the opportunity while congress is on break to show you the american history tv program to show you what is only seen on the weekends. at 8:00 p.m. we'll show you william f. buckley's opinion and then at 9:25 p.m. james baldwin and then at 10:45 p.m. on race in america. when congress is in session, the best access and live coverage of hearings, news conferences and key public afarz events and every weekend it is american history tv traveling to historic sites and discussions with author and historians and eyewitness accounts of events that define the nation. c-span3, coverage of congress and meshamerican history tv. and a look now at over site of intelligence agencies and what lies ahead. among the speakers were former

congressional staffers who worked offer over site for lawmakers. the breanan center for justice hosted this here in washington. >> so we wanted to have one final panel again recognizing the important work for the staff in these instances. of church committee staff. and basically throw it out there. what we got right, what we got wrong what did we miss, what did we not talk about and what do we need to do next. so let me introduce you. first judge paul michel the former counsel to the church mitty. and one of the things that fascinated me about the year i spent working with these incredible people is how incredible they're diversity of experience is both before and after their church experience -- kmch committee experience.

he was an assistant watergate special prosecutor, work in the public integrity section of the department of justice and nominated by president ronald reag to the circuit court of appeals and retired in 2010, peter fenn he was the washington chief of staff for senator frank church, founded, among other things and was executive director for the center for responsive politics and self-described political on sieve and now runs fenn communications. and patrick shea, the former assistant to the staff director of the church committee, has one of the most diverse careers that you should look to his bio for for all of us but on the president's commission on aviation safety and security looking at the twa -- after the

twa 800 drafter, the national bureau director for land management and deputy secretary for land mineral. so thank you for participating. what did we get right, what did we get wrong and what do we do next? >> well my submission is the courts have a significant role in this along with the actors providing over site and policy and guide sans input. and to fight the court is not the whole story. it is an important part of the story, theive provements discussed here today would make it better. i think there is a growing and significant role for the regular courts as well. in the final analysis, legal rights are meaningless unless they are enforcement and that really means the courts have to be available and effective. i think that the attitude of the judiciary, the level of understanding, the level of skex

six has -- skepticism has changed mark theedly for obvious reasons for the disclosures going on unbe knownest to them and to others in the country. so i think those like standing executive privilege state secrets, all of the doctrines that have been used in the past to avoid reaching the merits are losing power and losing power fast. so i predict the courts will do a much better job in the past few years than they have recently. with resect to dealing with secrets, courts have lots of experience. i myself worked on a case involving stealth aircraft technology before the word stealth bomber entered the lexicon. we knew had you to clear classrooms classified storage device and work with officials an the idea judges can't do it because it involves highly

classified stuffs i think is not really sound. now, to the extent that some level of specialization might be useful, there are a thousand federal trial judges and about almost 200 federal appellate judges, that is a lot 49 districts in the 50 states but there is a model that we could use if some zreg of specialization is thought to be essential. there was something called temporary emergency court of appeals which was staffed by regular judges from around the country on special assignment, somewhat like the visa court could you could have -- so you could have that model used again. i think the biggest problem is the advance of technology especially electronic technology and the utilization by the intelligence community has been so rapid that the law has not kept up with it and lawsuits

have not kept up with it. the fourth amendment was obviously written in a completely different technology era and to my way of thinking as valuable as the constitution bill of rights protections are, they are not adequate because of this rapid, rapid advance of technology and its advancing even more rapidly now than in recent times. so i think what is needed to make the courts more effective is for congress to define some red lines, if we want to use that expression, that intelligence agencies are not to cross with respect to collecting and analyzing data about americans who are not the target of founded concerns about being terrorists or criminals or whatever. if congress would do that the effectiveness of the courts would rise even further.

you know the core confidence of judges is they look at a law, they look at a set of facts and say was it legal or was it not legal. they can't duck the issue. they have to decide the issue. they will decide the issue. but if the law is clearer, then the out comes become more predictable, fairer and more effective and that provides guidance for the actors in the executive branch and help the legislative branch. so i think what we need is for congress to get in the game and work sort of in a tag-team fashion with the courts. i also think that no one else can do it. you can't count on the executive to make a judgment for the whole society in a democracy of republican form of government. really only the congress is the legitimate person to assess these competing considerations and strike a balance.

they're not perfect. nobody's perfect. but they're the right people to do it and i hope that they will. i think that they are certainly moving in that direction. last thing is we've talked a lot about some of the output of the church committee but there were a lot of statutory reforms that we haven't talked about. for example, limiting the irs be used for political purposes. that was enacted in statutory reforms and other reforms. there is more that can be done in that area as well. there was an effort to develop a charter to for the fbi which was done by the fbi and the justice department, mostly written by director john hoet us and me and it gone way down the track with the approval by the carter administration, the attorney general and the director of the fbi and at the last stages it sort of got pulled from consideration. i think there is good potential to enact charters for the key agencies that would set a broad

framework within which specific statute statutes, specific guidelines and oversight can take place and be more effective than it has been before. i think also there is a good role for guidelines. but again, guidelines have to take place in a context and the context most broadly has to be set by congress in global form and that is the single thing most thing we need to improve the quality of the restraints on the intelligence community and think from having spent many years as a criminal investigate involving public corruption as you've heard that the intelligence agencies will not only be able to observe appropriate civil liberty, civil rights privacy interest but become more efficient and effective against real terrorists if we move in this direction. so it is not a question of give up safety to have privacy, you

can have both but it takes smart laws and constant updating because the whole thing is a moving target and technology is changing a mile a minute. the courts need to get in the act, the congress needs to step up. and i think they are and they will. and like the congress, there is a special role of judges. they are appointed for life. nonpolitical and they are like monks and days of old. they are in dependent and not wrought up in the dispute and they are fallible like all other humans but if you have to pick whether somebody should be a referee given what the statutes and the constitution should say there is no better alternative than federal judges so let us and congress play our role and we can advance this ball a great deal very rapidly. >> and as a federal law enforcement officer, and fbi agent, i can say i agree with

you entirely. never found bad guys by investigating people who were innocent. and i think that is something that is missed. peter. >> first of all i would just -- my hat goes off to you and to the brennan center and fritz and the whole staff. this has been an incredible day. you've done so much work to prepare for it. i know you are going to do a lot of work after it is over. but this is a public service. and it's come at the right time. and even with us gray hairs up here to make sense of some of. i come from the political sort of public side of this. in addition to the time spent on the committee and the time spent in senator church's office i've worked for three decades to elect candidates to office failed with this fella in utah, but democrats in oughta don't

tend to do too well but pat and i have been great buddies for a long time, even before the church committee. but one of the things that concerns me a lot is how do you bring the public into this. how do you move the ball down the field when you've got some very complicated issues, when a lot of it is secret when people haven't studied it and thought it through and when you have and i hate to say it elected officials, who tend to act very quickly, when push comes to shove and they may not make the best decisions on sunday when they vote on this. and i wrote a column, partly at your urging, where i said, i think we have got to get it right. i think it is really difficult when you pass the patriot act in the heat of passion.

and folks that are not terribly competent on some of these issues, read the congress, are making decisions on this. and there are two things that we have talked about. politically i understand that they are tough. but folks should call for a new church committee in the congress, made up of people on the intelligence committees, on the homeland security committees, people who have a real interest and understanding for this subject and to sort of step back and look at it. at the same time, my view is, and i expressesed this in the white house, because as a political consultant i get in there, and i said you should have a simpson bowls type of commitment, to look at this, to have subpoena power and have solid, good people on it real folks and serious staff, and we

should begin to look at some of the questions that -- that paul just laid out. we should look at what we need to do with the vice act. we should look at what the role of certain judges are. we should take a good, hard look at what the executive does with i.g.'s and whisle blowers and if we are shutting down people concerns and with moral questions about what our policies are. and if they are looking and can't come and say we are torturing people overseas they just destroyed these tapes, they shouldn't do that, then we're in real trouble. because when you're spending 50 -- 70-80 billion dollars including the military money over 107,000 staff people in the intelligence field and plus the folks out there -- the contractor and building this

multi-billion dollar facility again in the state of utah to suck in all of this information they gather, somebody who has questions shouldn't have to travel to russia to let it all out. we should figure out a way to make these people not pariahs but folks who are doing their jobs. so i think -- and i'm not a waive and a political idiot, so i know some of the second church committee isn't the easiest thing to get done or to have a presidential commission. but i hope that this -- if this president doesn't do it, that the next president does, and gets really serious about it. >> and i think that is why you are right, it is the public education part that is so important, that we're trying to accomplish here with your help because once the public puts that pressure on the politicians, whether it is the executive branch or --

>> and i'll tell you one quick thing, i just an hour ago did a interview with steve skully from c-span here taping this and he played a two minute bite from frank church from 1975 on meet the press and i'm sure it will be on c-span and i thought to myself holy cow he could have said that yesterday. talk about that -- looking inward, the precisely your words, about what will happen with our technology, it is getting greater and greater and so -- and the public needs to think a good deal more about it. >> and we have a rethinking intelligence project if fenn communications wants to. >> i just do probono stuff any way. >> patrick. >> mike, i hope that you will become the next director of the fbi. it would be refreshing.

[ applause ] >> i don't think that is likely. >> in utah if i could help somebody i say i would oppose them. and so i oppose you. and i want to thank fritz and bill miller. he and i have not always had a harmonious relationship on the committee. >> pat, you haven't had a harmonious relationship with your friends and i'm rooting for you. he's irish, you know. >> he helped me on the campaign my opening line for governor as an irish governor for utah i'm here to help you and in 1982 that got the same response as it did today unfortunately and i think what happened to me the other day -- yesterday, when i arrived, in 1969 it was the first day i was here in washington working as an inturn senator moss from utah and i land the at dulles, the new

airport at the time and i thought about john kennedy's ask not what your country can do for you but for what you can do for your country and the i have a dream speech and there was a aspirational dream to government and people thought they could make a difference. and the other day when i got into reagan airport all i could hear is the house of cards theme music and i think that captures what has happened in the 40 years. we've went hollywood and defined what we consider to be political reality and as a criticism of the intelligence community i think they watch too much movies and don't get enough experience. some of the people -- seymour bolton had been in the field and capture in the german war and put in the prisoner of war camp and organized it and senator church was an intelligence officer in china and had

firsthand experience and in the 21st century the war on terrorism, which is an oxymoron to me, which is ridiculous and it needs to be and should have been in 2001 a police action police are under better control than the military because ike eisenhower who is emerging as one of my favorite presidents understood the power of the military industrial complex and when you talk about billions of dollars and talking about political appointees i was a presidential appointed senator confirmed, the average life of one of them is 18 months. i can remember at b.o.m. where i belt with wild horses having a senior official who supposedly reported to me looking at me and said, look i'll be here long after you're gone so i'm not going to do that. so i think we need to think about an eco-system. but the problem with the eco-system that has developed in the security state, it is a monoculture and they don't

survive very long. they do come in as an in vasive species and take over the landscape and fail because there is a lack of diversity. each time i've worked in washington, seven defrn times i've had a letter of resignation or a conversation with peter after i told one member of the committee that he was just not really with it senator church reminded me that is not a way a staff person talks to people i go back outside of the potomac village and i think of the potomac village or each of these tribes there are more interested and this was true in b.o.m., in defending thur turf, against for instance the forest or wildlife service or others, that they are all mixed together. and margo if you are still here, the other thing i would disagree with you on is more people in the pie. when i came to washington

in in '69 in '69 there were 2900 people and now there were over 10000. and there were over 10,000 in the library of congress and now there are over 25,000. so we've had an explosion of staff on the congress side and with respect to you, your hon, i do agree the court bz are a good place to adjudicate conflict but you need to have a congress that will be a congress. and i don't think -- the joke, when i was in blm, was there is only one system now and it is appropriation process the authorization committees don't matter. but the appropriators man, you kiss their ring, because they control your budget. so the only place i do want to talk specifically about the church committee is i think we had a unique opportunity and i think we took mee treat quarters of -- took maybe three quarters of the opportunity. we did prove to the public

whether there were abuses going on assassinating foreign leaders, probes, but what we didn't do in my judgment which was a missed opportunity was set up a predictable budgetary process and make sure the chain of command was traceable because we cop seed even today the agencies are so good at flopping over things that who is responsible for spending those dollars who is going to be accountable and in the cia, walt odor was a historian and when there was a covert operation he had to write up a history report where he interviewed the people there and determine wld they -- whether they were successful or unsuccessful and i think that was reviewable but an in dependent body i think through citizens united, i'm not convinced congress will be independent because of the money interest.

when i ran against orrin hatch, the bus theory, he had to get hit by a bus, but when somebody hands you a check for $10,000 or $20,000, it is not because they like your curly hair or irish demeanor, it is because they want somebody out of you and now there is unlimited spending and unfortunately peter makes good money off of this -- >> pro-bono now. >> but it is a system that is broken and we need to have some accountability. but finally, the most important thing is i teach at the university of utah and it is interesting to me to see -- i've been teaching for 35 years now how events that were real in my life watergate the impeachment of president nixon are now as relative to my students as world war i was to me when i was there age. and you could ask me at their age when i thought about world

war i and i could give you some ideas. we're failing in transferring the sense of responsibility. and some people have said tom brokaw spoke about the greatest generation if we don't change our way we may be known as the least generation and i said this last night and i'll repeat it here, as a young fbi agent, having read and internalized the reports that you guys worked so hard on, really set me on a course to keep the straight and narrow. it was nice to hear alex joel hear him say he has copies in his office and there are a lot of employees within the agency that want to do the right thing and want their agencies to be effective and efficient and we have to figure out a way to empower them and make sure they are able to work within the system so it can work well. and the commitment of this group

of people for over 0 years now is inspirational and thank you very much for the work you put in and continue to work in and i'm going to continue calling you. so thanks very much to the kmch committee staff. >> and fritz and bill if you wouldn't mind standing. [ applause ] >> and of course thanks to our vice president mondale and hart comes this morning. that was a terrific addition to the program. and thanks to all of you for coming, and thanks to c-span. good night, everyone. new jersey governor chris christie announced today he is running for the presidential nomination, becoming the 14th gop candidate.

you can see him commends at 8:00 eastern today. and here on c-span we're taking an opportunity while congress is on break to show you the programs normally seen only on the weekends. at 8:00 p.m. we'll show you a symposium by william f. buckley. at -- 9:25 p.m. james baldwin and at 10 clan 45 p.m., race in america. the c-span cities tour is partners with cable affiliates as we travel across the united states. join us and cox communications this weekend as we learn about the history and life of omaha nebraska where the poorest club was fighting for racial equality. >> omaha had a reputation in omaha and the united states, whereas a city if you came in,

if you were black, you needed to keep your head down and be aware you weren't served in restaurants and couldn't stay in hotels and when depores started they used the term social justice, that the idea of civil rights was so far removed from the idea of the greater community of omaha or the united states they were kind of operated in a vacuum. i like to say they were operating without a net. there were not the support groups ofrp the prior experiences of other groups to challenge racial discrimination and segregation. >> we look back to the union pacific and how the construction of union station helped omaha's economy. >> union pacific is one of the premier railroad companies of america and founded in 1862 with the pacific railway act signed

into law by abraham lincoln and founded several companies with the pacific and they were charged with connecting the east and the west coast and they started here and central pacific started on the west coast and met up in utah and that is really what propels us even farther, we become that point of moving west the gate -- the one of the gateways to the west. >> see our programs from omaha on c-spans book tv and on cspan3. up next a discussion on the barriers many minorities face in accessing higher education. this discussion from last month hosted by the u.s. commission on civil rights is about 90

minutes. we're back on the record this afternoon for our third panel. and i don't know how many panelists were here earlier but i'll repeat for safe of housekeeping how we're going to keep track of your presentations. each of you will have an opportunity to speak for seven minutes. that will be timed by the series of lights. green is go. yellow means you have two minutes to wrap up and red will ask you to stop to get to the next speaker and have an tount for the commissioners to ask you questions. our first -- i'll introduce our panelists and then swear you all in. our first panelists is mr. neal mcclusky from the cato institute. next is ron haskins from bookings. and next is michelle sick air os and fourth is ann neal from the

american council of trustees and alumni. and i'll ask you to raise your right hand affirm that the information you are about to provide us is true and accurate to your knowledge and belief. is that true. mr. mcclusky. >> thank you -- my name is -- can i start over. thank you for inviting you to speak with me. my neal is kneel mcclusky with the cato institute, my comments are my own and do not represent the institute. >> want to start that by saying while i'm speak being ethnic and racial groups all people are individuals. no sum of any individual is his or her race or ethnicity. i have not done any racial or achievement gaps but am familiar with the gaps. my areas of focus are school choice federal education costs

and education capitals. and african-americans do not necessarily attend college at lower rates than low income white students aleast among thoses who have graduated high schools. report did not look at hispanics. from 1969 to 1997 loss flag students were generally more likely to enroll in college than whites and by the end the whiten rollment exceeded blacks but that said enrollment for african-americans may have been roughly consistent with whites the schools in which blocks have enrolled have tended to be of lower quality. perhaps due to the disparity in completions. low and moderate income blacks appear to complete at lower rates than white students. according to cam burn african-americans are less likely to complete college.

and low cambridge work was con ducked in 1990s. and [ inaudible ] and a national assessment of exam shows shrinking but not disappearing hispanic and nonwhite gaps when scores are broken down by poverty. there are those who scores lag those of other groups. one may be inadequate resources however research suggests this is unlikely to be a major problem due to weak correlation due to spending and outdocks and spending between black and white students have blg largely equalized. out of school factors may be four to eight times due to in school factors for test skoors. perhaps there are culturals to play meanly generally held group values and orientations. one area there is no distinctions is that all believe

that education is very important. but this is not translating to equal employment or completion. for starters, african-american families are more likely to be single parent than the white families making it more difficult tor children to get high quality interaction with adults and producing cog nisive development. this perhaps leads to slavery and jim crow. and this is a sense among african-americans that education is very important but societal structures make it difficult dampening motivation. portraying this nate games from 1997 to 90 to feels of perilous remain however -- and given high-profile cases of possibly

egregious management -- can you hear me now? >> yes. >> let's see -- egregious police misconduct. >> and police police conduct and that could grow. and difference the way parents interact with children and large differences based on ses and the quality of verbal interactions and it also seems that classes interact with children that force the weight of their class rather than pushing kids toward demand analytical thought. that being said to how a child is disciplined to affect out comes to quote unquote patiental classes has some effect and there is some correlation with those likely to produce parental parenting behaviors after ses.

how can we mitigate these problems. [ inaudible ] though this is likely ties to s.e.s. than to race. numerous studies have college going ethos is more likely in schools as well as social networks that more easily enable people to get information about colleges. schools can help. charter and magnet schools can help go to schools based on addresses which are to housing. one of the effects of aid programs to help afford college. in the short run aid makes college for affordable. however logic and imperial evidence show that college raise their prices are not primary a problem of decrease state

appropriations and those are little effect -- public institutions have raid -- raise prices far in excess of state revenue per students and this hits the lowest income students the hardest. merit bases are disproportional to white students even among top academic performers and merit aid enables to rise. what is the track record of federal protests -- and upward bound found very limited benefits and use less than i deal methods and roo fre flect -- amealy airity thsh -- have exacerbated price inflation -- it seems that deficits low income children sl before kindergarten could

ameliorated by head start it does not support this, finding the benefits fade out or not following resieve yents to see if benefits last. there are no easy benefits to easy access since most programs appearin effectual. school choice does so by decreasing top down control for parents to seek out what we need and we need groups to do -- such things to reach out and compare services such as conversation and intensive day care and counseling and the message needs to be loud and clear that success is possible for all. >> mr. haskins. >> good afternoon. thank you so much for inviting me. it is a pleasure to be here and an honor as well. i would like to talk about the disadvantage in american society and why education plays such a crucial control in ameliorating this disadvantage. so first, we start with test

performance. neal has gone over that to some extent but it is really extraordinary, the differences in test performance and word knowledge and so forth begins even before the third year of life but they are clearly evident by age three and if anything the schools increase the gaps during the school years during the k-12 school years so the schools are not helping to close that gap at all. the sec thing, probably the differences in intellectual achievement play a big role and huge differences in house hold income. so that we have huge discrepancies in house hold income. the average white has a $58,000 income and the hispanic $41,000 and the average black $34,600 and that is 34% less household income for where blacks live. hispanic and blacks have 10% of the wealth of whites and it has declined substantially because

of the effects of the recession. the wealth was in their house and many people lost their house. and finally i want to draw your attention to something specially important for the commission and that is the ability of parents to pass their advantages on to their children. so consider the middle of the distribution of parent income the middle 20%, $50,000 to $80,000. for black parents, their kids almost -- only 45% of them finish in the middle or higher whereas 70% of white kids finish higher. it is a huge problem for minority parents to pass their advantages on to their children. so let's focus on the the role of education and the virs disadvantage and i want to begin with the first chart and kind of a complex chart it is worthy of study. and look at the bar graphs.

whose parents were in the bottom quent i'll. the left most bar graph, with kids that did not go to college and the right bar graph of the two on the left are kids that did go to college. as can you see, from the same bottom of the distribution, the kids that achieve a college degree, it changes their whole life course. so look at the bottom. 46% of the kids if they don't go to college will remain in the bottom. this is not equality -- this is not. whereas if they don't go to college, they have only a 10% chance. if they go to college there is only 10% chance of being in the bottom. i've been studying and looking at studies my adult life there are very few impacts of that magnitude. that is a huge impact. there is no question a four year college would make a big difference. there is good news on education. neal already mentioned that the

national assessment of progress, so some closing of the gap between whites and blacks and even to some extent less between whites and hispanics. and as you can see in the next chart, there is a huge change in the growth in minority enrollment in degree and post secondary institutions, starting in 1976 and almost continuous progress for all minority groups and for the minority groups combined. that is good news. but bad news too. and this chart shows from the top, 20%, to the top 20%, first we see the stair step fashion that parents can pass on to their children, the wealthier families, more likely to enroll, more likely to graduate. but look at the rates, the bottom chart that shows the ones that actually graduate.

here you can see the graduation rates as neal mentioned are a huge problem. they enroll but don't graduate. many of the kids wind up with debt and don't get the degree. so this is a big problem that i think you should look at carefully. so there is some good news, but it is mitigated some. now the next chart i want to show you. this is really increasing. i think it is something you should pay attention to. and what this shows is the college enrollment by parents income quartile for kids that have their own achievement the parents income and the kids' achievement test score makes a difference and it is progressive across the income groups. so the top group, even the kids in the bottom third by test scores do better than kids in -- in the next quartile down and so forth. so both parents income and

achievement. and here is another thing. look at the space, in the middle and the top third, between 100% and the level where they are, those are kids that -- that's the right fruit to try to get those kids more likely to go to college. they appear to be prepared and preparation is a big deal. so next chart. student aid, i agree with neal, apparently, that student aid is not the key here. we have a lot of student aid and it has increased dramatically over the last decade and declined recently but student aid is not good. the selection and the application process and the fassa that i'm sure you've heard about and financing is a minor part of the problem and it is still important and the huge dropout rate we need to address. so let me make three points.

the first one is the college prep program that neal mentions. there is a bunch of them. together they spend about a million dollars and they don't look good except for one which is upward bouj -- bound math science. and i've mentioned fassa. it is ridiculous that we have complex form for college age and every kid has to fill it out and it is difficult and parents have a lot of trouble helping them fill it out because many of them haven't been to college so that thing needs to be simplifyied and the administration promised to make it easier and so did the bush administration and i recommend major reforms in the way the states finance. they should make some of the money contingent on the graduation rate, especially for low income kids. if we did that, i guarantee you the colleges would pay more attention to the problem if half

of the money was dependent on helping low income kids chg thank you. miss sick ear os. >> thank you for having me. i'm miss sick air os from the campaign of college student and i also served on the college student aid competition that served $1.8 billion to pell grant kids who need it go to college. you have my report. i was about to speak about the studies we've done in race in california and i'm going to do that and we have a handout on the just released reports for latinos and blacks in our state that i hope you have a chance to reference and review. you know first of all i certainly wouldn't be before you today if it weren't for the fact

that there was federal and state investigate in my college opportunity. i'm the first in my family to go to college. i was able able to do so because i got a federally subsidized loan. i got a grant and work study and all of those made my ability to go to college and earn a degree possibility and that is why i work for the campaign for college opportunity. we were founded but an unlikely alliance of leaders that believed strogtly we needed an outside independent voice to advocate for higher education in our state and for the type of reforms that ron has pointed out in terms of ensuring that we actually not just enroll students in college but get them to graduation. we've played a critical role in advancing policy and using our research to help advance that policy. i'm focused on the economy of california but also what is good for students. sometimes that means we're on the same side of institutions

that serve our students sometimes it means that we're pressuring them to do a much better job than we are at serving our students. your review of this topic is really essential. i would argue that this certainly is a civil rights issue of today. whether or not students have an opportunity to go to college is critical for low income students it is hard tore go to college today than ever before. only 30% of student from low income backgrounds enroll in college compared to 80% of the higher income counterparts. it is more likely a d. or a c. high income student to go to college and graduate than for an a plus honor student that doesn't have high income and that should be shameful in america today. if we're going to retain our position and try to recapture our position as a leader in producing four year degrees we're certainly going to have to address issues of race in our

country as we become more and more diverse. currently latinos represent 17% of americas population. blacks are 13%. asias are 5%. nonhispanic whites are 16%. by by 2044 the nation will be more diverse. demographic proimmigrations show whites are no longer the nation's ethnic group so making sure that college opportunities and attainment is equal across our racial and diverse communities is going to be essential. obviously california is in many ways ahead of the curve in terms of that diversity. we are already a minority miff majority state. one in two kids that are under 18 are latino. and we are also to be commended, i think, for our world renowned university system, university of california, our 23 campus state university and you heard from chancellor white earlier today

and our kpansive commune college system with 112 colleges and a generous financial aid program targeted at students based on need, not merit which unfortunately too many states i believe in the nation focus on. you know our own research as part of the series of papers that were just handed to you on the state of higher education in california actually demonstrate to you, i think, why race analysis still matters. latinos in our research we found, are more -- the good news is more and more are graduating from high school and going to college. as ron mentioned before. but unfortunately they are disproportionately represented at every sector of higher education. so in spite of the expensive california higher education system latinos are not represented in relation to the numbers of population at any of the institutions, whether it is

community college, cal state, for profit colleges or independent colleges or the university of california and you can see in the chart before you do go to college, the majority enroll at a california community college. 65%. for blacks -- i won't go into other findings. for blacks in higher education i just wanted to point out a few things. obviously we've seen improvements over time improved high schoolkool school graduation rate. more students are likely to graduate from high school today in california than they were in 1990. however, there's still a huge gap in terms of graduation rates when compared to other ethnic groups. you also see that black students in our state are slightly overrepresented at california community colleges, similar to latinos. if they go to college, they enroll at a community college. they're overrepresented at for-profit colleges.

significantly underrepresented at the university of california and the cal state system and, in fact, we found in this research report there's been a decline in black enrollment at the cal state system since the recession. some of the concerns obviously are about college preparation. only a third of california students come out of our high schools having completed the a through g course requirements which you need in order to apply to a university of california or cal state system. so right off the bat 70% of latino and black students in our state can't even enroll or apply at the university. so their option is community college. which highlights why the improving outcomes for students at community colleges is so important. some of the findings that you have before you show that completion rates are really dismal. unfortunately, far too low, and this is where most students are going, so much more needs to be done. if federal funding has a stated goal of helping colleges support diverse student populations, my

belief is that funding needs to be allocated in a way that better supports our nation's four-year public university system and holds them accountable for improving outcomes as well. i know that my time is up so i just wanted to highlight a few of the recommendations. we do believe that we have to support enrollment for students but completion is key. we should incentivize we should measure performance by our universities for pell and low income students not just enrolling. we give lots of federal funding for hispanic-serving institutions and historically black colleges and universities. we should make sure that that sufficient funding but also make sure that we hold those colleges accountable for their graduation rates. i agree with our fellow testifiers around simplifying pfaff a, thankfully, somebody walked me through that process when i applied otherwise i certainly wouldn't be before you today. we should expand income contingent loans to make sure

college affordable for students and with that i'll stop. >> thank you. ms. neal? >> thank you mr. chairman, and members of the commission. i must tell you that your topic and the unique opportunity it gives to examine -- do i need to turn something? sorry. let me start again. thank you, mr. chairman, and mens of the commission. i must tell you that your topic and the unique opportunity it gives to examine the civil rights impact of accreditors as gatekeepers for title four funds is inspired and long overdue so thank you. put simply, students need clear information about quality and financial stability to have the best chance for success. most especially those with limited financial means and limited familiarity with higher education. yet the accreditation system fails those students and i will pose an alternative. let's start with a little background. in passing the higher education act nearly 50 years ago, congress lunged accreditation and federal student aid to prevent students from squandering taxpayers' money as

well as their own on diploma mills. it took accreditors who had traditionally provided by voluntary peer review of academic programs and made them gatekeepers of title four. accreditation, in other words, ceased to be a voluntary choice and became a costly mandate since virtually every school in the country depends on title four to survive. the hea provided by thet accreditors would be guarantors of educational quality so it's no wonder that parents and the public and to be blunt, many members of congress, mistakenly believe accreditation is a good housekeeping seal of approval. today nearly 7,000 colleges universities, and professional schools in the united states are accredited so that they can receive title four funds. in the 2012/'13 school year title four amounted to $170 billion. the oecd data show, incidentally, that the united states spends more money per pupil in higher education than any other nation.

yet, accreditation is not a reliable indicator of quality and the so-called good housekeeping seal deceives students and consumers. as professor milton greenberg has written, it's essentially a confidential process which hides an institution's advantages and disadvantages. let me explain. harvard is accredited, yale is accredited. so are amridge university, hodges university, our lady of holy cross college, the university of texas at brownsville and armstrong atlantic. if i am a student at harvard i am nearly 100% likely to graduate in four years. but if i go to amridge university in alabama or hodges university in florida, based on the data from the 2007 cohort i have zero chance of graduating in four years assuming i am a first time full-time student. if i go to our lady of holy cross college, i have a 5% chance of graduating in four years. among african-american students or a quarter of the student body, only 7% of first-time

full-time students graduate within six years. at the university of texas at brownsville where 90% of students are hispanic, only 9% of first-time full-time students graduate within four years. and admittedly there are problems with the graduation rates, they are not perfect but it gives us a snapshot of what is happening. schools with sad stories of performance are accredited and receive title four funds, but students have no way of knowing what they are getting into as they take out loans to pursue their dreams. student debt now exceeds $1 trillion and those most likely to be in debt, heavy debt, are minority students. bottom line -- all students are hurt by accreditation which too often protects institutions that do not provide transparent information and do not deliver good outcomes. but the negative impact is greatest on those students who typically have the most limited financial means and are least familiar with how higher education works.

it isn't just that they don't graduate, it's that they often leave with lots of student debt and few employment prospects. this is morally indefensible and the blame should be placed on colleges and their accreditors. but that is not the end of the story. students are also hurt because accreditation standards often lead to higher costs with very limited benefits. over the years accrediting associations have been quite happy to exhort colleges and universities to advance inputs and spend more money. financial burdens are imposed often with no obvious return. for example, campbell university in north carolina with a 23% minority population was placed on probation some years ago because its standard faculty teaching load was 15 hours per week. the accreditor insisted that 12 hours was the maximum acceptable load so the school solved the problem by consolidating class sections. instead of the relatively small classes students had come to

expect students found themselves in classes of 60 or more. what accreditors do not value is also instructive. accreditors do not assess whether a school is put in place a rigorous core curriculum a prescribed, limited and typically far lest costly set of course requirements that help point the way toward completion. the core curricula at nearly 1,100 institutions across the country, noticeably hbc us do particularly well. morehouse college and clark atlanta are two of only 23 schools to receive active a-rating for their general education programs ensuring exposure to foundational subjects. but do they get special shoutout from the accreditors? no in fact, schools that had diffuse and do it yourself curricula are more likely to be praised. and what does a school do if it's being abused by an accreditor? many hbc us over the years have criticized the interference of creditors. they've raised concerns about

their standards which invariably raised costs. these questions are legitimate. but the fact is institutions in these situations have no place to go. the regional monopoly of accredit or the accreditors gives no choice to institutions if they are being disserviced. just one example recently of how accreditation interferes with innovation. in ohio there is a school all theed tiffen. some years ago, faced with the challenges of the higher ed marketplace they made available online programs for those who could not pay big tuitions and they were able to show proven student learning gains. the accreditor, the higher learning commissioner decided to second guess for-profit partnerships and tiffen was forced to put an end to this online innovation. many students, at least 47% minority with 97% eligible for pell grants were left without an affordable educational option. we need to put an end to the

existing opaque system and create a bert more transparent and less costly way and i'm happy to reports this being done at the state level. most particularly in florida where higher education leaders were frustrated by the opaque system of accreditation and instead put into place an annual accountability report of key metrics. because of this, we know minority students and their families have been empowered more than ever before and i will be happy to talk more about those details. but just way way of example in 2010, the university of florida, which was outlined in this accountability report, proved to be one of four flagship institutions given the highest marks on measures of equity serving low income and minority students by education trust. the bottom line? more money is not the answer, greater accountability is. it's time we eliminated the deeply flawed accreditation system and replaced it with a transparent system of accountability that rewards schools that do right by their

students. thank you so much. >> commissioner actonburg would you like to open up the questioning? >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. haskins from the brookings institution, mr. chairman. >> i'm sorry. >> common mistake. >> the achievement of the baccalaureate degree the key to social and economic mobility. your figures indicate that that is, indeed, the case. do you have any -- how can you explain why that is? >> i think it's both because they actually learn something in college. they make contacts with people that help them later, it's helpful if they have a four year degree when you apply for a job so there are are all those effects. but there's also something that researchers call selection effects and that means that a

kid who as we go to college -- and you saw the data on how many drop out, the ones that finish, it isn't only because they learn more it's because -- there's a whole complex set of features that they have that they stick to it that they work harder when things get tough they stick it out and so forth. so those are selection effects they're not directly measurable or they're certainly not measured, but they do contribute. and so college in that sense is kind of a sorting device. i would point out to you that i think we can see the same thing and increasingly are seeing the same thing with two-year colleges and agrees and apprenticeships and so forth. four-year colleges are not the complete answer, that's for sure. >> no, they're not the complete answer. but we do need to increase in sheer numbers the number of successful graduates of four year institutions do we not?

>> yes absolutely. we certainly do. and not only that, we need to track them figure out what happens. that's been a problem for a long time that we don't have great information about what happens to students when they leave and so a number of institutions are creating the ability to follow students longitudely to figure out if they get a job, what their wages are and so forth. tha('s the kind of thing you would have to do if you implemented the kind of situation i made of making state colleges contingent on their performance. we need to know what their performance is. >> you said as much as half of the aid? >> i'm not -- >> good, i'm glad to know you made that up. >> there's no scientific formula. i think a substantial amount of aid -- how would you feel if all of our spending at the federal and state level would be based on no information about the results. >> i understood. i just wanted to know where the 50% came from. >> i made it up. >> somebody from the brookings

institution 150ez%, itsays 50% -- i mean i'd hate for the governor of california to get that information and think that he could change overnight from a system based on enrollment to a system -- a funding system based upon at least overnight. >> here's my point. it's not 50% but here's the point. organizations that are being held accountable don't like it. so if they realize it's too late, they can't get out of it anymore, they have to do something, they want 5% of the money or 10%. it ought to be substantial. we could start with 5% or 10% but we have to build and make it more accountable understood. i don't disagree with you. missy, i know you are deeply familiar with the practices that work and the practices that don't work when it comes to --

you both are able to assess the performance gaps and you've done a lot of work in terms of assessing what helps and what doesn't help. could you talk -- part of what we are struggling with here is is this an issue that can be addressed successfully? i think the answer to that is yes and i'd like to know what you think the answer is. if you could linda@ if you could delineate some things that are helpful that you've found in your practices that could help with the various forms of achievement gap. >> well, the first thing i would say is data matters. so ron mentioned we do quite a bit of investing and we don't know what the end result is. we don't analyze data in a comprehensive way. so i think what works are institutions that use data in

very proactive ways to change results. you heard earlier from cal state fullerton and they're actually one of the colleges that we profiled because they have a really aggressive agenda around closing the gaps. if you're not analyzing what's happening at your institution by race, how are you ever going to figure out solutions for addressing them. so they're a perfect example of innovation. we also profiled as we released the state of higher ed for black students in california the minority male community college collaborative which is an effort launched by two professors at san diego state university that focuses on actual using research on what works for african-american students and helping to evaluate and assess community colleges to implement practices that can help support come for institutions and they point out a lot of the research is done in terms of what works for students at four-year

universities so i think you need really good data you need leadership at institutions that care about closing the gaps and aren't afraid to talk about how they're going to close the gaps for students by race and you absolutely need incentives that force them to do that so we know cal state has a california graduation initiative that is about closing the gaps i don't see how you change these results without doing that there's obviously the k-12 rule. we have to make sure more high schools are better preparing students. race matters because most of our latino and black student ss in california attend low-performing school. it's not just a cultural phenomenon that latino and black students don't go to college and graduate at higher level. they go to the least best performing school where they have the least-prepared teachers. there are institutional factors that have to be addressed and

those can only be addressed through policy and fund inging. >> i don't know if we undernova scotia in higher education in the absolute sense. maybe we do maybe we don't. but i'm worried that we overinvest in higher education relative to other kinds of investment in human capital. vocational education of various sorts. not everybody wants to go to college. many people prefer other kinds of vocations, other kinds of learn, not every subject is best naught a classroom situation. i am wondering if any of you have any comment on these other kinds of vocational education, other kinds of investment in human capital: are we

underinvesting there? >> i think it's an important point. this can't just be about higher education. there's a lot that happens before that. i think the k-12 part is important. and if you look at a lot of other countries, off much more robust vocational track than we do. so if you don't want to go to a school where you have to take a liberal arts core and maybe you can get your engineering degree or something and you want to do something that we consider vocational and that term has negative connotations but you can do that. there's a danger with that. if you think about germany you took a test and you were tracked into that. we definitely don't want a system where your future is determined for you by a task. we do want one where if you have an interest or ability that takes you away from a traditional college. we see a lot of that within school choice.

there are charter schools now for instance where you can learn everything right down to underwater welding which i don't have any experience with underwater welding but i understand that it's lucrative. you can get lots of valuable skills skills that can't be outsourced and there is something else important in your question which is that we have a lot of money going into higher education that by all indications isn't translating into more learning. there's credential inflation. there's the arms race and amenities and buildings and things like that. so i think it's hard to make the argument that we need more money. maybe we need it better targeted. i think more important is we need to allow people to choose what they think is best for them even before college. >> i agree with all that we need to place emphasis on all kinds of degree programs and this

brings up another interesting topic which is online. there's a lot to be done online and a lot being done. people that qualify for various certificates based on online. this has a real impact on their debt that they carry away and also the programs where you work and get practical experience at the same time. many of these programs start in high school, georgia and wisconsin have ideal programs that start kids in high school. and we have something something like 5,000 career academies across the academy that do the same thing and there's very good high quality research that shows that those kids is the boys that with were in those programs, eight years later, they make $2,000 more and they're more than 20% more likely to live with their children and be married. so these programs and, oh by the way, on the point of does it shut them out of four-year schools? the kids in the career academies

had the same probability of going on the a four-year institution as kids who did not -- similar kids who did not participate in the program. so it doesn't necessarily shet them out. it doesn't close the door. these programs need to be looked into. they should be a part of what the commission focuses on, zblibl my fear is -- i agree, we don't want to follow the german tracking system. that's not the american way. but there are a lot of people who are bored to death in the classroom and would much prefer jobs that are -- you know what we call sometimes disparagingly vocation education. but i don't know why that bias is something we should cater to. >> i have a few questions here. and mr. garros you mentioned that race matters a lot in the this context still and there that there's an overrepresentation, i believe, of -- i think it might have been latino students or maybe it was

minority students in for-profit schools. can you clarify that for me? >> so far black students in california, if you look at the chart in front of you if we analyze the young adult population, 18 to 25-year-olds and we see they're overrepresented in for-profit colleges if that are age group and underrepresented at the four-year universities slightly overrepresented at community colleges, we find that that's significant for black students in particular in our state attend ing attending for-profit colleges. we know there's a regional issue in the inland empire where we have a growing population in our -- it's -- there's only a couple public universities but if you drive down the 10 freeway heading east you will see for-profit colleges up and down. we know that some of the things for-profit colleges do in terms

of pretty intense marketing and outreach and hand hold inging are things that students who are first generation going to college need. i think in some ways they're looking for a kind of direct way to getted trained into a particular job. they're given a particular guidepost for that. so those are some of the practices that community colleges, for example, don't have the resources to necessarily do. those are things that don't work for students who don't have anybody else guiding them a four-year university. we also see high numbers of latino students at for-profit colleges, too. it's a common thing. >> and yesterday during our panels it was brought up that many of these for-profit schools end up with large amounts of students that end up not completing with substantial debt and some of these schools target those students for the purpose of obtaining some of that

financial aid and some of them who may complete the work find that they're -- their education is not what they thought it was or they couldn't -- they can't transfer it over because the credentials can't transfer. >> this is what's disturbing. you have essentially for-profit colleges and university, some of which are actually good performers, so i don't want to make a blanket statement. but some of which really do target enrollment because they're completely publicly funded. so the idea that they're private institutions is really concerning. when they rely on students that are low income that will qualify for pell, that will qualify for cal grant, that qualify for these federal subsidized loans or private loans. and so if -- i think there should be a federal expectation if these institutions are receiving federal money that they have some skin in the game

and if they are being funded entirely through federal and state dollars, they don't have any skin in the game in terms of producing better outcomes for some students. we find that disturbing. as a member of the california student aid commission, we instituted the legislature and the governor passed a new rule around limiting cal grants to institutions that had a high cohort, you know, loan default rate for their students, naent ameant that a lot of their students had graduated or not but were not able to pay their loans and had a very high or a very low six-year graduation rate. so there are mechanisms by which we can put minimum requirements. this was done in california in response to the recession and the fact that there are limited dollars until you have to pick and choose how you disperse them. in actuality, it's good practice and it's why corinthian in

particular has been so affected, because many of those colleges in our state were kicked out of receiving cal grants. again, if they're receiving public dollars and that's their only mechanism by which they survive, we should be a little bit concerned. >> i just want to add to that. i certain l i would agree that all for profits are not superb, but i think it would be unfair to single them out for single-digit graduation rates. as i indicated in my testimony we're looking at many, many nonprofits with single-digit graduation rates. so the issue one across the board and i think it would be wrong to single out one sector for that problem. >> thank you. >> i have one quick thing. if you look at these different sectors, there does seem to be a correlation between their outcomes and who they're serving and a lot of this appears to have a lot to do with the

preparation the people who attend those schools before they ever get to college. so there are plenty of atrocious for-profit schools but like anne said, if you look at community colleges, they have terrible outcomes and there seems to be a connection between the preparation of the students who go there. that's why this is also a k-12 problem to a very large extent. often through aid we're giving people money to go to college who may not be prepared for it. you see this in huge remediation rates and people remediated are much less likely to finish. so that's something that has to be focused on when we're talking about higher ed is what's going really from birth to high school graduation. >> to be sure, there's no perfect players in this entire system. but my recollection from yesterday's testimony was that in terms of students who have defaults on their loans i think it's well overrepresented students coming from the for-profit universities, i think it was something like 47% of all the defaults if my memory serves

correctly. so clearly there's something happening there as it relates to these funding issues that merits a little closer attention. but, of course, not everyone should be painted with the same brush, missy garros? >> i don't disagree that preparation and k-12 matters, but colleges should be serving the students they have, not the ones they wish they had. and so i think it gets to the question of if you have students that are coming in less prepared, what are you doing as an institution to better provide service to them? and we know that there are institutions and community colleges that are addressing remediation in a way that's very effective. so i just would push back a little bit that it can't just be blame k-12. there is a responsibility for institutions as they serve students. >> mr. haskins of brookings institution. i had a question about one of the charts that you showed us. i think it was chart number

three which shows that latino -- that latino college attendance now exceeds the african-american college attendance and earlier today we had testimony from professor flores who indicate that some of this may be just pure demographics. that is the growing population of latinos means that naturally there are going to be more that are represented in the pipeline to college, not necessarily that we've come up with a magic program that has somehow put more latinos on the path to college. is that -- do you have any opinion on that and how that might be represented in your chart? >> it could be true. i'm not positive. but my charts are percentages so i don't think it should -- it isn't just the numbers it's the percent that has been coming up. percent of enrollment. so that does indicate that all of the things equal hispanics are, in fact more likely -- their rate of increase and being

in college is greater than for blacks. >> and do you have any opinion as to why that might be? >> i have opinions about it. there's some research about it. i think family background makes a big difference. i think the quality of high school makes a big difference. i think -- one thing that's happened in the hispanic community apparently especially talk to people in chicago about this and they've written about it, too, i can give you some references and that is that there's been a change within the family. many hispanic families at least in chicago and other places that i've heard of, don't necessarily pressure their kids to go to school. they want them to earn money and contribute to the family. they were actually a force that kept some kids from going to school. and that appears to be changing a lot. that parents come to realize how important college is. of course they want what's best for their kids so the views of parents are changing. i think that could be another factor that's contributing to this issue as well.

>> i can attest to that. i'm from chicago and i think it's something that was not just in chicago but a lot of immigrant latino families in particular would encourage their children when the family needed it to step out of school and help the family and we've i think in the latino community made an overwhelming effort to try to educate our parents about that. it's still a challenge, but i think it's certainly more folks talking about that issue. >> but i do think that's a factor in why the percentage of hispanics that are going to college is increasing more rapidly than for blacks. >> madam vice chair do you have some questions? >> we were talking just -- thank you, mr. chairman. we were talking just a moment ago about default rates and for-profit colleges and universities. our recollection is that there are certain limits or guidelines placed on our public colleges and universities where if they reach a certain default rate

there are penalties attached to include loss of government monies. are our for-profit colleges and universities subject to the same default rates? the same kind of penalties? i seem to recall that they are not. >> in california the rule ss do apply across the board. there is -- so in california they do. in terms of federal policy i'm not quite sure. >> that's what i was inquiring about, federal policy. >> i could be wrong but i'm pretty sure it's the same for all schools. they've been changing how they calculate the cohort default rate, whether it's two years to three years but i think it's the same regardless, as long as you're taking title four money. where there may be a difference i'd have to look but there is a question about how you

incorporate g.i. bill money. that hasn't been counted in some ways toward for profit schools. i don't think it's connected to the default rate and if i'm correct in that, there's no difference to my knowledge. >> this doesn't go to the default rate but i can say within the accreditation system the for profits have been held to certain baseline requirements that the nonprofits have not. so that at least in terms of certain basic requirements it's a higher level of expectation of the for-profits. in terms of graduation rates and natural outcomes than of nonprofits where it really has been up for grabs as to what was acceptable and what was not. in fact, accreditors have no baseline of graduation rates for instance that mean yes you get money or no you don't. there are baselines for for-profits. >> thank you. >> commissioner? >> thank you so mr. haskins has

just advised their that their recommendations at brookings is to take trio and programs like that, to reform them and perhaps create a more general flexible grant program to provide that kind of support and i was wondering whether you also -- what's your response to that recommendation? >> so, quite frankly, i haven't analyzed a lot of those programs myself. my concern with that recommendation would be that in many instances it's those programs that have really high graduation rates for underrepresented students and so i think more research would be needed before i could feel comfortable. i do think that we have to get to a place where resources reach more students. some of the challenges are that those programs only reach a small number of students.

and we need to get to a place as we have a student body that actually where the majority now is first generation all of the students could benefit from those kinds of services that when they're a trio or mesa provide is how do we scale that kind of intervention? and we know that there's limits, right? especially some of the programs are really high-touch, you can only do with a small cohort of 50 people in order to be effective. i think one of the things that provost cruz at cal state fullerton, said that what they do is use the data to identify the programs that are very effective at closing gaps and serving students and that can be scalable. and i think that is the direction we need to move in. because there may be some of those programs that are effective but not scalable. what we do need is scale. we need more students to be able to access some of the benefits that these programs provide. >> i just have one more question. so --

>> can i clarify one thing, please? >> did i mischaracterize what you wrote? >> no, no it's not a brookings recommendation. >> sorry. >> it's my own recommendations may bed on-- based on research. >> okay thank you. so the other question i have is i got the impression from the most recent testimonile from this panel at least some people believe that we're spending enough on higher education support. you testify in your written testimony that we at least need to consider spending more on pell grants and making them more available throughout the year to help people who go to summer school and are sort of the more non-traditional students. i'm wondering what your view is about whether we're spending enough on financial aid and where you would put it if we were to try to either reorganize what we're spending or try to

spend more. >> that's a really tough question. i don't believe we're spending enough. the research is pretty clear that the pell grant, while it's obviously grown in size and in terms of cost for the federal government because our population growth is -- has increased, has not kept pace with the cost of getting a college education. the research indicates that it's harder today for low income students to go to school full time, when they do go to school many of them have to work so making summer pell available again would obviously better support those resources. in california it's clear we're not spending enough on higher education. you know, there's a huge wage premium for folks today that's very different from what it was in the '60s or '70s when these programs were instituted. so before you could get a high school degree and that was enough to put you into

middle-class life and get a job that you could sustain over a career, that could afford you a house. that's simply not the case today. we know that whether it's a vocational degree or a four-year degree that's what makes the difference in students' abilities today to get into the middle-class so if we care about sort of growing our middle-class i don't see how you can do it without investing more. especially in getting more low income students to be able to afford to go to college full time. i don't know what the magic number is. i think making pell year round is a good first step. simplifying pfaff a so that more eligible students actually apply and get the financial aid they're already entitled to a second step. those would be the more immediate recommendations. >> and i had one more add on to that. so mr. haskins' slide show that there's actually a decrease in work study if i read the slide

correctly? so i'm wondering if that's a concern that we're actually spending less on work study? a prior panel had noted that they felt that the chancellor noted that he felt one of the most important things was to address fact that we don't have the traditional old-fashioned kids 18 years old just out of high school going to college but now we have older students with families who do need to work and so one of the biggest challenges for successful getting to a degree is can you stay in college if you're working full time even if you're getting your tuition taken care of. >> i think work study is critical. research indicates the longer a student is on a campus the more likely they're going to feel like they belong. the more likely they're going to succeed and get to graduation and work study helps to do that. i think part of it is certainly

federal funding. the other part is northeastern university is a good example of a public/private partnership where they actually have students that start working, because they're going to work, so they're going to school part time and they're working part time in their chosen field. so it's not like having a job at the gap. it's having a job as an intern in an engineering company where that company actually covers some of the cost so i would just say that you know it may absolutely be increasing federal funding but also how do we increase public/private partnerships that want good quality interns that they can then potentially grow in their leadership and address the fact that students do need to work? is it better to have them working in their field or working on campus? yes. >> thank you. >> commissioner? >> thank you, mr. chairman, thanks the panelists. this has been very informative, as have the other panels.

a couple of questions. we've been talking a lot about funding throughout all the panels and as i mentioned in previous panels, i was troubled by a number of slides i saw that showed we're pending sprls of dollars, have spent trillions of dollars with marginal effect. as i mentioned before,'m particularly troubled by over a 23 year period the gap between black and white achievement had only narrowed by two points. there could be a lot of reasons for that but i would hope if you spend several hundred billions of dollars on trying to narrow the gap it would narrow more than two points and that we wouldn't have to wait more than 300 years for that gap to completely erase if we go by today's measurements, it would take more than 300 years. i'm fine because it's not my money, at least not directly, if we want to spend more money on something but i'd hope we would do so smartly. i was struck by the fact that there are really no measurements, no transparency, no accountability standards yet

we're going to give more money to demonstrably failed programs. it's not doing anything. it may be happy talk but it doesn't seem to be closing any gaps. if you were to suggest a policy prescription for narrowing achievement gaps, increasing college access persistent and obtainability, would it be to a, increase funding or increase transparency or accountability standards? which one of those is the most effective of those three? >> why don't you do all three? >> you know, given the fact that -- money is is something. we've got all kinds of money but the chinese government's money, frankly, it's not our money, we don't have any money. so i'd like to know how'd we get this stuff done the smartest way?

i'm interested in outcome ss more than inputs. miss neal? >> i want to certainly agree with you on that. as i indicated earlier, we're spending two times per student average of any other industrialized country with worse results. we're looking at four-year graduation rates that hover around 40%. so rather than looking at this as a problem that needs more federal dollars, we need to be looking at ways of holding the institutions accountable. we've heard more skin in the game. i think that's an important issue. these institutions need to have more skin in if game and we need to credit those that are succeeding and not credit those that are not. but students won't know the difference between a school that is doing well and having student learning gains and schools that aren't having learning gains and i think this is where we need to improve the existing accreditation system which rewards schools no matter how they do. if they're doing 90% graduation

versus 5% they still get title four. this is why i think we need to move to a basically a transparency system which would allow institutions to show they're financially stable, would require them to show certain key metrics of performance and last but not least would insist that in order to get title four money they would have to show student learning gains because at the end of the day it's not simply a question of giving someone a degree or a piece of paper it's showing that students have gained value with the money they have spent. and study after study, whether we look at academically adrift or the national assessment of adult literalsy. we're showing the vast percentage of college graduates are emerging after spending lots of money many of them in debt, without the skills that are needed to be effective in the workplace. so the system is skewed in favor of access and not in favor of student success once they are

there. there. >> i agree with everything she said and she didn't exactly say this, but accountability i think is key. we're going to have problems with money. we haven't talked about it here but i do a lot of work onle from debt and deficit and we've already started cutting spending on children's programs in the last two years which we had not done for the previous 30 years so there's a real issue of how much money the federal government will spend and the states are even more financially strapped. so what we have to learn to do is to do better with what we have now and accountability is definitely the answer. so we need accountability in k-12 schools, we need accountability in community colleges we need accountability at university and two of the three recommendationsry made you were basically accountability recommendations. i think it's very important that we spend about a billion dollars now for example on these college

prep programs that are supposed to be focused on low-income kids and there are very good research studies that show they produce modest or no impacts with some exceptions. so why wouldn't we make it more demanding, force them to evaluate as a condition of their getting the money, they have to do do good studies to show they're producing impacts and if they're not give the money to something else. >> what should be the metrics in that evaluation? in that accountability? would it be not just a diploma but, say five year income rates or something of that -- looking at a longitudinal study of what does the person do with that diploma? >> i think a high school graduation would be the least desirable but nonetheless a good measure. college entry is a good measure. college completion is a much better measure and did they get a job when they graduated and what is their wage would be the west of all. >> i'm going to say funding is absolutely not the answer. more funding is not the answer. we spend more on education all

levels than almost any other country. lux luxembourg, maybe within other. what we've seen the funding translate into is largely a lot of waste. i know it's cherry picking to say look at the water parks that are springing up in college and universities, many of these public colleges and universities. there's a reason for that. what we've seen research evidence that shows what most people do when they're choosing between colleges now is they don't choose based on academics but amenities. a lot of this is because we're using third-party funding to pay for it. partially it's grants. it's much big err problem of loans, loans you can get very easily at any amount from the federal government. the same at the k-12 level. we spend a lot of money and we haven't seen any real correlation in improving outcomes as a result of it. i always worry about

accountability because accountability sounds good but we need to look at something like what we've seen with no child left behind which was supposed to be about accountability. what we found, though, is people who would be held accountable are pretty good at finding ways out of being held accountable. so no child left behind said well you'll have all kids proficient by 2014. and what did states do? in most cases they had a definition of proficiency which was incredibly low. so we have to be realistic about how much the -- an accountability system might lead to. >> you can't fudge -- or maybe you can, i guess you can fudge anything, as mr. haskins was talking about. if you look at five years out from a period of time when somebody graduates, if he's got a job making $50,000 a year you know that that's a metric you can look to as opposed to another college where only 30% of their students five years out have a job of $50,000 a year or more. >> i can already tell you one problem with that. then you have to adjust for the

situation of those people who when they went to those schools because there will be schools that deal with students who are less well prepared then we've put into the law well, if your students are less well prepared you don't to earn as much. then you start to see loopholes and things working their way into regulation so that's what we've seen repeatedly. >> would some transparency -- would that assist in terms of if you provide students, parents, with all the information you can, a number of metrics, that would establish -- there's no perfect metric right? and you can fudge almost anything. but if you have a number of metric, give them information about which institution do you want too go to? inject competitiveness in the process so college a competes against college b and knows "i have to be better than these guys." >> and i think that intuitively that would work. the problem is we see lots of data already available for colleges. nobody likes the "u.s. news and world report" evaluations but they do tell you stuff like

graduation rates and cost per student and things like that. the federal government has had the college navigator now for several years what we've seen is people tend to not use a lot of the information we make available. i think part of that problem is we want to do good with aid but part of what aid does is make this decision, we will pay for your decision and it's not necessarily your money or money you have right now that is part of that. i think part of the solution is counterintuitive but actually people selecting schools need to have more of their own money involved rather than third party funding because that incentivizes making more disciplined decisions. and that's actual accountability and especially when people are using their own money and they hold a school accountable and that school isn't giving them what they want. >> i'm going to move on because now i have three other commissioners that want to ask questions and we're getting close to the end.

>> thank you, mr. chairman. >> you're welcome. >> it seems from all the testimony i've heard that everyone has a different dog in the fight here. all focused toward the same solution and it seems to me that all these different school, colleges community colleges we've even talked a little bit about k-12 all have issues but i think they have the same issues or are they all different issues toward a accomplishing a goal of getting more students and minority student ss through higher education? i'd like to hear some priorities and programs that you propose and whether you believe that to be a correct statement that different schools face different problems and how are you going to evaluate them like the commissioner who's spoken and

how -- i mean, it seems like a very sprawling problem here. very unwieldy situation from all the testimony. so i was wondering if we could get some commentary more focused on the solutions besides just accountability. how do you go about that? >> going back again to my suggestion that we allow title four money to flow to schools that are showing that they are having success with students by showing student learning gains. why is this a good solution? it's not a one size fits all sort of exam. in other words, these national tests such as cap or proficiency profile take the students where they are and determine whether or not they are at or above predicted learning gains for those cohorts. so it's a wonderful way for a school to establish that it is doing a very good job with certain parts -- certain

demographics in the population. so we need to go to a system that will reward and showcase institutions that are transparent in terms of their financial stability and the fact that they are actually providing value to students because if the students are leaving with student learning gains, that presumably is going to be a helpful predictor they will succeed once they get out of the institution. institution. >> so the schools would compete individually to show these different things and go about in the different ways? >> well, what i'm proposing is we move away from the accreditation system which is very opaque and basically which has money flowing to every institution regardless of its performance because as i indicated we're seeing single-digit graduation rates schools receiving title four funding. i'd like do see a system where title four flows directly to institutions that show they are providing education to students and that students are graduating at or above predicted learning

gains after they've attended these institutions. that way we can highlight the schools that are successful at whatever price and show those who are affected, the students who are looking to find schools that are doing well with their particular cohorts that they will have data enough to make an informed decision which they can't make under the current system. >> anyone else on the panel? >> i would like to endorse the idea and defend the idea that we have to measure what we want to do. process measures are almost always a mistake. we need to specify the outcomes we want and pay for those. that has to at least be part of an accountability system. and we can measure these things. we have all kinds of good statistical techniques to adjust for where the students started so it doesn't throw the whole system off because some school specializes in kids who graduated in the top third of their class and other schools specialize in kids who may be around the middle or below the middle. we can adjust for that. we can compare institutions that

have those rates and that there are -- funding would be based on starting with low-income kids. there's lots of things we can do. accountability has got to be part of the system and it has to be based on outcomes not processes processes. >> i guess my job is to throw a wrench in ideas. you still have problems though. think about -- we talked about controlling for the -- who your student population is. when you get to college you also run into very big problems. what is it you want to measure? do you measure what every student knows when they leave that college? do you measure it by the program you're in so you have a set exam for all engineering students all english majors, all accounting majors? is it supposed to be a measure like we've seen typically used in critical thinking? what does it mean to be critical thinking? i say these things to point out

that using the term accountability is certainly intuitively significant. it's something we want to have. we want to have accountability so we've seen repeatedly that operationalizing accountability becomes a difficult thing because we're talking about fine-grain decisions ultimately that are made by lots of individuals. >> it is a fine-grain thing and there are problems but we're getting better all the time and if we continue doing it we'll get better and better. and where are we without account snblt that's the counter question. >> well how will the colleges and universities accept your form of accountability? >> when you control the purse springs you can make them dance to your tune. the federal government certainly has the right and so does state governments to say if you want our money you have to meet these criteria. that's not very difficult. the federal government does it all the time. i agree that we shouldn't let the perfect by the enemy of the good. we also might take some examples

from what's happening in the states, and i don't know the details to a great degree but i believe in wyoming and massachusetts they have a setup where students take a particular test and based on how they are assessed in terms of college readiness it will give them access to a community college access to a four year. so it's actually calibrated and a more nuanced system so if someone needs, for example more remediation, that student then gets state aid to go into the community college, which is much cheaper way to deliver remediation and ultimately can succeed there and move into the four years. so it's a graded system designed to take students where they are not push them ahead to a four-year school but give them access to college post secondary education at a level where they can more likely succeed and continue to move up in they do so. >> i want to move on to

commissioner actonburg and the vice chairman. >> i'd like to take us back to where we started. if the achievement of the baccalaureate degree from an accredited university is the goal -- is one of the goals. i'm not saying certificates that lead to middle income jobs and the resurgence in advanced manufacturing that we also want to be promoting and all -- there's a lot of other good things going on and technical training of all kinds could make us more -- could make some students who choose to pursue that much more employable with skills that are translatable and

career paths that are pursuable and all of that is absolutely true and this is not meant to suggest everyone should go to college or only the four-year on. it happens to be what this hearing is focused on and trying to figure out whether or not the federal investment that is being made could be made better by focusing on practices that work in institutions that have shown by virtue of enrollment, persistence and current graduation rates. that they have an inclination. some level of expertise and a commitment to graduating students in general. and specifically to addressing some of the gaps in attainment

that we see in particular communities, which, of course, that being the particular issue of concern to the united states commission on civil rights. having said that all of these other things are of concern and, you know, certainly are truly the case, with regard to that particular issue, if there were to be reformulation -- reallocation of existing dollars to some extent -- we're not talking about more money. let's talk about how we might spend the current assessment better to achieve the outcome of more degrees in general, as you said. we need that. and we also need more

achievement in underachieving communities. we need both those things. that's my proposition. to the extent that we need both those things and we had the opportunity to reallocate existing dollars. mr. haskins, what would you focus those dollars on? you've said we have accountability. and i don't disagree that we shouldn't be paying for things we're not getting or conversely we want to pay, we'd even be willing to pay more if we were getting the thing that we wanted, right? i mean, so -- accountability is extremely important, focusing on outcomes, i agree with that, as well. not so much inputs, but who's achieving the goal. what other things might that money be focused on.

to get better outcomes. >> i have a simple answer. it's already been given. one of my recommendations would be states should be -- the money they give to schools on performance. and performance should be graduation rates and employment and wages. those are the main outcomes that we're looking for. and the system would be skewed so that if you could do that, achieve those ends, graduation rates, employment, and wages with kids from low-income families that you would get some kind of extra credit. you would get extra money of some sort. that's the way i would do it. >> thank you. >> i think the answer to your question is, yes, the federal investment in higher education in this country can help address these issues of producing more graduates, if that's a defined goal. you know the investment has multiple goals, right?

so i think probably the first step is do we get commonality around, do we have a common goal that increasing baccalaureate attainment is important? that closing the gaps and not doing it in 300 years is important amongst our diverse populations. and ensuring that everyone regardless of income status has access to a higher education is important. if the answer to those three questions is yes, then, the investments could be targeted in a way that we ask the next question, which is how do we scale? because we could invest and continue to invest a lot of resources in private institutions that have good results but aren't necessarily scaleable. or we could focus more of our resources on comprehensive universities that will have greater scale in terms of

producing graduates that we need. and going back to your question, commissioner, around what's most important. i think all three of those things are important, but certainly having transparency so you can have accountability around the outcomes that you want with your resources is clearly important. and i would just add to what mr. haskins has said is that you do have to be thoughtful about what that accountability looks like. but i don't think it's too much to say that every institution that gets federal resources should be demanded to improve their graduation rates and close their gaps at their institutions. and do a better job than they did the year before. but until we articulate that as a goal and hold the pursestring to achieve that, i'm not sure that's going to happen. >> thank you. >> madame vice chair, you have the last question. >> thank you. thank you very much, mr. chair. this is for mr. mcclusky and mr.

haskins. i've been following the arguments that we've been hearing regarding outcomes and accountability. at one point, it seemed you were saying that you would measure success by graduation, jobs, wages and then you went on to put a value, i think you threw out $50,000. in terms of income. and i guess what i found myself thinking is that when we're talking about educating in an educated citizenry, must we put an income, a wage value on it? understanding, of course, there are many occupations and roles and services that our states and our federal government needs

that there's just not a real big value income placed on it. you weren't saying that there's not success if you fail to make after attending college in graduating "x" number of dollars, did you? >> i don't think -- oh, sorry. i don't think i was the one that said it. i was the one saying be no measures bah i don't want accountability. i do want accountability. but it does bring up an important point. we're not actually -- doesn't seem to be agreement about what the outcome should be. should it be graduation rates, should it be what you earn as you get older? but one of the things that concerns me is in the state of florida, a year or two ago, the governor said, you know, should we really be spending money to produce anthropologists? >> and that's the reason i asked that question. that same argument has been made by some of our leaders in the state of north carolina. a liberal arts education isn't worth anything.

>> and that concerns me. i don't think a lot of education is something you necessarily monetize. buhat we spend a gigantic amount of money on higher education. we don't seem to be getting anything like commensurate outcome. but this is why i think, and this becomes counterintuitive. a lot of the problem is, we have a lot of money that comes from somebody other than the student when they consume education. they may decide, i'll study anthropology for four years because it doesn't seem to be costing me and maybe i want to do four years of college. there's a balance there, but i don't want to go to a system where you essentially have a bureaucracy say if you don't earn $50,000 within three years of graduating, there was something wrong with your education. >> can i just add a quick point? you know, i -- i'm all for institutions and students having skin in the game, but one could

make the opposite argument that high-income students don't have any skin in the game when their parents fund their college education. and i don't think anybody would object to having parents fund their education. i think we need to be careful we're not putting additional barriers for low-income folks that really shouldn't have to put anything in. because if your family is barely surviving on $16,000 a year, why should you have to put anything into your college education? >> okay. well, that concludes this panel. thank you, everyone. we appreciate it. we're going to take a few minute break until 2:45. then we'll come back on the record with the final panel of the day. thank you. new jersey governor chris

christie announces he's running for the republican presidential nomination becoming the 14th gop candidate. you can see his comments at 8:00 eastern today. here on c span 3 we're taking the opportunity while congress is on break to show you some of the american history tv programs that are seen on the weekends. at 8:00 eastern will show you william f buckley. at 9:25 the discussion of james baldwin's significance in american political thought. at 10:45 p.m. eastern, princeton university eddy glod on race in america. we return to the conversation of what minorities face to get into college. this hour long panel looks into the pell grant program and other campus programs.