model. >> thank you for the question. our understanding was that we were, in some sense, beholden to more of an agricultural calendar on the ak academic year. we ask the question, is there another way to conceptualize the academic calendar, and we did. the basics of the program is simply this -- each semester is divided into two eight-week sessions with a extended weekend break between them. that is repeated both in the fall semester and the spring semester:

there is a lot of stop and go traffic that happens in the classroom. you teach them -- there's a long weekend, and you come back and you're hooking up to the previous time and you're moving forward. this reduces some of that, and we have learned from students that once they adjust to the pace of it, they're intrigued

with and seem to prefer narrow the focus of three instead of five scattered over a long period of time. >> that's an interesting response to my question, and i'll close by saying, is it possible that those taking that program, that three-year program, that they could work some number of hours per week of, say, 10, 15, 20 hours, is that possible? >> i think it is, if they chose to. another element of that three-year degree option is we require, of all students, 12 hours of applied learning. that is, they must participate, and an actual real-world situation to test the value of what they're getting in the classroom, how they're progressing, and we do that to advance their employeeability, and there's some other elements too. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you, madam chairman,

and thank you for holding this hearing. i think this is a really very timely and very important, and thank you all the witnesses for being here. i am thinking about this, and the revenues that come in. the one thing that wasn't mentioned, and i know that colleges really try and keep their alumni involved by participating in the fundraising that the universities and colleges do. maybe mr. foster, you could speak to that. we've seen a reduction in the appropriations from the state and federal. has there been a decrease in giving by alumni or others to the universities? >> well, as you identified, those reductions in state

support and one way that we can try to make that up is, in fact, with dinner and alumni. while the dollar amount per gift has declined, the number of gifts have increased. so we have a broader pool, although they're giving less intensely. and so, it helps. it's not the entire solution. it's like any problem you have, you look around and try to find as many possible contributors to solving that problem, and that's certainly one of them. >> thank you. there's thought to be a view that in higher education that institutions like to keep up with the joneses and the other universities. i took a tour of one of the universities in my state of illinois. it was great. the one thing that i noticed was this huge building that was just being built, and it was beautiful, huge. i asked what it was, and they said, oh, that's the fitness

center. now, i'm very -- this is very important to me, and i will silt only state that even has p.e. every day for k-12. so, fitness is very important. but in this time of -- and i asked, well, why are they building this? they said, because we need to have that to get the students to come to the university. how can we make sure that the colleges provide the things that are necessary for kids? but is this something that's done to really keep up with other universities, the competition? >> it's a good question. i don't have a great answer. i think that many institutions face a double-edged sword in this environment. it's a very competitive environment. they're looking more and more to students as a consumer. they need to get the students who have the money to pay, and the students who have the money

to pay want those facilities. they say they need to have it in order to compete in the market they're in. i think that the competition for amenities rather than for academics, putting the money is going up in athletics, more than it's going up in athletics. it's going up in dorms, not in student support. i think it's the nature of the consumer reality, though, that those kinds of immediate, palpable benefits are ones that students seem to want to have. i think it's a tension that could easily be resolved. >> thank you. i co-chair the house financial and economic literacy caucus, and we've had this for years and years. i think that it's really important that it's critical for information like this be available to students and their parents. and mr. foster, given your

close interaction with students, how many of this responsibility should fall on students to be informed consumers, and are they when they are coming to the school, and is there more that students and parents can do as consumers to help increase the competition among institutions of higher education so that they're picking the school that really fits their financial needs? >> well, i would say a lot of responsibility falls on our shoulders in terms of making sure that information is available to them, and we really look at a good match with the student is critical for us. you know, not having them retain and finish at colorado mesa university is kind of a personal front to us. and i would tell you, increasingly -- and you can probably go back to 9/11, that all of a sudden, i think you saw a change in terms of family, parents, and students, and nontraditional behavior in

terms of their inquiry and pursuit of information relative to, if i come, will my son or daughter finish? what's the total cost of attendance? we emphasize to them total cost of attendance, because they always want to whittle it down and assure themselves that they'll be able to afford it. we try to say don't do that, because you've got to be prepared for this cost. mind you, our cost is significantly less than a lot of the institutions that we've talked about. but it's a two-way street, i guess, would be my answer to you. and i think it's a place state agencies can play a big role in terms of -- when i was at the department of higher ed, we really transitioned away from the regulatory role to being more -- and published a consumer guide and found that people in colorado had more faith in that, because it was a third-party, objective listing of cost expenses, grad base rates, retention rates, and then you can evaluate for yourself which school you want to go to. >> thank you. i yield back. >> mr. bishop? >> thank you very much, madam

chair, and thank you very much for having this hearing. i think it's a very important topic, and i think our witnesses have provided us with very helpful testimony and very enlightening testimony. i just wanted to start, you made reference in response to the question to shifting eligibility for federal assistance based on a student's academic major. i'm not aware of any eligibility standard the federal government maintains that differs for any of the title four programs based on a student's major. am i missing something? >> let me get you additional information. i'm just the president, so we're the least informed. but as we talked about in preparation of this hearing, we talked about the fact, if, in fact, i take -- if i'm taking biology, for example, it's a biology major, and i fail that

course, then, in fact, that puts in doubt my understanding, my eligibility for federal financial aid. if i'm not a biology major, i'm a political science major, i fail that -- >> i'm going to respectfully disagree with the advice you've gotten. the eligibility for federal aid on the federal level to the best i know -- and i administered student financial aid programs for a number of years before i came here -- is it's rooted exclusively in information provided on the facet which is subject to so-called uniform methodology, which spits out a bottom line called the expected family contribution, which, by the way, is not perfect. but i think it's the best system we have. if you do learn of something, i think we would -- i at least would like to know about it, and i thank you. thank you for your testimony. i just want to be clear. you have found that the

principal driver of increased student tuition is cost shifting, that is to say, reduced state appropriations for publicly supported colleges and for all colleges reduced income from endowment and so on. is that correct? >> yes, in the public sector in particular, there's a little bit more evidence of increased spending, driving tuition among some private, but not all private -- >> when you say some private with increased spending driving tuition, is that more localized in what we might refer to as the elite private? >> actually not. it's the institutions is that don't have the endowments -- >> that are trying to keep up? >> that's right. >> so they're trying to increase quality, but at the same time maintaining affordability? >> that's right. >> one of the things that we hear frequently is that -- and there's a very forceful proponent of this notion that i'm about to suggest, a man

named richard vetter who we hear frequently tell us that the reason costs are increasing is that federal student aid is increasing, and because federal student aid is increasing, that gives college administers the license to raise costs beyond what they normally would. does your data give you any evidence that's true? >> no. >> thank you. i appreciate that. doctor dr. manahan, i administered a small college that was particularly good at being not for profit, and i wanted to -- i wanted to commend you for your efforts, and i really think they're very good and very innovative, but i wanted to quickly -- a little over $10 million of institutional aid that you administration, what proportion of tuition revenue does that represent? in other words, what's your discount rate? >> it is about 40% to 41% t. >> so, if you will, your growth

sales are 100%, and your net sales are roughly 60%, is that right? and is that -- does that represent discounted tuition or represent income from endowment and philanthropy? >> it is almost entirely from tuition. >> ok, so you discount tuition to that extent. do you have any sense of where that places you among comparable institutions? when i left new york state, the average discount rate was somewhere in the low 30's. that was nine years ago. do you have any sense of where that puts you? >> yes, i do. there are a few discount rates, over 50%. we certainly are not there. depending on endowment levels, if you think of comparable endowment, you might find some in the upper 30's. but we have worked religiously to move that to this level and

find an operational path to succeed on at that point. >> and is the $10 millian principally need-based or a combination of need and measure knit >> it's a combination of need and merit, but given the nature of the students we serve, families from which they come -- >> the merit would have been justified by need anyway? all right, thank you very much. madam chair? >> thank you. >> thank you. thank you all for your testimony today. student aid and the cost of post-secondary education is personal to me on two levels, one being 23 1/2 years since i graduated medical school and still paying what i affectionately call my second mortgage, and the fact that my daughter's a recent graduate from unlv and her deferment period is about to end. i'm intrigued by both these comments and dr. manah's training to success as opposed

to time. after spending 21 years in the military, if there's one thing we're experts at, it's training to time and not to standard. we're the foremost experts at cramming 30 minutes of information into two hours. of all the areas that we talked about driving cost, two questions. do you believe anybody that there's an increased cost due to duplicity amongst programs in state systems of higher educations? i can tell thaw, in my state, nevada, we went through a period where community colleges decided to offer four-year degrees. the state college decided to get into advanced degrees, and the competition that causes with the four-year academic research universities. and secondly, is there an increased cost due to the need to perhaps provide remedial course work for matriculating freshmen, and is that due to the fracturing of the k-12 and post-secondary approach as opposed to a p-16 approach to

education? >> the question on duplication, look, i think a lot of that's been eliminated. there's still some of that in existence, but with the economic crisis that we face, there's been a lot of tough choices that institutions have had to make in states. and one way i think you can say that being promote is through performance-based funding models. i mentioned where you differentiate by mission, you have a better chance of being clear about what you expect of institutions based on their institutional mission, and therefore, you can create incentives so you don't have overlapping programs and things like that. so, in the time period of cost cutting, and i think wee gotten pretty close to the end of that because there's a lot less to cut in a lot of states, what we're seeing is that these efforts to differentiate a mission is a very important outcome, actually a potentially positive outcome of the unfortunately challenging economic times. >> anybody else on the issue of the requirements for remedial work and a k-12 post-secondary

approach versus p-16 approach? >> remedial education is clearly a cost driver. it's not a smoking gun kind of cost driver. it's actually a fair cost education. i think the big problem with remediation isn't working very well. the proportion of students who get into it who are successfully remediated who go on to some kind of academic success is just way too low. so i think we've got a big conundrum in there about making it more cost-effective, reducing costs but actually making it work better. it's a big problem. >> i think it's a student cost driver. it's a zero credit course, developmental course, that is, and so it's amazing what percentage of students come in and require, primarily in math, but significant until reading and writing as well. the chairwoman and i spoke about dual enrollment. you have some districts that are taking a lot of ownership in colorado. we have community colleges, as well as ours that partner up with some of our area high schools. we identify students who need education at the junior level

when they take the a.c.t. on their campus, we send instruct force over and the district pays for those instructors. then when they graduate, they're college-ready. it really is delaying them in time as well as tuition. >> thank you. >> you get the gold star for today. >> thank you. thank you for the hearing. >> i've got of vowels too. >> your point about performance funding is a very good and valid point, and thank you for that, but let me ask you a little bit about the phenomenon -- not a phenomenon, but the reality of the income disparity that is happening in this country, and one of the major

tool to close that gap is education, particularly post-secondary education. so, as we look at making sure that that educational equity part of the discussion is applied to the next generation, let me talk a little bit about the trio programs. can you discuss how increased investments in those programs and similar programs across the country might help mitigate the increased costs and the preparation gap that has to happen? a absolutely. look, your point about equity is absolutely right, which is that equity of educational opportunity is extremely important. that has to include improving access and ensuring those low-income, first-generation, minority and other students actual have the an opportunity to succeed. i think that's that's a lot of what's going on is efforts to ensure that they are actually successful. in indiana, the performance-based funding model

actually takes into account the success of low-income students in the population. the federal trio programs have been one of the most important efforts at the federal level to increase opportunities for first generation and other students for decades, and i think they are extremely important in terms of our future. we've got to recognize that students don't just pay for college, they actually have to be prepared for college and they have to succeed academically, financially, and socially. that support comes from trio programs because they help students better understand the system, work their way through the system. so trio is a very important part of the overall landscape. >> if i may, you mentioned the regulation issue that mr. bishop asked you about, and i agree that regulation should be streamlined for schools.

but i think there's also very important reasons that afford them. they're important to help us understand rising costs, prevent accidental or intentional misuse of taxpayer funds. and you mentioned you spent -- you have to spend hundreds of hours of additional costs in preparing school's information that students expect to have and that they have to have before they make their decision. doesn't that information make it -- make the information you have to generate for the federal government also available in the same sense? >> all the information that came out and was required to be one or two clicks away was contained in different places that we thought were more

intuitive. we spent a lot of time, i'm sure like dr. manahan, saying, what do you want from us? >> you're saying they're not comparable? >> i'm just saying is we had it collected where we thought students would go. and then what we had to do was reconfigure it to make sure students could be one or two clicks away. >> let's talk about the reconfiguration. one of the things that was a great accomplishment of the last congress was creating the income-based repayment program so that students would be able to manage their debt. can you speak to efforts your students have taken as a means for them to be able to manage that debt? is that part of the information they receive?

>> what you're talking about, we look and monitor our average student loan debt, and it's an issue that we try to track very closely. what we've done is actually a person in our financial aid office, who, all they do is debt counseling. in student loans, unlike a banking situation, nobody sits down and says this is how much you can afford to pay back based on your occupation, so we try to create that person who sits down and says, this is how much you can really afford to borrow as you graduate and you want to pay it back and pay it back in a reasonable time. >> elephant in the room, of the debt side and the loan side, 40% of the debt that students have is through for-profit colleges, which represents less than 30% of the student enrollment. do you see that as -- anyone, do you see that as a factor affecting cost and as a factor about the regulatory intent of

trying find out what that is and who's responsible for that debt? anybody? i'm out of time. those are my best questions, too. >> if i might, very quickly, the data we have on spending, revenues and spending, we can include for profits because of problems and comparable data. it's something that the feds ought to deal with and we all the to step up to, because i can't answer your question because the data aren't there. >> thank you very much. >> thank you, >> i thank the panel for being here. i think our higher education system in america is the best in the world. i think there are two great issues we face in this credit rye now, and that's rising healthcare costs and rising education costs. probably not one of us sitting up here has not benefited from a great college education, and basically public education. i went to school for 24 years,

and dr. manahan, i went to medical school in three. i wouldn't recommend that to my worst enemy, but that's what we did then. one of the concerns i had, i lived at home when i went to college. i had a job. my father worked in the factory. we had no student loans then. i was able to work, live at home, go to college, and finish college with no debt. number two, because medical school was affordable at that time, i graduated from medical school with no debt. i was able to move to east tennessee in appear latch i can't, an underserved area, because i didn't have hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt , and take less salary and serve that area. i get letters all the time, and i'm sure every one of those students have hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. how has that happened where a young man like myself from a middle-class family, quite frankly, it was very simple

when i went to medical school. i saw what the tuition was at one great private university, more than my father made in a year, and the university of tennessee in memphis, which wasn't, and i made my decision to go there. both great schools. a lot of people do that. that's not hard information to get. i graduated, thank the lord, three children have all graduated from college and they're out on their own. but how has that happened to us? because we cannot sustain this current 7%, 8%, or 10%, or kids like myself will never be able to go to college, as dr. heck said, spend 25 years of your life basically paying for a house, which is what it costs to go now, $50,000 a year to private university. when i went to school the state tennessee covered 80%, 90%. today it's under 50%. and it's all being shifted to the students. any comments?

>> look, i'm a walking advertisement. i got a pell grant, federal student loans, state assistance. >> are you out of debt? >> i worked for my church, i got support from the institution i went, to i worked. that was 30 years ago. the problems for today's students have multiplied greatly because of the rising cost of higher education. to your point, i think the challenge is that students and families really are at their limit in terms of their capacity in order to be able to deal with these issues. i think part of the challenge comes back to the point in my remarks, which is that we can't afford to reduce the capacity of the system to produce graduates t. is very important that we increase the number of higher qualified graduates. that means we've got to make this system much more productive, particularly for those students who haven't had the opportunity or the prior successes from their families, etc. i think that is an important issue for us to understand from

a state policy perspective, from an institutional policy perspective, and from a federal policy perspective. there's many things that need to be done to enhance productivity. >> well, i was the foundation board president of my college before i came here, and i'm still on the foundation board at east tennessee state university, public schools both. we've raised money on the private side, and we've shook everybody down that we could, and i know mr. foster probably has done the same thing as president of his college, and dr. manah also. but there are limits to all of that. i don't know, where does this end? >> the good thing about this recession has been that we finally, i think, are starting to hit the wall. for many years in the public sector, states and institutions were both complicit in allowing this to happen. nobody decided to make it happen. it happened because of other things. buppingts went down, few i guess so went up. but institutions have too long believed that more money always was necessary for more quality, and i think that -- i think we're turning the corner.

i don't think we've turned the corner. >> well, let me go over a couple of things that was said, and in tennessee, we have pell grants, hope scholarship, which is where we use our lottery money, and still young people are graduating. if you go tie community college, when i was in school, you didn't transfer to a four-year college. today repeat the same course again. we've stopped that. you had go to a community college and then transfer that credit to the university of tennessee. we are now requiring our colleges to look at graduate rates, not at the number of students in there to get their funding. i think that is an extremely positive step that you mentioned just a moment ago. the city built it, the blicks and mortar, and yet university of tennessee, king college, northeast community college all have classes in there so they don't have this incredible investment in bricks and mortar as miss biggert mentioned in

trying to attract students. you can go from a freshman degree to ph.d. and never leave kingsport, tennessee, and doing that and transfer the credit. there are many other things, online classes, we have to do these things or, as i said, folks like myself will never have a chance or, number two, will never be out of debt. i thank you all. >> i was wondering if dr. heck could get some help from dr. po. he seems to have loose cash hanging around. >> this is an issue that's troubled us through the last reauthorization and forever on that. we've been troubled by the fact that this is a partnership, the

federal government, the state, the families, you're trying to make it accessible to move on. states have, i think, routinely backed away from the partnership in a huge way. we heard tremendous feedback, particularly from community colleges, but from a lot of four-year colleges as well, that if we hadn't done that, should we enhance that program? are you feeling it's not necessary anymore because schools are now trying to deal with this stuff on their own? >> i don't have a good answer. i think the problem with state budget is so much bigger than what's happening in higher education that the pressures on states to cut funding are going to be with us the next several years. whether the federal maintenance effort of requirements some brakes on that, i think they probably do. i wouldn't -- this is not the time to take them off. whether they can be

strengthened or rewritten, i don't know. i don't think what's causing the cuts from the states is related to federal funding. it's related to what's happening to state budget. >> well, thank you for that. send dowments, well-off institutions on that, senator grassley and i started on this past last time and got a lot of consternation from some, but many of those schools don't even pay 5% of their income back into education-related efforts on that. now, they still maintain their tax-exempt status. is that an area where we ought to expect those schools to pay at least the minimum amount that other charities have to pay in order to maintain their tax-exempt status and put it back into efforts, maybe in a way that helps other institutions on that basis? anybody? >> the wealthiest institutions are already spending a lot of money from their endowments. i guess i'm sympathetic to your question. my question is whether continuing to raise tuitions at

the same time that they have at that level of revenue, requiring an even higher payout in this environment in those institutions would be like putting kerosene on a fire. they're already spending a lot of money. >> so an institution that has almosted pods billion and an endowment that spends 4% less -- >> and raises tuition every year. >> that would be a problem? >> i think the issue is a really important one. i also was a state college product and was able to afford to go and get through on that, but the cost now, we expect campuses to be little communities. they're responsible for the safety of their students. they've got huge energy costs. technology is far more expensive than it used to be. the cost of construction, you know, and the benefits, as you mentioned, all of you because of pay for your staff, whether it's administration or faculty baffs of the benefits. so a lot of schools have switched to adjunct faculty.

i'm want sure that's great for the students or faculty member, but it looks like a cost shift, so now the school may not have to pay for the benefits, but the individual does, so they're getting paid less, have higher expenses, or they shift to a health system within their state on that basis. there doesn't seem to be the wisest way to proceed. is there another alternative? >> boy, you asked the hardest questions, and i'm glad i ducked the first two. i would tell you i think there's a temptation to do what you talked about, and i think some schools have gone down that road. and i think most of those that have have turned around and gone back the other direction because it comes down to quality and quality of people. i think we all are scrambling trying to find other places to contain costs. i was nodding, because we used to think it's a cost, but it's a cost driver, because this generation just demands way more robust technology than you and i even consider feasible. so it really has us searching

everywhere possible to try to reduce those costs and see what's extraneous to the core mission behalf we do. so our faculty, for example, teach teach four course loads per semester, which is double that of most r-1 institutions. you know, those sorts of met ricks that at some point, you know, you're ready to be a college president sounds like to me, so we'll switch places. >> sounds attractive some days around here. lastly, on that transparency issue you talked about, i think that you're probably unusual if you had all of the transparency provisions that the higher education opportunity act asked for, and i command you if you did. the idea of having institutions with the largest percentage increases and tuition prices submit an explanation forethat. did you have that on before the act or is that something you added on? >> well, we didn't hit the percentage says, so we didn't have to deal with that --

>> and you use strategy toss rein in price increases and use those incentives to keep costs low? you share that information with others? >> i do a monthly email to all the parents of our students and try to do two things. one, community those sorts of issues. and second, as i tell them, the more engaged they are in their student's education, and if you're like me, you ask your son -- what happened today? i get no answer. if i have a little bit of information, i get a whole lot more back. so we try to give them -- this is what's going on on campus so they can engage with their student, and we tell them midterms are coming. you might want to inquire if, in fact, they're studying. those things help the dynamic. >> what kind of feedback have you had with your institutions online net price calculator?

generally a couple of private, and we looked at your programs and your price, and we chose here because you are this much less. and so, it was the first time i had someone just out of the blue say that was a consideration and that's why we're here. i assume they were doing that use our net price calculator as well as the other institutions they were comparing us to. >> thank you. thanks to the panelists i think for a very good hearing. this question is for specifically for dr. manahan and mr. foster, your experience with your universities. you know, did you have a sense about how much time you spend on federal regulatory reporting compliance and do you have some suggestions for us about how

regulations are reporting could be eliminated without jeopardizing integrity of the federal financial aid system? >> i'd be happy to begin with that good question. we have calculated on our campus, and we're a small campus, we spend about $460,000 a year on salary and benefits to address regulatory issues. that's want counting equipment and other things we need to provide them. so, what that equals for us is we spend about $300-plus per year per student to care for regulatory matters. we certainly believe -- there are a number of regulations that are very helpful and protective.

but those that have less value, perhaps, and fewer changes to continue to adapting to, that is a way to reduce some of that cost, because that is passed on to the cost of the institution. but i would grant you there are other regulations that are very helpful as well to the student as a consumer and other such things. but overreaching regulations make it challenging to carry on funding. i try to give you some sense of a couple of areas. we haven't quantified it, and now i'm glad i haven't, because i'd be under my bed lamenting how much we're spending on regulatory compliance.

the data we use intensely to compare ourselves to other institutions, so we track things or we actually mine that information ourselves, because you never know how well you're preparing without getting it in context. i would say the collection area is something that is actually very beneficial, i think, for all of us, because you use common definitions and everybody knows what that is. it's below that radar screen in terms of increasing. i appreciate the difficulties with proprietary schools and whatever other issues you're dealing with, but it's pulling us into that vortex that is really starting to tilt and have us spend hours. we can get you more discreet suggestions in terms of areas, if nothing else, if we just stopped changing the definitions of federal financial aid, that would be great, because then we would know and we can tell students from year to year exactly what those criteria are. there's a new report that's looking -- that looks at 15

major areas of higher education regulations and ways in which burden and overlap and other things can be reduced, and i think that may be helpful in terms of the decision making of the committee. >> what role does the integration of online learning, virtual campus have in increasing access and frankly potentially decreasing costs? >> huge. like i said, we represent or cover an area that's fairly rural, more jack rabbits in people in large portions, and so, from an access perspective, for them to be able to take classes online, it also equal is a matter of convenience for our students. i think the overwhelming majority on most campuses online students are people taking classes in person, and they use it to balance their schedule, whether they're working or do other things. it's more intense. you know, the theory was you

could scale it and have, you know, hundreds of students in a classroom and the experience is not that way. but it certainly avoids bricks and mortars, so it's extending the life of our classroom buildings so we can grow beyond, we anticipate about 20% of our credit hours will be delivered online because of those sorts of things. there's a 20% bump in terms of the classrooms we won't need because of that online activity. >> i mentioned the same outcome in half the time for students. another great example is the western governors university, which is online, competency-based learning model, which is delivering programs in only four key areas, teacher education, business i.t., and nursing, and they're having very success rate with their competency-based model, but it is using online delivery. we think there's a lot of potential for those competency-based model using technology to proliferate. >> we agree.

in this three-year degree option, the three years allows two summers in between to be taken online by courses provided for our campus or from our campus, and those are tuition-free to the student. it allows the students to return to their home for summer employment, whatever they need to do, if they need to fulfill some degree component, traveling to another company still allows that. we have other uses of online as well in our graduate programs. >> thank you. >> thank you to all of you for being here. i want to switch the scale and talk about california, if i may. i'm not expecting that you're experts necessarily in that system, but in terms of what you know and to apply, as you probably know as well, the governor's 2011-2011 --

2011-2012 budget is below levels with 75,000 fewer students than the 2,037 students enrolled today, so clearly, a different scale than we're talking about. of course, thousands of people have been laid off, etc. but i'm wondering, you know, at what point does the streamlining and the savings hinder student learning? how far can a large system like that really afford to go to afford graduates both an opportunity to graduate, but to graduate with something substantive to contribute? >> california, i worked there for many years, and including the legislature and the ways and means committee. i know more about it than i know what to do with. >> it's a tough one. >> they're cutting access, probably cutting quality.

you can't cost manage your way out of the problem california's got. having said that, california has weakened its policy capacity in the last decade so that they no longer have what they once had, which was a way to look at integrated, comprehensive solutions, so they're all on their own sort of flailing. i think there's got to be a return to policy capacity in that state to once again look comprehensively across those institutions. as bad as it is, california's still got a lot of money in higher education, but it's not being invested very well. >> and revenues are really coming from students at this point. i tell groups of people in my district of san diego that i do recall writing checks for $89 a semester to bierk leave. i don't want to tell when you that was, but it sent a different message to me certainly that the state thought i was actually pretty important, because they were making an investment. and i don't think students feel that way today.

i wonder if you could talk just for a second about the transparency issue. i understand what you're saying, that people figure out how they want to make comparisons. they know if they have some assistance, some scholarship money, whether it's cheaper to go to one school than another and still get quality. but are there other things that you think families students really should know? i heard a statistic that 85% of graduating seniors this year will be living at home. that's pretty striking. what is it that you think is fair for people to know as they're making those compares son, and should perhaps not by fee or by regulation, but how is it that we can assist get

students better information, or really, are we there? is there nothing else that needs to be done? >> well, i think there's a lot that needs to be done, and i think it's built off of the question, and that was, where's the individual have some responsibility to seek that information out? now, that falls apart with first-generation students because they don't know what questions to ask. for us, it's really trying to figure out what they know is important. it's always surprising the questions you get when you interact with parents and students, and sometimes it's safety, sometimes it's cost, sometimes it's the dorms. it's just a myriad of things. i think most of the institutions i'm familiar with are trying to push that information out and make it as available as possible. we do a lot with high schools, with first-generation students to educate them and help them understand. they have a desire to go to college. it's they have a complete -- they tend to shut off and say it's too expensive, i'll never be able to realize that. it's really the reverse, where

we're trying to pull them in and say there are a lot of opportunities for you as a first-generation student. i don't think there's a limit in terms of -- any question those families want is fair game. i guess i go back to kind of margaret thatcher, which is the market is just more powerful and more reliable and more liberating force than government can ever be. so the pressure we get from those folks is 10 times what you can do in terms of a policy directive. >> three things i think a student or family should know about an institution, one is, are students completing at that institution, particularly students who look like me? the second is, what are they learning and how can we tell? and the third is, are they getting jobs? those three areas of outcomes i think represent the most important things that all students and families should have access to as a result of better data systems. >> i would just say this. to the degree there is a lack

of transparency it diminishes the value of the education and people begin to sense it deeply. and i think the more transparent we are upfront with real costs, it adds to a better value of the education and trustworthiness in higher education as a whole. i think every campus bears responsibility to make its own contribution to set a level of transparency that helps people make a decision. we noticed this remarkably in our campus. as the value of homes decrease and had people had less access to home equity, they became quite well schooled in asking financial questions, commitments on a number of fronts. and we do get people coming to our campus and saying, how does

this cost compare to that cost and what am i getting into? >> thank you. i want to, again, thank the panel very, very much for taking time to testify before the subcommittee today. i want to thank all the members of the committee who came and asked such great questions. one of the wonderful things about congress is the diversity that we have, and that diversity causes us to ask lots of different kinds of questions and get many different perspectives. do you have some closing remarks you'd like to make? >> thank you. i thought it was very interesting and informative. i like some of the new ideas that were discussed. i can't help but think of some of the, i guess, comparables to

dr. manahan's three-year program, the western governors university and how they're doing it with about half of the cost and without having all the campuses and all the expensive athletic programs that we have in many of our big flagship schools where we pay coaches upwards of $4 million to be a football coach or other expenses that are never discussed as part of the cost of running a university. but i think that what i like is the fact that, more and more, we are accepting that online courses are going to be more and more acceptable but the employers, particularly when they are producing a graduate

that is capable of coming into a business or to a program and take it to a new higher level. in effectiveness and profits and so forth. so i think that we're -- we're making progress in this committee in terms of looking at new success models, and i want to thank the witnesses for sharing their insights with us this morning. and i look forward to working with all of you and my colleagues on this committee to make college more affordable and to achieve our nation's college completion goals. thank you very much. >> thank you. i want to repeat what dr. rose said earlier, and i think sometimes we forget to talk about it.

i think we have had the best higher education in the world in this country. i think, like many things that are being threatened, i think the quality of higher education in this country is being threatened these days, and not just because of the lack of money. in fact, i think the lack of money is probably the least reason that higher education is being threatened, and i agree with what someone else has said . i think miss wellman, it was you, perhaps the squeezing budget have been a benefit, not a negative, because it's forcing people to look at what they're doing. i think one of the big problems i've seen in my lifetime is having institutions of higher education decide what it is they want to do.

i think that mr. foster's comment about focusing on the students as customers is very important. but are the institutions focusing on what learning the students are getting or seat time or are they simply providing income to maintain the institution? so i think there's much that we need higher education to be looking at, and agree with miss wellman. i think that having this money crunch may be helpful, and i go back to a comment mr. foster said. when you had your committee split three and three, and one side of the committee said, well, if money is an issue, -- well, money is always an issue. however, in higher education, people haven't thought that. and i remember when i was a community college president, the presses of our system came to the presidents one day and said the days are gone, ladies

and gentlemen, when i could go to the legislature and say we're doing the lord's work, therefore, you should be giving us lots of money. and i thought that was going to happen a long time ago. because i think we had a booming economy. that got sort of waxed over. i also want to say, it is still possible to graduate from very fine institutions in this country without a dime of debt. it is up to the student and up to the parents to shop, and i think sometimes you sell parents and students short. i think our whole society does in terms of their ability to make those decisions. we go out and buy cars every day. we go to the grocery store. we're very capable of going out and shopping. transparency, though, is going to be one of the biggest

issues. and i think that is something that has to be looked at. i want to thank all of you for emphasizing both affordability and quality. i do think that we can have both high quality and affordability, i should say, and i think that is an extremely important concept for us to keep in mind. we do want, again, i think, too, as tennessee has done, to concentrate on funding results, not necessarily enrollment. so there's some things that have to be done. i think you all have brought up some really, really important issues to us, and i'm extremely pleased with the way the panel has gone today, with the questions that have been raised, and the issues that have been raised. and i want to say, again, on the issue of parental involvement, we've known for 50, 60, 7 owe years that what

makes eye good elementary and secondary school is a good principal, good teachers, and parental involvement. that is not different from higher education. should be exactly the same thing. you'll get good results if you get the customers involved with checking out the quality of the goods that they're receiving. so, i want to thank you all for being here, and, again, thank the panel, and there being no further, the subcommittee stands adjourned. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> on this morning's "washington journal," we'll continue the conversation on education costs. more about that in a moment. here's a look at what we're covering today on capitol hill on our companion network, c-span3. officials from the state and

treasury are you departments will talk about a senate panel about u.s. policy with iran. yesterday, london ordered iran to remove all of its diplomats from britain after its embassy compound in tehran was attacked. live coverage from the senate foreign relations committee begins at 10:00 a.m. eastern. and this afternoon, executives from fannie mae and freddie mac will testify at a house financial stfs oversight hearing, along with the eakting director of the federal housing finance agency. that's live at 2:00 p.m. eastern, also on c-span3. >> within 90 days of my inauguration, every american soldier and every american prisoner will be out of the jungle and out of their cells and back home in america where they belong. >> george mcgovern's pledge at the 1972 democratic convention came nearly a decade after being one of the worst senators to speak out publicly against

the vietnam war. the senator from south dakota suffered a landslide defeat that year to president nixon, but his ground breaking campaign changed american politics and the democratic party. george mcgovern is featured this week on c-span's "the contenders," from the mcgovern center for leadership in mitchell, south dakota, live friday at 8:00 p.m. eastern. >> in a moment, today's news and your phone calls and email, live on "washington journal." and the house gavels in this morning at 10:00 eastern. in the afternoon, they'll debate a measure that would terminate taxpayer financing of presidential election campaigns and party conventions. live house coverage here on c-span. and coming up in 45 minutes, representative tim griffin of arkansas will talk about his proposal that would eliminate the pension benefit offered to members of congress. then, an update on what the house will be working on