mr. bergeron, you may begin your testimony. >> thank you. and thank you for inviting me to be here today. we are at a critical moment of the year. our young people are in the process of preparing to go off to college. many for the first time. they're going to be dealing with issues they have never had to deal with before. about thatnk experience that our students have -- it is different than the one we had. today, 21 and a half million students will be enrolling in our institutions and 12% of them will be going online. when i went to school, there was no such thing as online. population is experiencing different things. one thing is the level of death they are taking on. since graduating with a bachelor's degree in 2011, i graduated with $26,000 in debt. that was an increase in just four years, of 33%. graduate students graduated with $55,000, an increase of 46% in just four years. while i worry a lot about the students who graduate from our institutions and the level of debt they are taking on, i am probably worried more about students who

mr. bergeron, you may begin your testimony. >> thank you, mr. chairman, thank you to the rest of the committee for inviting me to be here today. we are at a critical moment of the year. our young people are in the process of preparing to go off to college, many for the first time, and they're going to be dealing with issues that they never had to deal with before, as was mentioned a couple of the opening statements. and when we think about that experience that our students have, it's different than the one we had. and today, 21 and a half million students will be enrolled in our 7500 institutions. and 12% of them will be going online. when i went to school, there was no such thing as online. never thought of anything like that happening. and so the student population is expensive different things, and one of the things that's very different is the level of data they are taking on. students graduating with a bachelor's degree in 2011-12 graduate with $26,500 in student loan debt. that was an increase in just four years of 33%. graduate students g