low income and middle income families who we need to get into college and across the finish line if we're going to meet the president's goal and i think if we're going to meet our moral imperative of providing opportunity and access to the middle class for families across the country. >> ralph in the face of pretty deep cuts in terms of state investment, your institution has been able to make strides in terms of completion. can you talk a little bit about how you are able to do that? in our report we are calling for greater state investment but also changes in policies at the institutional and state level that hopefully bring down costs but increase outcomes. it seems like you have done the latter. >> we have. first of all, thank you, carmel, thank you most particularly for including a voice from the universities and colleges on this panel. while it's a thrill to be here with policy leaders, we're the

ones that have to implement that policy and that sometimes comes with challenges. what's interesting about the university of south florida, as you pointed out, it is a large institution, it's a young institution. most particularly, it's a top 50 research university public or private in the united states. and i mention that because all too often it's the research universities that lose sight of the focus on serving the needs of the students and enhancing student success. over the past six years, we have seen an 8% increase or an eight point increase in our freshman retention rate, a 15% increase in our six-year freshman graduation rate, which only tells part of the story. because a large number of students entering the university of south florida come to us as transfer students as well. we have also seen an increase in

graduation rates there from 60% to 68% in four years over -- in recent past. so we're pleased in the direction we're moving. we're not yet satisfied. i think first and foremost, it's been our institutional wide commitment to student success that really has lifted all of the students in terms of demographic profile at the university. yes, we have seen a growing number of pell recipients from 19% six years ago to 41% of our undergraduate are pell recipients. that's as much i think a product of the economic downturn as it is any particular effort on our part to recruit lower income or middle income students. but we know those are the ones that are most significantly

impacted by states declining investment and efforts to increase tuition to help offset some of those limitations. >> so what steps did you take in order to achieve the level of increases in completion that you are seeing? >> well, first and foremost, we have raised expectations. we have raised it's everyone's responsibility. but we have raised expectations with regard to college preparedness and readiness of students, whether those students are coming to us from k-12 community or through our community colleges and state colleges. we have raised expectations with regard to student engagement through a number of initiatives. freshman are required to live on campus. and we know that while that adds to the cost of attendance, we have implemented some

initiatives to offset the impact of that requirement, because we full well that students that engage fully in life on campus are more likely going to be retained and progress toward graduation. our shift has been from inputs -- a focus of inputs to three puts a s threough puts a outputs. we have enhanced student support -- financial support, academic support, structures and scaffolding student's experience. because, again, with so many students who are first in their family, they don't have the privilege of a network at home to help guide them through what is sometimes a complex and even confusing pathway to completion. and we don't stop at completion.

today, our focus is on placement as well. placing our students in high skilled, high paid jobs as well as providing them the support necessary to progress to graduate school or to first professional programs if that's the path they're pursuing. >> david, at the community college level, as our report points out, community colleges were hit harder in many ways that four-year institutions. so you'reducating more students than ever, fewer investments from the state level. do you see your institutions making the kind of choices that ralph mentioned in terms of investing in things that help children -- students get to graduation and having to reallocate funding? how are the institutions dealing with it. >> that's a good question. i think he would should start with the factual grounding

irrespective of enrollment or changes in state funding, which is the fact that the colleges educate students for less cost than the other sectors of higher education on a per student basis. what we saw in the recession is what we call a double whammy as it were ere we had cuts in funding as your report points out along with dramatically increased enrollment. 22% increase enrollment over the three highest years, the peek years of the recession, which has tapered off. so starting with that very limited amount of resources or relatively a small amount of resources that colleges have, there is an ongoing tension i think it's fair to say between the desire of the presidents and deans on campus to provide as much education as they possibly can. that is, faculty members in the classroom, whether full-time, permanent or whether ad juyct,

which is important to get more students to graduate. we have to say that for all the attention that has been placed upon the need for our colleges to graduate more students, progress in that area is stubborn to come by. i mean, we're dealing with low income students. of course, they are higher percentages are from the lower two income core tiles and was case ten years ago, which is a very disturbing trend on a number of different ways. so we have lower income students. correlated with that is the fact that they're not -- most of them in fact are prepared to do college work. when i say that by virtue of the fact that more than 60% of our students are tested to be in need of some remedial work. you are starting with low income, relatively unprepared population. you want to get them to graduation. as you well know, and the

audience knows, there's a strong correlation between income and properce propensity to graduate. what the colleges would like to do is have the mrn to provide support services that help students get to graduation. the counseling they need, the academic enrichment services that they need, the further advising in terms of their personal lives, because one of the things that our presidents point out to us constantly is you are not just dealing with educational deficits for a lot of students, but these are people who as you were mentioning, that the students don't necessarily have models of college going in their own families. so they have really got to find their way in an environment that's not natural for them the way that it is for other students. figuring out a way to triage the limited resources we are talking about at a time where resources are less available than they have been, also at a time where we responded to obama's challenge to graduate more students and it's not unique to

the president has really been a difficult needle to thread for a lot of our colleges. but having said that, one thing that i do feel very positive about, not as a practitioner but very positive about is the fact that without a doubt the emphasis on completion and the need to get students to attain an educational credential is enhanced from even five years ago. the way i look at it is that no community college president can get away without having an elevator speech about what his college is doing in terms of working on completion. all that that elevator speech implies about the real commitment across the campus to get students to graduate. the last thing i would say is that while it absolutely requires leadership to increase graduation and get more students to complete their programs, there has to be investment across the campus. that includes particularly the faculty, which traditionally have not had the same incentives that they might have needed to

take individual responsibility for getting students to get up on the podium at the -- and the stage at graduation ceremony and get the sheepskin. >> sarah, what are young people doing to advocate for themselves in this regard? is the focus -- are they directing their energy towards state policy leaders to get increased investment in public institutions? are they focused on the price versus quality or completion aspects of the issue? >> thanks. young people are getting engaged on this issue in many different ways. we have activists who are directly targeting their state legislators to say you need to invest in us. they are targeting members of congress. i think when we have so many peoples who will go on the floor and will say things like, i painted houses over the summer to pay for my college tuition and then we laugh at the idea of a minimum wage job being able to pay for a whole year of anything

in college. those are -- young people are calling out members, they're called out their electeds to say you had a better deal than we do and that's not okay. on the same account, we're also seeing young people who are speaking out to what you were saying before about some of the other social services that are needed for young people when they are in school. if you look at the millennial generation, we're the most diverse, 40% of us are young people of color, but also 15% of us were not born in the united states. so when you see young people, dreamers in particular, calling for resource centers, when we have young people who are first in the generation and have had to do things like translate for their parents to access other services in the community, we're needs to see a whole wrap around support for the young people so they can academically do well, but also socially take care of themselves, take care of their family so they can succeed in school. similar to lgbt students,

because 6% of our generation identifies as lgbt. those are all things needed so young people can do well academical academically. they have been doing an amazing job calling out electeds but folks within the university system to say here is what we need to succeed. >> ted, we have called for a major investment from the federal level to create incentives for states to increase their investment. the administration called for similar program. given the level of activity in congress that might not happen in the short-term. hope it will. if it doesn't happen, what are the other levers you have at the federal level to address these issues? >> it's the conversation that we're having, what can we be doing while we set the big targets up and they're important to have? because i think as your report is doing, it starts to change the conversation. so i think it's important to not

walk away from the big challenges. i don't think any of us are, which is great. but there are other things that we can be doing. you were centrally involved, for example, in helping to craft the first in the world grant competition, which we put out to the higher ed community a little over six months ago. the response was overwhelming, 500 institutions put in applications for innovative practices that they wanted to experiment with to try to improve access and improve outcome, drive down cost or accessibility. the fact that 500 institutions, to your point, the institutions are responding saying, we have to do our part, too. so at the state level, i think our work is to help identify some of the things that we're learning from the first in the world grantees and scale those up so that they can become more common state practice.

in the same vein pshgs one of the areas in which the k-12 and state have a common interest is teacher preparation. in that area of overlap, we are working with states now to create a set of regulations that will put more tools in the hands of states to be able to work with institutions to raise the level of teacher preparation, which we think is a key lever not just in the higher ed world but in the k-12 world if we're going to really seek to bring high school graduates to the door of college ready to do college level work. so there are tools around innovati innovation. there are tools around empowering states with new policies and regulation that we're certainly pursuing. >> ralph and david, to that point of the connection between the post secondary system and the k-12 system, we point out in

the report that one of the areas of cost that seems surmountable is the fact that -- i think david mentioned, so many students are showing up on campus and they're not ready for college level work, which means they have to take remediation courses, extends their time to degree. there's a cost to the student, increases their debt, cost to society because we are teaching them the same content twice. are there ways that your institutions can help tackle that issue which is really a k-12 issue, but help ensure that by the time they get to your door they are ready for success at college -- at the college level? >> absolutely. we work on a regular basis with our local school districts in providing precollege programs, summer programs in particular for students that are looking to move on to post secondary education. most particularly though, as i

mentioned earlier and to david's point, we have a very close articulation and transfer agreement relationship with our community colleges and state colleges. one of the great advantages of being the state of florida is that we have a well established two plus two articulation. we have a common course numbering system that i noticed you mentioned in your report as being an essential mechanism, i think, for streamlining passage from -- and preparedness in community colleges to universities. we're actually working toward jointly admitting students to the university as they're admitted to our partner in community colleges and state colleges. so they receive a joint

admission letter. yet, these are the conditions that they must meet along the pathway to enter the four-year university. we recognize the strain that our feeder institutions are facing. tuition for students in a community college or state college in florida is about $3,000 a year compared to what we think is a very reasonable $6,500 per year in the state university system. again, that's only part of the story, because the full cost of attendance is closing in on $20,000 a year. we realize that's an immense strain or tn the coffers of limd income families. >> before i comment directly on your question, let me just say that i think it's important to understand and appreciate the broader context of the relationship between the federal government and its roll in higher education traditionally

and state government and even local government. the reason why it comes to mind in this particular context, because much of what's being done in this area is really being done at the state and local level. so there's a question about, what is the best largely new role that the federal government might play in this area? we know that the traditional role of the federal government has been providing student financial assistance to a greater or lesser extent. and i would be remiss if i didn't note in this context as we talk about the impact of the great recession that the funds that the congress and the president provided in 2007 with the ccraa moving on through the higher education act, reauthorization of 2008, the stimulus bill, the increase in pell grants, the american opportunity tax credit provided

played an essential role in plugging a hole that would have been created otherwise through the increase in tuition which was caused by state budget cuts. so the government through just providing dollars to students from our point of view the federal government did something that even a few years down the road from that deserves to be remembered and applauded. and we need to make sure that we continue to keep that level of support for students. because they are at this point in time dependent upon it. so in terms of your question what our colleges can do to help students be more prepared, in fact, they're doing a tremendous amount right now that i think is some to some extent unheralded. probably most people here at least are aware of the fact that community colleges provide in almost all cases some type of dual enrollment, which is an

opportunity for high school students to acquire community college credits while they are in secondary school. they might be having the courses delivered to them at their high school. they might be going to community college to take the courses. but this concept of dual enrollment is relatively new, although it's very broad based at this point. and it was designed interestingly and importantly not for your classical advanced placement type student who is an honor student in high school, an a or b student, who students maybe on the margin of college participation. maybe they weren't sure they were going to go, they didn't know enough about it. the original animating idea behind this was to give the students who might not have attended exposure to college. so that's really being done on a very broad basis right now. so that does play a role in preparing, orients students to be ready for community college.

another thing the colleges are doing -- this is more at the local level than the state level -- is you find many presidents at institutions doing very aggressive reaching out to the local high schools to simply increase college awareness for those students who maybe don't know about student financial assistance, they don't know the various options available, they might not know that if they attain an associate's degree at the community college, they will have transfer opportunities to a four-year institution and do all the sorts of things. in fact, some of the presidents are so effective, i heard one gri griping that he was providing great resources and then they were going to the four-year institution. by that as it may, they -- it is something that the colleges i think are doing. but it's not so much a state-based policy in most cases but really up to those individual presidents to do that. i guess one other thing i want to mention, because it is so interesting and i think potentially helpful in

increasing college readiness is the administration of placement tests at community colleges require almost all students to take when they enroll at the institutions to make sure they are ready to do the community college work. in more -- in a number of states and local areas, the institutions in some cases on their own dime are administering the placement tests. there are a couple of tests that are commonly used across the country. and then letting the students know whether they are ready or not for college level work. if they are not, and these tests would be administered no later than 11th grade, then they will take what is the remedial course work in high school where they might have been thinking that they were just fine to do a course work at a community college or four-year institution. so they come to the door much better prepared than otherwise. i think these few innovations stand to increase college readiness in a dramatic way. we have heard about the common

core. but i think other things which is consistent with it really stand to make students much better prepared when they enter our institutions or other ones. >> quickly on david's point about administering the placement tests earlier. i think it's an example of a great opportunity for state policymakers, because there are few states, california is one of them, where they imbed those placement oriented questions in the regular state testing regimen so that sophomores and high school juniors can get an accurate picture of what they need to do to really be college ready on day one. i think that those kinds of policies take what is good institutional practice and lift it up to the level of a state policy decision all to the benefit of the students. >> if i could also add, with regard to financial aid and

particularly for students who are first in their family to go to college, not all of those families fully understand fatsa. they fully understand the federal funds available to help them. we do participate actively in college goal sunday. we work closely with families and community organizations to help fill out the federal forms, which incidentally have been tremendously simplified and improved in recent years. thank you for that. but we still find in florida where our pell grants have more than doubled over the past six years, we still find that we leave $138 million a year of pell funding on the table. florida isn't alone. there's an awful lot of available pell awards that

aren't utilized. and we all need to do i think a better job of communicating and facilitating the application process. >> the bills that david mentioned that dramatically increase student aid, the student advocacy groups played a huge role in getting those across the finish line. do you see the millennial generation getting engaged on this issue, not just additional aid but demanding that the k-12 system give them what they need to be ready for college as well? >> i think so. i mean, especially with the points made about remedial courses. i have mentored young people who when they are ready to go to college, they realize they have to take remedial courses and it adds on the time. for young people living in poverty and working to support themselves and their families, that time, that extra semester or two is -- it's like the

difference between college happening at all or not at all. young people are not -- not having to take remedial courses so they can finish school sooner or on time. these are things that young people are ready to mobilize on. even if you look across generations, parents want to make sure their kids can go to college. their decision for employment. so many of my peers and i'm sure people in the audience have stories where friends maybe wanted to go in public service and maybe they wanted to be teachers or nurses but have drastically shifted their career course because they have so much student debt that they can't imagine possibly paying down the debt with some of the public sector jobs that exist.

whether it's student debt or access to higher ed, these are issues that mold the millennial generation and all generations are mobilizing on when they talk to the state legislators but taking it to the ballot box as well, which is something that is very exciting. >> the president has obviously made it a top priority to increase student aid and then he admirably changed the conversation from one about access to one about completion, big focus on making sure there's good outcomes in the post secondary sector and he has talked about the need to keep price down, because there's only so much the federal aid can do if the price continues to go up. one of the big concerns in that space is pressure around price could lead to reduced support at the state or the institutional level for low income students, because as you know not everybody pays the sticker price

and we want to make sure that low income students are getting the support they need to be successful. how do you think about that at the department in terms of pushing the policies in a way that doesn't have an unintended consequence for low income students. >> it's a great question. it's really at the heart of a lot of the policy conversations that we're having in the department. a place where it comes out, for example, is in our discussion about college ratings. how can we create a ratings system that doesn't create the unintended consequence of encouraging institutions to accept the easiest students to teach and perhaps even the cheapest students to teach or those who can afford higher education in the way it's currently being framed. so we're thinking about a mixture of different metrics

that identify an i snstitutions ability to attract and move through low income students, first generation, pell grant students as a focal point so we're not creating an incentive to take those people out of the equation and find people who are better prepared, wealthier. we don't think that that's in the public interest. i want to shift just a little bit to go back to sarah's point about some of the other underlying dynamics around student debt and affordability. i think student debt is not just people changing their behavior once they are in. one of the things that i worry about is that the student debt issue may be preventing more and more young people from pursuing a college degree, because they're afraid on the very front edge that what they're about to

embark on is going to make it hard for them. so i think the more we can talk about and get very clear about public service loan forgiveness programs, about the president's income driven repayment programs, just beginning rule making on the pay as you earn, expanding the pay as you earn program. we need to work on reducing price. we need to work on reducing cost. and we need to make sure that young people understand the range of opportunities for dealing with student debt. >> the ones doing the worst are going to school but drop out with debt load before having any degree. that's a population we should do a lot of focus on to make sure they know about some of these programs. i just met with a group of latino interns here in d.c. they're very committed to public interest. they all have student loans.

i asked them, do you know about the public service loan forgiveness? these are young people who are seniors in college. they didn't know about it. these are programs that we should make sure students know about when they graduate but in the junior and beginning of their senior year of school, because they could be making very different career decisions if they knew some of these programs existed. so i think that's something where we have a role in from the university system to it the department to us as individuals in talking with our peers. >> ralph and david, are those programs something that your member institutions or, ralph, your unsti institutiinstitution action? it seems like if there's students who could benefit from these programs that they don't know about them. >> absolutely. we're tireless in our efforts to communicate such opportunities.

i would like just to go back to ted's point a few moments ago. and that is the administration's focus on funding or support and accountability with regard to completion. again the through puts and outputs rather than inputs, if you will. and it's true after six years of diminishing public investment and increasing tuition in florida, for the first time this year, in a long time, we have seen an infusion of new investment in public higher education around performance-based funding. while performance-based funding across the nation has perhaps received mixed reviews, for a state that is now investing $100 million a quarter of which came to south florida, so we like it.

based upon completion rates, based upon retention rates, based upon the percentage of pell students served, based upon the number of students graduating with excess hours -- without excess hours to sarah's point. if we keep piling on the completion expectations, many of our students will never get them. they will become so discouraged that they drop out and we lose them for a long, long time. so, yeah, i think this is representing a change for us. new funding came to us six or seven years ago on the basis of opening our doors wide open. it's one of the reasons why i think five of the top ten largest public universities in the united states are in florida. we haven't recovered from access for the sake of access.

now with the refocus on completion and placement, i'm very confident we're moving in the right direction. >> a couple comments. first of all the issue that the money the students leave on the table in the form of not filing is very disturbing across our sector. the numbers are different depending on which source you cite. clearly at minimum, aqua quartef college students don't complete the application process. as i say, it's a very bothersome fact for our institutions. colleges are doing what they can to promote awareness and counseling students throughout the application process. but it remains a hurdle for them. getting back to what i started

talking about about the quandary that institutional ceos have between where they allocate resources, a lot of them have problems processing the papers as opposed to making sure everybody files. in terms of the issue of student debt that's been touched upon, fortunately, because of our low tuitions, our institutions are age able to ensure that the vast majority of community college students don't graduate with debt. about a third of our students who attain a associate's degree have debt. only 17% of our of our credit students borrow. that is a function of our low tuitions. in terms of getting students to complete though and providing incentives and there are institutional incentives at play, performance based funding, which is gaining ground across the country at the state level,

one of the things that we think would enhance completion would also be better information about student outcomes. and we do remain disappointed there the that there is not a national data system which would follow students through their course so that institutional performance would be accurately reflected in the federal data. but also that individual students who are perspective students who are considering enrolling would have a more complete picture of their likelihood of getting a college grew. and then related to that and the basic architecture is currently in place in the form of the gainful employment regulations, my association believes in community college presidents believe is that we ought to know what types of earnings students get after they leave college at some appropriate point. we understand that there's a lot of complexity in interpreting this data. we understand it's not comprehensive under all cases.

we believe that students who complete a given program at a community college -- we believe they should apply for all programs, not just gainful employment programs as it were. they ought to know two years, five years after graduation, on average, how well are students doing economically? because the fact is is that most students go to college first and foremost to increase their career prospects. it's by no means the only reason they go. they get other benefits that come along free of charge or just along with the ride of going through college. but the notion that students go to institutions simply for learning sake is wonderful as learning is and as much as it transforms lives is denying reality. so we are hopeful at some point through some mechanism, that when a student enrolls at their local community college they know not just what the graduation of 150% of normal

time is but how likely they are to graduate from any institution, whether it might be four-year, and then after that what they might expect economical economically, what the returns would be. we all know the best investment you can make in your future is going to college and completing college. >> david, just answered what was going to be my next question for david and ralph, which was if there was one thing you would like to change at a policy level, federal or state -- david, you can have an opportunity to add to this. but i think that the access to the data you are describing is something the federal government, state governments could provide on a policy basis to help your institutions improve their performance. just wondering if there are other either federal or state policies that you think -- if you were king tomorrow you would enact in order to help your institutions be successful. >> well, one concern i've always had with federal data reporting

is the seemingly myopic focus on traditional -- the path of traditional freshmen. while that may indeed have been the experience of many in this town, the reality -- the increasing reality is that more and more students are finding their way to four-year colleges and universities through community colleges. so recognizing that reality and tracking transfer student pathway to success, to completion i think -- i think would add an awful lot to the experience today. >> if i were educational king for a day, i would solve, resolve the transfer problem once and for all. of course, your proposal including or has embedded within it a seamless transfer within the states.

this is really a tragedy for lots of students who accrue credits at community college and move on to the four-year institution and find the credits can't be applied to i agree at the four-year level. although we're making progress in fits and starts, both through entrepreneurial community college presidents and chancellors who are hashing out articulation program -- on the programmatic basis with local colleges and although there have been improvements at the state level, there are still in far too many places students are not able to transfer credits and all the data that we have show that if you are able to transfer all your credits to a four-year college, that you are much likely -- the data almost belie the fact that even if you just lose a few credits on average, you have a lower likelihood of getting i agree at the institution that you transfer into. we all know the institutional

complexities and obstacles that one might confront in doing that. if i could wave a wand and create common course numbering and seamless articulation and perfect information for students when they enroll in community college, like in some -- arizona is a good state and florida is a very good state as well. i think that would probably have the single biggest impact in completion certainly back laureate attainment in this country. >> i could also say, i think from a student peck speccive, if we have, it would be free college, absolutely. this is something that we have students demanding and organizing across the country. that's a starting place for so many of our young people. in the meantime, going back to some of the thingings i brought up earlier about pell money left on the table, we need to let sophomores and juniors in high school know they are able to

access pell money. family income does not change so dras drastically. i think that's really important to make sure that students know this is how much federal aid you could get which would cover the cost of a community college in most cases. i think the other thing that we have seen with students is that far too many students are taking out private loans before they max out federal loans. this is i think it's something like half of students who have private loans have not maxed out their federal loans. this is a huge concern, because federal loans have so many more consumer based protections than the private loans do. whether it's income-based and public forgiveness. we need to do a better job on educating students before they get the private loans, that you have federal loans that are a much better use. you don't have to take them at all, but if you do, it's much better -- a better decision to take out the federal loans. >> ted, if you were king? either the federal or state level. >> i think on the -- i want to

go back to the reason for our gathering and to your report. i'm going to wave a couple -- one is the basic point that your report is raising, that states need to get back in the game and provide equitable and fair funding to their students. that would be one. second i get to take everything they have done, which i support. but i would like to go back to ralph's point. not only is the traditional student not the majority student any longer, but even those quote unquote non-traditional students are consuming higher education in different ways. into david's transfer, the mecca that you created for transfer credit, i think we have to recognize that students aren't just transferring from one institution. sometimes it's two or three or they are assembling course

credit online. so i think it's our responsibility to develop a financial aid system that is every bit as flexible as the students are today and likely to be tomorrow. i think that that would be my add would be flexible student aid. >> with that, we will turn it over to the audience and give you all a chance to ask our terrific panelists questions. >> good morning. reporter with diverse issues in higher education. i was hoping you could say a bit more about the proposed compact itself. it makes reference to 10% of funding a. i'm unclear what that 10% refers to. after you speak a bit about the wo workability of a compact, i guess perhaps you could say something about the likelihood of such a thing coming into existence, what needs to happen in congress, things of that nature. thank you.

>> i will let david answer the part about 10%, because i'm not sure what you are referring to there. but in terms of congress's role, it can't happen without congress. ted doesn't have a magic wand at this point to have a substantial new funding stream. they would have to enact the program. but we think they should. it's an issue where it has historically been a bipartisan issue to ensure that people have access to post secondary education. it would be our hope that they would take action in next congress. >> our proposal calls for 90% of the money that's provided for the program would be distributed among the states. the formula takes into account the pell grants. 10% would be held by the federal government to be used to help support the work of states to do evaluation and do other kinds

of -- provide other technical assistance that might be helpful to states they go about doing their work. also it could support maybe some work in regions where communities that are closely linked could come together and develop holistic solutions to higher education problems in a geographic region. we were thinking that a substantial amount of the money would go out to states and states would use it and use it effectively, but there should be some reservation of funds to make it possible for the federal government to support that work. we think that this is going to require very substantial investment of funds. you know, when we talk about this internally, we benchmark it to work that's been done by our

economic policy team where they have identified about $1.4 trillion in additional funding that could be made available through bipartisanly agreed upon tax reform. so you could say that 10%, 5% of that money is the kinds of things that the dollar amount. we would think about being necessary in order to drive the kinds of changes we want to see happen at the state level across the country. >> other questions? nobody else? okay. great. maybe each of our panelists could give some closing thoughts before we finish up. ted? we started with you. we'll finish with you. >> we're all shy. so it's difficult.

i guess as a closing comment, david mentioned this earlier, but i'd like to reinforce it. i think that at the heart of both this report and the plan and a lot of our discussion today has been this move -- ralph, you called it a move from input to through put and outcomes. i think the increased focus on outcomes for individual students, outcomes for taxpayers, outcomes for us as an economy and a society is probably the most critical shift that we have seen in the debates about higher education over the last ten years. and i think that it's important as we think about outcomes that we do it in a robust way that doesn't narrow our focus as we look at the range of things. we seek to gain as a society from higher education.

>> i guess i'll go next. maybe we can go in line. i'd like to get back from a comment that the under secretary made at the beginning of the panel. that is the fact that we do have an implicit but yet very cooperation to finance higher education. the reality is that over time the state role, we could call it his tore historically declined to the extent it dropped off from what it was 20 years ago and before that, but that the state implicit share in that partnership and that bargain, states haven't been keeping that -- their side of the bargain. and there are a lot of reasons for that. and one of them perhaps the next chair of the committee will say, it's because of the growth in medicaid spending, which has crowded out a lot of other

spending. we know the share of dollars going to post secondary education has decreased as a percentage of state budgets. so i commend the center for their proposal for trying to put the spotlight back that is because one of the last best chances we have to stimulate state governments and legislatures to provide greater support for postsecondary education by having greater documents of the impact that we have.

and as i was thinking over the weekend about this panel, i was remembering back to the goals 2000 effort, which you will remember and what president, you know, herbert walker bush did in this area, trying to perhaps potentially galvanize or that's what he tried to do some time ago, state leadership, in the area of k 12 education. but that perhaps something ought to be done nationally by this administration and maybe congress, maybe both of them, maybe something they could agree on, actually, that the states need to provide a more -- more robust financial support for higher education for students and for the institutions themselves because from my perspective, the federal government has been doing certainly more than states have relatively speaking has really stepped up to the plate in a way over the last five, six, seven years that state governments have not, for whatever reasons, and that balance needs to be

changed. so, again, i just want to thank you for having me and again for thanking the center for casting a spotlight on the fact that we need state governments to be -- provide more support for postsecondary education. >> i think something i'd like to close with is to, you know despite all the problems and challenges that exist is the millennial generation is doing a great job. we are the most educated generation in our country's history and are seeing massive increases in the amount of african-american and latino students going to college and just haven't happened before and that should be applauded, both to the generation directly but also to the college systems and the secondary schools that are really pushing and parents to get young people to go to college. so, i think we have to remember that as well. and we have to remember to engage young people, engage students at all levels of this conversation. students are the ones who, you know, are finding those holes in

the system before we are. it was just last week, i met a young woman over coffee who was telling me about struggles she was having with her pell grant and something we hadn't thought about before but directly speaking with this young woman that this issue came to light and i'm looking forward to chatting more about how we can fix it. but i think if we are really talking about making sure that we continue to be the most educated generation, that future generations are even more educated, is that we are -- we are acknowledging the diversity of the generation, whether it's the amount of vets that are in school, which really excited to see is that we are talking about students with pell and those on the gi bill and the same category, they should be of particular focus because it is our generation that has gone to war. and it is our generation that has high amounts of low-income students. i think the other thing that we would just mention is we need states to get involved, we need states to invest because students are attempting to make the right decision to go to school, there are a lot of bad actors out there that will swap

them up, that will take advantage of them, like a lot of the for-profit schools, when they could be going to great community colleges that are not going to charge them nearly as much and make sure they have a good degree when they graduate and can get a good job. so we all have a role to play in this and i just would ask for those who are the decisionmakers thought to really be sure that we are talking with students on all kinds of students, yes, 18 and 19-year-olds, but 28-year-old moms with kids who are going back to school because those are the ones who our school system should be working for and. >> ralph, last word? >> that's challenge. but i think what's become clear this morning and again, thank you so much for putting the spotlight on this, that higher education today is not your grandparents' experience in college, or for that matter, your parents. in the state of florida, we -- half of the degrees, in fact, half of the student enroll.in

the state universities occurs at three of the 12 institutions in the most populace areas, the university of south florida, the university of central florida in orlando and florida international university in miami. we have recently launched a connoissesortium of the metropo research universities in the state that graduates again, just about half of the baccalaureate degrees, two-thirds of the baccalaureate degrees awarded to hispanics in the state, about 55% of the degrees awarded to pell recipients across the state. their experience is quite different than, if you will, at the legacy institution. we are committed to collaborating, to sharing best practices, to leveraging resources across the three

universities with a mind to betterer ask offing the new population -- better serving the new population of college attendees and college graduates in the state, and we believe that's absolutely essential if florida and this nation is going to compete successfully in the global economy and maintain what has become a commitment to providing social mobility opportunities through college education. >> thank you all for doing this and for joining us this morning. thank you. [ applause ]

take you live now to capitol hill, where the senate appropriations committee is getting ready to question obama administration officials about the u.s. response to the ebola outbreak. the administration is asking for over $6 billion in emergency aid. the last ebola patient being treated in the u.s., a doctor who was diagnosed after returning from a volunteer stint fighting the virus in guinea was released from a new york hospital, new york city hospital on tuesday. new york officials continue to monitor health workers who care for him as well as other recent travelers from west africa. we are waiting for the members

of the committee, a few of them starting to come into the hearing room. barbara mckulski of maryland chairs the appropriations committee. the ranking member is richard she will bill, the republican from alabama. among those scheduled to testify today are health and human services secretary, silvia burr well, the cdc director, dr. tom freiden, homeland security secretary, jeh johnson and dr. anthony fauci, the director of the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases. live coverage on c-span3.