with education. disclosures are not a subject for gate keeping, when i go to the supermarket, i don't want to have toxic food on the shelves with a phd desertation on each item as to whether it will kill me or it's edible. we need to -- finally with regard to the executive order, we support it as an imperfect substitute for what we believe only you could do. you are the folks who write these laws, you have done so

with leadership and with the best of intentions and i believe if this committee takes a look at the situation and addresses gate keeping, we could simplify a lot of the things that we have to do otherwise. i appreciate the opportunity and look forward to any questions. thank you. >> thank you. dr. gibraltar, you're recognized for five minutes. >> chairman, and divisistinguis members of the committee. we're a rural university in western maryland and part of the university system of maryland's 11 campuses. i'm here today testifying on behalf of the american association of state colleges and universities, commonly known as asku, which represents over 400 public institutions and university systems. thank you for holding this hearing. i would also encourage members

to view my written statement for further detail and explanation of this testimony. prosberg serves the majority of military directed towards our national guard and veteran units. the number of veterans we serve varies significantly from year to year. our overall enrollment right now is about 5,500 students, we're currently serving about 102 veterans. our growing online programs, in particular our accredited mba and our advanced degree in nursing. asku which also serves as the administrative agent. our nation's veterans and military personnel should be able to obtain quality information about institutions

and their programs. asku and it's member institutions, including my own campus value the perspective and experience that service members and veterans bring to our institutions, as such we take our commitment to providing them a quality educational experience very, very seriously. as the conflicts in iraq and afghanistan wind down, and over 2 million troops are withdrawn from those areas, more and more veterans will be arriving on college campuses to use the educational benefits they have earned serving our country. and our active duty military are combining service to the country with higher education. the text of the executive order as written raises a number of concerns regarding implementation. those of us on the ground are also most aware of the human issues of the individuals that we work with. for example, as there is no requirement that students

identify themselves as veteran, some choose not to do so. meaning they may be missing out on services that we can and should provide. the executive order requires the secretaries develop a comprehensive strategy for developing service member and veteran student outcome measures that are comparable across federal military and veteran's educational benefit programs. while ask oourks appreciates the order's statement that, quote, to the extent practicable outcome measures should rely on existing data to -- benefit programs, end quote, there's considerably more burden to finding available data for those outcome measures than meets the eye. the issues of data definition and collection raised by the executive order's requirement to develop national level outcome measures become even more significant for institutions.

first the federal government does not collect veterans and military students specific data from institutions. second, institutions and states vary in their ways of defining veteran and military students based on what data is available to them. given the complexity of data identification on this -- higher institution stunss may be asked for data that may or may not be possible to obtain. that leads to another concern, the reporting burden and associated costs. in 2010, the government accountability office completed an analysis of the burden placed on intuss, to comply with -- monk other issues, the gao found that schools reported time burdens ranging from 12 to 590 hours compared with the 19 to 41 hours education estimated.

gao further reported that especially tugss incurred a total estimated salaries and computer costs of over $6 million. the call for consistent -- would be an advancement of -- to incur considerable back office costs. another key concern that was mentioned earlier is the complaint system outlined in the executive order that would create a centralized complaint system for students receiving federal military. instituting a centralize complaint system without first establishing whether an individual has already attempted to resolve their complaint with the university or college's veteran's affairs office represents a concern. too often complaints raise to the highest level when they would better be reinvolved on the campus.

in closing, asku especially tugss are eager to continue meeting the educational needs of our veteran and their family. we are concerned that these returning military become solid students and campus leaders. thank you for the opportunity to speak about this legislation. >> thank you. and i'll begin the questions. what's their experience life in transitioning to college life as compared to an 18-year-old freshman coming into school. >> mr. chairman, i would be hard

pressed to define an average student veteran. every one of them is so unique in their situation, in their needs, in their experiences and how those experiences have impacted them and what that means for them as they now transition into their civilian life, that we really think of them across an entire spectrum of experiences. we do find that as they come to school, they have a greater focus on education, they have a different value on education than perhaps the average traditional 18-year-old freshman student might have. they tend to be very interested in their success there, they tend to be very concerned about their finances. they tend to be fairly reticent to seek assistance even when they know they need it because they come from a tradition that's not necessarily looked on as a value to reach out and ask

for help. we try to provide that assistance to those who need it and those who look fine are not just concealing a need that we're not aware of. it runs the full gamut of students who walk in our door and sign up for classes and they are good to go, just like any other student, to someone who spends three days a week in the office because they have a need to reconnect with other veterans, or because they feel lost in a school of 42,000 students. i'm afraid that's not a very good answer, that is to say there's not an average one out there, every one is unique and special and different. >> that's probably the case for every individual, every individual is looking for something different in one way or the other. but mr. gunderson, given all the variables in student demographics, the availability of jobs is it reasonable to use data such as salaries to judge

the quality of a school's education? could you just discuss a little bit of the about the variables that you see and also if you could follow up on the question that asked mrs. bectel as well. >> when you ask the first panel that, i put down some notes that i think would be very helpful in college navigator to the typical veteran who's trying to make a deigs, one of them is in placement, in employment and -- -- [ no audio ]

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>> what would the data, the current data, is it valuable to what extent will this create additional administrative burden for the school? does that information valuable for students that are looking to apply at your school? >> well, there certainly is an i normous amount of data and also if you look at the voluntary system of accountability that may be asking institutions to participate in. you'll find that there's a lot of really useful and -- for

anyone including veterans. i think the issue that i'm going to discuss today is in part of the availability of that information, but is also the issue of promoting those systems of accountability for veterans, so there's more -- >> not necessarily how many there it came back on. not necessarily how many items are added, but how you present that to veterans, it sounds like is an important issue. >> dr. gibraltar, let me start with you, you self-identified at working at a rural university. >> yes. >> to mr. stutzman and i, rural america isn't a policy, it's where we're from. and rural america has a disproportionate contribution to the defense of this country. so when we have young men and

women returning, looking for educational opportunities, we have a moral obligation to reward that sacrifice by giving them an educational experience that moves them on the way to fulfilling their career in educational goals. i don't think you disagree with that. >> i absolutely agree. >> but one of your statements confused me where you said that there's no requirement for students to identify themselves as veterans. >> right. >> and yet, we're talking about funding from the gi bill and military tuition assistance benefits so how can colleges and universities not identify that that is a veteran when they're receiving those benefits. >> i think you're talking about two different issues. i think that where we struggle is that there are students who are on our university campuses who don't ever tell us or indicate in any way that they are veterans. they don't want themselves to be known.

that is what i'm talking about. i am not talking about those students who are therefore also receiving benefits. if they're receiving benefits, sir, we do know about it. >> you also raised a point that i alluded to in my opening remarks and that is -- everybody, if you ask 100% of the population if they think there's too much government red tape, you're going to get 100% yes. and to the average person, the average business, that's a two-fold problem. one is the conduct that's being regulated and whether it should be regulated in the first place, and the other is if that regulation or the documents that communicate with people about their expected behavior are written in incomprehensible gobbledegook so people waste their time trying to figure out what's expected of them. i know that you are all intelligent, highly edge

indicated people. but if you are telling us that you're dealing with federal regulations that are incomprehensible gobble debook to you, we are in trouble. that's why i introduced the plain language in the government relations bill to get at the root cause of what we're talking about. you mentioned that in your opening comments, but this gets to the greater problem, when you've got companies like turbotax that can greatly simplify the time it takes the average veteran college student to do their tax return, and if you give them those same ftax form that that's 150 pages long, we have to get you the data you need in the least inconvenient format possible and that's what frustrates me. so how do we get there? >> i think that these conversations need to continue and i think that we need to be

involved and continue to be involved in the conversation. and, you know, i would use as a reference the voluntary system of accountability that at least initially colleges and universities did not have to participate in, but many chose to. i think if you really look at that, you'll see at least from my view, a much more easily understandable interface that students can get information about, you know, acceptance rates, graduation rates, percentage of students that get financial aid, any number of data points about colleges and universities. >> mr. gupderson, welcome home, i would like to remember you, that iowa -- we beat you into the united states for two years. your concerns are that on behalf

of your member institutions, you are opposed to the executive order in itself? or you are opposed to the implementation of the executive order? >> great question. because i'm not sure we're opposed to either. i was disappointed that an executive order would preimp all the bipartisan consensus up here on the hill. that was my disappointment. seconds, what i have lifted up is the executive order if it is developed by all of you and all of us in working out the kinks and what needs to be defined. we need to do it with a -- academic achievement in ways that works for the veterans and works for higher education. if we do that together, this is a win-win for everybody. if we don't, it's a disaster for everybody, the vaeterans the

schools and the general public. we only got 60 days left before that 90-day window is to be concluded and this goes into effect. i talked to the -- i said we haven't been asked and we were promp promised by the white house that weld be asking. so nobody in higher ed's been asked to come to the table and help work out these issues. >> one of the things that all of us would tell you is that an executive order lasts only as long as the person who signs it is in office, as a practical matter, chairman stutzman and i and other members of this subcommittee are actively engaged because we know that ultimately there has to be a legislative solution that takes into account, the best interests of the veterans, the people receiving these funds and the u.s. taxpayers and the institutions who have to administer them, so we look forward to working wi