[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
KEEPING COLLEGE WITHIN REACH:
IMPROVING ACCESS AND AFFORDABILITY
THROUGH INNOVATIVE PARTNERSHIPS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHER EDUCATION
AND WORKFORCE TRAINING
COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
AND THE WORKFORCE
U.S. House of Representatives
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, SEPTEMBER 18, 2013
__________
Serial No. 113-32
__________
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COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE
JOHN KLINE, Minnesota, Chairman
Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin George Miller, California,
Howard P. ``Buck'' McKeon, Senior Democratic Member
California Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey
Joe Wilson, South Carolina Robert C. ``Bobby'' Scott,
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Virginia
Tom Price, Georgia Ruben Hinojosa, Texas
Kenny Marchant, Texas Carolyn McCarthy, New York
Duncan Hunter, California John F. Tierney, Massachusetts
David P. Roe, Tennessee Rush Holt, New Jersey
Glenn Thompson, Pennsylvania Susan A. Davis, California
Tim Walberg, Michigan Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona
Matt Salmon, Arizona Timothy H. Bishop, New York
Brett Guthrie, Kentucky David Loebsack, Iowa
Scott DesJarlais, Tennessee Joe Courtney, Connecticut
Todd Rokita, Indiana Marcia L. Fudge, Ohio
Larry Bucshon, Indiana Jared Polis, Colorado
Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan,
Lou Barletta, Pennsylvania Northern Mariana Islands
Martha Roby, Alabama John A. Yarmuth, Kentucky
Joseph J. Heck, Nevada Frederica S. Wilson, Florida
Susan W. Brooks, Indiana Suzanne Bonamici, Oregon
Richard Hudson, North Carolina
Luke Messer, Indiana
Juliane Sullivan, Staff Director
Jody Calemine, Minority Staff Director
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHER EDUCATION AND WORKFORCE TRAINING
VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina, Chairwoman
Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin Ruben Hinojosa, Texas,
Howard P. ``Buck'' McKeon, Ranking Minority Member
California John F. Tierney, Massachusetts
Glenn Thompson, Pennsylvania Timothy H. Bishop, New York
Tim Walberg, Michigan John A. Yarmuth, Kentucky
Matt Salmon, Arizona Suzanne Bonamici, Oregon
Brett Guthrie, Kentucky Carolyn McCarthy, New York
Lou Barletta, Pennsylvania Rush Holt, New Jersey
Joseph J. Heck, Nevada Susan A. Davis, California
Susan W. Brooks, Indiana David Loebsack, Iowa
Richard Hudson, North Carolina
Luke Messer, Indiana
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on September 18, 2013............................... 1
Statement of Members:
Foxx, Hon. Virginia, Chairwoman, Subcommittee on Higher
Education and Workforce Training........................... 1
Prepared statement of.................................... 3
Hinojosa, Hon. Ruben, ranking minority member, Subcommittee
on Higher Education and Workforce Training................. 4
Prepared statement of.................................... 6
Statement of Witnesses:
Baraniuk, Dr. Rich, professor, Rice University, Founder
Connexions................................................. 18
Prepared statement of.................................... 20
Docking, Jeffrey R., Ph.D., president, Adrian College........ 8
Prepared statement of.................................... 10
Isbell, Dr. Charles, Georgia Institute of Technology......... 25
Prepared statement of.................................... 26
Singer, Paula, chief executive officer, Global Products and
Services, Laureate Education, Inc.......................... 13
Prepared statement of.................................... 14
Additional Submissions:
Brooks, Hon. Susan W., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Indiana, questions submitted for the record to Dr.
Docking.................................................... 50
Mrs. Foxx:
Miyares, Javier, president, University of Maryland
University College, prepared statement of.............. 45
Questions submitted for the record to:
Dr. Baraniuk......................................... 49
Dr. Docking.......................................... 49
Dr. Isbell........................................... 52
Ms. Singer........................................... 54
Kline, Hon. John, Chairman, Committee on Education and the
Workforce, questions submitted for the record to:
Dr. Docking.............................................. 50
Dr. Isbell............................................... 52
Ms. Singer............................................... 54
Response to questions submitted for the record from:
Dr. Baraniuk............................................. 49
Dr. Docking.............................................. 50
Dr. Isbell............................................... 52
Ms. Singer............................................... 54
KEEPING COLLEGE WITHIN REACH:
IMPROVING ACCESS AND AFFORDABILITY
THROUGH INNOVATIVE PARTNERSHIPS
----------
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
U.S. House of Representatives
Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training
Committee on Education and the Workforce
Washington, DC
----------
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:01 a.m., in
Room 2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Virginia Foxx
[chairwoman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Foxx, Walberg, Guthrie, Heck,
Brooks, Messer, Hinojosa, Tierney, Bishop, Bonamici, and Holt.
Also present: Representatives Kline and Miller.
Staff present: Katherine Bathgate, Deputy Press Secretary;
Heather Couri, Deputy Director of Education and Human Services
Policy; Amy Raaf Jones, Education Policy Counsel and Senior
Advisor; Brian Melnyk, Professional Staff Member; Krisann
Pearce, General Counsel; Emily Slack, Legislative Assistant;
Alex Sollberger, Communications Director; Alissa Strawcutter,
Deputy Clerk; Aaron Albright, Minority Communications Director
for Labor; Tylease Alli, Minority Clerk/Intern and Fellow
Coordinator; Kelly Broughan, Minority Education Policy
Associate; Jody Calemine, Minority Staff Director; Eamonn
Collins, Minority Fellow, Education; Jamie Fasteau, Minority
Director of Education Policy; Scott Groginsky, Minority
Education Policy Advisor; Eunice Ikene, Minority Staff
Assistant; Brian Levin, Minority Deputy Press Secretary/New
Media Coordinator; Megan O'Reilly, Minority General Counsel;
Rich Williams, Minority Education Policy Advisor; and Michael
Zola, Minority Deputy Staff Director.
Chairwoman Foxx. A quorum being present, the subcommittee
will come to order.
Good morning, and welcome. Ranking Member Hinojosa will be
here shortly, but we have permission to continue with the
hearing and honor people's time who are here.
I want to take a moment to offer our condolences and
prayers to all whose lives were shaken by the tragedy earlier
this week in Washington's Navy Yard. The victims and survivors,
as well as their families, remain in our thoughts.
I also want to extend our appreciation to the first
responders, metro police officers, and our own Capitol Police
who worked diligently then, as they do now, to keep our capital
city safe.
I also want to acknowledge the flooding in Colorado. I know
that Congressman Polis was not available to be at the Rules
Committee meeting yesterday. He is on our larger committee, and
he is there in Colorado. So I want to thank everyone who has
been involved with helping our fellow Americans as they face
these various challenges.
Returning to today's subcommittee business, I would like to
thank our panel of witnesses for joining us today to discuss
the ways postsecondary institutions are utilizing innovative
partnerships to improve higher education access and
affordability.
With thousands of colleges, top-ranked research
universities, and specialized degree programs, America is home
to the greatest higher education system in the world.
Our diverse institutions not only cater to the unique needs
of students from around the globe, but also drive our nation's
economic competitiveness by preparing graduates for the 21st
century workforce.
However, our higher education system is not without its
challenges. College costs continue to rise at an unprecedented
rate, compelling institutions to explore more creative ways to
rein in tuition.
Changing student demographics heighten the demand for more
flexible degree programs and course schedules. And evolving
technologies mean institutions must constantly modernize
program offerings to ensure graduates have the skills necessary
to thrive in today's workforce.
Recognizing these new dynamics, a growing number of
institutions are forming creative partnerships with private
sector entities to help reduce costs, strengthen degree
programs, and enrich coursework to meet the needs of a changing
student body.
With the development of Massive Open Online Courses, or
MOOCs, institutions are exploring exciting new ways to deliver
high quality education opportunities to students all over the
world.
These online platforms are revolutionizing instructional
delivery, and providing thousands of students access to free
educational resources at the click of a button.
Coursera, edX, and Udacity are just a few of the MOOC
providers helping universities build online learning
environments where students can access and complete high
quality courses in their own time.
Georgia Tech is working to take online education a step
further, announcing in May plans to work with AT&T and Udacity
to offer the first fully online master's program for computer
science. Students will be able to earn their degrees completely
online and at a fraction of the cost of traditional programs,
possibly even less than $7,000.
While some institutions are exploring ways to improve
higher education access and affordability through partnerships
with online providers, others are forming partnerships with
other nearby colleges and universities to offer students in-
demand degree programs at a more affordable price.
To expand degree options for students without raising
tuition, administrators at Indiana's Grace College partnered
with two local institutions to develop a program that allows
Grace College students to take advantage of the popular nursing
and engineering programs offered at the other schools.
Another great example of innovative partnerships can be
found at Emmanuel College, a small liberal arts school in the
heart of the Longwood Medical Center in Boston.
In 2001 the school leased an unused piece of land to
pharmaceutical giant Merck & Company, forging a partnership
that launched a wealth of biomedical graduate programs and
specialized summer internship opportunities for Emmanuel
students. Enrollment has since tripled, and Emmanuel has
regained a competitive edge in the higher education system.
It is creative partnerships like these that will help
ensure our higher education system remains the best in the
world. As policymakers, we have a responsibility to ensure such
innovation can continue.
By lifting burdensome regulations and simplifying the
current complex statutory framework, more institutions will
have the opportunity to innovate and meet the challenging needs
of our students and economy.
Earlier this year, we took a step in the right direction by
approving the Supporting Academic Freedom through Regulatory
Relief Act, legislation to eliminate three regulations that
threaten to stifle innovation at postsecondary schools.
I hope we can work together through the upcoming
reauthorization of the Higher Education Act to continue these
efforts to limit federal overreach and preserve flexibility in
our modern higher education system.
Once again, I would like to thank our witnesses for joining
us today. I would now like to recognize my colleague, Mr. Rubin
Hinojosa, senior Democrat member of the subcommittee for his
opening remarks.
[The statement of Chairwoman Foxx follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Virginia Foxx, Chairwoman,
Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training
Good morning, and welcome. Before we begin, I want to take a moment
to offer our condolences and prayers to all whose lives were shaken by
the tragedy earlier this week in Washington's Navy Yard. The victims
and survivors, as well as their families, will remain in our thoughts.
I also want to extend our appreciation to the first responders, metro
police officers, and our own Capitol police who worked diligently then,
as they do now, to keep our capital city safe. Thank you.
Returning to today's subcommittee business, I'd like to thank our
panel of witnesses for joining us today to discuss the ways
postsecondary institutions are utilizing innovative partnerships to
improve higher education access and affordability.
With thousands of colleges, top-ranked research universities, and
specialized degree programs, America is home to the greatest higher
education system in the world. Our diverse institutions not only cater
to the unique needs of students from around the globe, but also drive
our nation's economic competitiveness by preparing graduates for the
21st century workforce.
However, our higher education system is not without its challenges.
College costs continue to rise at an unprecedented rate, compelling
institutions to explore more creative ways to rein in tuition. Changing
student demographics heighten the demand for more flexible degree
programs and course schedules. And evolving technologies mean
institutions must constantly modernize program offerings to ensure
graduates have the skills necessary to thrive in today's workforce.
Recognizing these new dynamics, a growing number of institutions
are forming creative partnerships with private sector entities to help
reduce costs, strengthen degree programs, and enrich coursework to
better meet the needs of a changing student body.
With the development of Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs,
institutions are exploring exciting new ways to deliver high quality
education opportunities to students all over the world. These online
platforms are revolutionizing instructional delivery, and providing
thousands of students access to free educational resources at the click
of a button. Coursera, edX, and Udacity are just a few of the MOOC
providers helping universities build online learning environments where
students can access and complete high quality courses in their own
time.
Georgia Tech is working to take online education a step further,
announcing in May plans to work with AT&T and Udacity to offer the
first fully online master's program for computer science. Students will
be able to earn their degree completely online and at a fraction of the
cost of traditional programs, possibly even less than $7,000.
While some institutions are exploring ways to improve higher
education access and affordability through partnerships with online
providers, others are forming partnerships with other nearby colleges
and universities to offer students in-demand degree programs at a more
affordable price.
To expand degree options for students without raising tuition,
administrators at Indiana's Grace College partnered with two local
institutions to develop a program that allows Grace College students to
take advantage of the popular nursing and engineering programs offered
at the other schools.
Another great example of innovative partnerships can be found at
Emmanuel College, a small liberal arts school in the heart of the
Longwood Medical Center in Boston. In 2001 the school leased an unused
piece of land to pharmaceutical giant Merck & Company, forging a
partnership that launched a wealth of biomedical graduate programs and
specialized summer internship opportunities for Emmanuel students.
Enrollment has since tripled and Emmanuel has regained a competitive
edge in the higher education system.
It is creative partnerships like these that will help ensure our
higher education system remains the best in the world. As policymakers,
we have a responsibility to ensure such innovation can continue. By
lifting burdensome regulations and simplifying the current complex
statutory framework, more institutions will have the opportunity to
innovate and meet the changing needs of our students and economy.
Earlier this year, we took a step in the right direction by
approving the Supporting Academic Freedom through Regulatory Relief
Act, legislation to eliminate three regulations that threaten to stifle
innovation at postsecondary schools. I hope we can work together
through the upcoming reauthorization of the Higher Education Act to
continue these efforts to limit federal overreach and preserve
flexibility in our modern higher education system.
Once again, I'd like to thank our witnesses for joining us today. I
would now like to recognize my colleague, Mr. Ruben Hinojosa, the
senior Democrat member of the subcommittee, for his opening remarks.
______
Mr. Hinojosa. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Before we begin, I want to express my sympathies to the
families who lost their loved ones during yesterday's tragic
shootings in the Navy Yard. My thoughts and prayers are with
them.
Today's hearing will explore how our system of higher
education can improve accessibility and affordability of
quality higher ed through innovative partnerships.
I would like to welcome our distinguished panelists. I want
to say that at this time I also want to recognize our witness
from my home state of Texas, Rich Baraniuk, a professor at Rice
University which is one of our best universities in the state
of Texas. And I want to say that he is a professor at this
great school who is also a leader in the open education
movement.
Welcome to our hearing, Mr. Baraniuk.
As ranking member of the subcommittee, I strongly support
innovative partnerships that work to make high quality, higher
education more affordable and accessible for all students,
particularly for low income and moderate income students.
It seems to me that partnerships that serve the best
interests of students and taxpayers should be expanded and
supported while partnerships that increase college costs of our
students and families should be discouraged.
Today, we will hear about some innovative partnerships that
show promise and can help address the issue of college
accessibility and affordability. I am particularly interested
in learning more about OpenStax College, a free and open
library of college textbooks which integrates with the venture
philanthropists and for-profit course material companies to
reduce college costs by what they estimate, $250 per class.
In many states, college students spend more on textbooks
than on tuition. Innovative partnerships like OpenStax College
can help reduce the high cost of teaching materials and
eliminate barriers to college access and student access.
Once built out to scale, the OpenStax initiative is
projected to save 1.2 million students an amount over $120
million a year in course materials many are currently funding
through student loan debt.
In my view, Congress must incentivize high-quality, low-
cost innovative partnerships that make college more accessible,
more affordable, and improve retention and student success.
Congress can also do more to promote college employer
partnerships.
In a September 12 op-ed, Secretary of Commerce, Penny
Pritzker and Secretary of Labor, Thomas Perez highlighted
successful partnerships between community colleges and
employers that align skills training programs with workforce
needs in growing sectors of our economy. As you know, more than
half of new jobs created in the next 10 years will be middle
skills jobs requiring more than a high school diploma.
At the same time, a number of concerns have been raised
over partnerships that have increased the cost of college while
providing financial benefits to some institutions.
A recent ABC news investigation found multimillion dollar
exclusive financial agreements between the big banks and
college campuses linking debit cards to student IDs that could
subject students to numerous hidden charges.
It is equally disturbing that public universities are
increasingly outsourcing their student housing to private
contractors to cut their costs. Rooms at privately-financed
dormitories can cost students $1,000 more per semester than
other dorms.
Finally, while massive open online courses may end up
providing greater access to higher quality and affordable
education in the future, they are still largely untested.
Some colleges have not learned the lessons of the past and
are pursuing inappropriate partnerships that increase the
overall costs of college for students and families.
These innovative attempts to profit off of students are
inappropriate and should be discouraged.
Finally, I thank our witnesses for their insights and
recommendations. The reauthorization of Higher Education Act is
an opportunity for Congress and our federal government to do
more to promote innovation and improve accessibility,
affordability, and student success in higher education.
And with that, I yield back.
[The statement of Mr. Hinojosa follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Ruben Hinojosa, Ranking Member,
Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training
Thank you, Chairwoman Foxx. Before we begin, I want to express my
sympathies to the families who lost their loved ones during yesterday's
tragic shootings in the Navy yard. My thoughts and prayers are with
them. Today's hearing will explore how our system of higher education
can improve accessibility and affordability of quality higher education
through innovative partnerships.
I would like to welcome our distinguished panel of witnesses. At
this time, I also want to recognize our witness from my home state of
Texas, Rick Baraniuk (BARE-uh-nik), a professor at Rice University who
is also leader in the open education movement. Welcome to our hearing
Mr. Baraniuk!
As Ranking member of this subcommittee, I strongly support
innovative partnerships that work to make high quality higher education
more affordable and accessible for all students, particularly for low-
income and moderate-income student. It seems to me that partnerships
that serve the best interests of students and taxpayers should be
expanded and supported, while partnerships that increase college costs
to students and families should be discouraged.
Today, we will hear about some innovative partnerships that show
promise and can help address the issue of college accessibility and
affordability. I am particularly interested in learning more about
OpenStax College, a free and open library of college textbooks, which
integrates with venture philanthropists and for-profit course material
companies to reduce college costs by up to $250 per class.
In many states, college students spend more on textbooks than on
tuition. Innovative partnerships like OpenStax College can help reduce
the high cost of teaching materials and eliminate barriers to college
access and student success. Once built out to scale, the OpenStax
initiative is projected to save 1.2 million students over $120 million
a year in course materials many are currently funding through student
loan debt.
In my view, Congress must incentivize high quality, low-cost
innovative partnerships that make college more accessible, more
affordable, and improve retention and student success.
Congress can also do more to promote college-employer partnerships.
In a September 12th op-ed, Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker and
Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez highlighted successful partnerships
between community colleges and employers that align skills training
programs with workforce needs in growing sectors of the economy. As you
know, more than half of new jobs created in the next ten years will be
``middle-skills'' jobs, requiring more than a high school diploma.
At the same time, a number of concerns have been raised over
partnerships that have increased the cost of college while providing
financial benefits to some institutions. A recent NBC news
investigation found multi-million dollar exclusive financial agreements
between big banks and college campuses linking debt cards to student
IDs that could subject students to numerous hidden charges.
It is equally disturbing that public universities are increasingly
outsourcing their student housing to private contractors to cut costs.
Rooms in privately financed dormitories can cost students $1,000 more
per semester than other dorms.
Finally, while Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) may end up
providing greater access to high quality and affordable education in
the future, they are still largely untested. Some colleges have not
learned the lessons of the past and are pursuing inappropriate
partnerships that increase the overall costs of college for students
and families. These `innovative' attempts to profit off of students are
inappropriate and should be discouraged.
In closing, I thank our witnesses for their insights and
recommendations. The reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA)
is an opportunity for Congress and the federal government to do more to
promote innovation and improve accessibility, affordability and student
success in higher education. Thank you.
______
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you, Mr. Hinojosa.
Pursuant to Rule 7-C, all subcommittee members will be
permitted to submit written statements to be included in the
permanent hearing record. Without objection, the hearing record
will remain open for 14 days to allow statements, questions for
the record, and other extraneous material referenced during the
hearing to be submitted in the official hearing record.
It is now my pleasure to introduce our distinguished panel
of witnesses; however, I will turn to Mr. Walberg to introduce
our first witness.
Mr. Walberg. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
It is a privilege to do this introduction. I have really
looked forward to this hearing today for a number of reasons.
To hear creativity, hear people thinking outside of the box.
I am looking forward to the full panel. I think it is a
wonderful hearing that you have chosen to have to highlight
what can and is being done in higher education.
But to introduce my good friend, and I guess would say a
motivator of me, a person who doesn't know the meaning of no or
can't, but is willing to push the envelope to the point of even
getting coaches and professors to work together producing
academic excellence and increased enrollment.
Dr. Jeffrey Docking is the 17th president of Adrian
College. I might add, our colleague, Mike Rogers' alma mater.
Before coming to the college, he earned a doctorate in social
ethics from Boston University, a master of divinity degree from
Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary, and a bachelor's
degree from Michigan State University. After providing
leadership for Pennsylvania's Washington and Jefferson College,
he became president of Adrian College in July 2005.
Through his innovative means he transformed the college
from a struggling institution of 840 students with a budget of
$28 million and more than doubled the enrollment to nearly
1,700 and a budget of more than $62 million.
He raised the academic profile of incoming students in
nearly every benchmark category and that continues to this very
day. Dr. Docking is a leader in higher education circles,
having served as chairman of the ACE Fellows Program board, the
premier leadership development program in the United States.
He currently serves as chairman of the executive committee
for the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of
Michigan and the Michigan College Foundation.
It is a privilege to know his efforts. Even this morning,
in the Detroit Free Press, an article talked about Adrian
College providing resources to pay off student loan debt for
their graduates who are without jobs that meet those needs;
unique and innovative. He truly exemplifies the statement,
``build it and they will come.''
And it is a privilege to introduce him as well as his
partner in academic excellence and commitment to those goals,
his wife, Beth.
Thank you for being here today.
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you very much, Mr. Walberg. I will
continue with the introductions.
Ms. Paula Singer is the president and CEO of Laureate
Global Products and Services. In this capacity, she leads the
company's international online network products and services,
information technology and U.S. campus-based operations as well
as several of Laureate's global programs.
Dr. Rich Baraniuk is the Victor E. Cameron professor of
electrical and computer engineering at Rice University and
founder of Connexions, one of the first initiatives to offer
free open-source textbooks via the web.
Dr. Charles Lee Isbell serves as a professor and senior
associate dean with College of Computing at the Georgia
Institute of Technology. Prior to this role, he spent 4 years
with AT&T Labs Research.
Before I recognize you to provide your testimony, let me
briefly explain our lighting system. You will have 5 minutes to
present your testimony. When you begin, the light in front of
you will turn green. When 1 minute is left, the light will turn
yellow. When your time has expired, the light will turn red.
At that point, I ask that you wrap up your remarks as best
as you are able. After you have testified, members will each
have 5 minutes to ask questions of the panel.
I now recognize Dr. Jeffrey Docking for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF DR. JEFFREY DOCKING, PRESIDENT,
ADRIAN COLLEGE
Mr. Docking. Chairwoman Foxx, Chairman Kline, Ranking
Members Hinojosa and Miller, and members of the subcommittee, I
thank you for the opportunity to appear here today to discuss a
unique business model that Adrian College created 8 years ago
to reverse a downward spiral in enrollment, revenues, and
academic quality of our students.
This entrepreneurial approach to saving our college
ultimately gave us the revenues we need to create innovative
partnerships with businesses and enhanced access to students
throughout the Midwest.
Let me explain. In 2005, Adrian College dropped below 900
students and was saddled with a $1.3 million annual operating
deficit. Three of our dorms were closed, our deferred
maintenance bills reached several million dollars, and leaky
roofs and dandelions were a constant sight on campus.
The academic quality of our students also suffered. We
attracted only 1,100 applications in 2005 and rejected only 71
students. Essentially, it was open enrollment. Many freshmen
were not prepared academically to attend a private liberal arts
college, so they either failed out or quit before they
graduated. Our retention rate was only 59 percent.
Our problems were compounded by our location in Southeast
Michigan. Adrian College is located 60 miles southwest of
Detroit, a city currently undergoing bankruptcy protection, and
our major local manufacturing base is in automotive parts, a
very troubled industry during those years.
The perfect storm descended upon families that wanted to
send their children to college, especially a private college.
People openly questioned whether Adrian would survive these
circumstances, but Adrian did not close, it thrived.
During the past 8 years, our enrollment doubled to over
1,700 students and our annual budget increased from $28 million
to over $64 million. Our retention rate stands at 85 percent
and our freshman classes grew from 263 in 2005 to 665 last
fall.
We built over $60 million in new facilities and started
five new graduate programs, eight academic institutes--nearly
doubled our endowment. Each year, we have given raises to our
employees, hired additional workers, and expanded benefit
coverage.
At Adrian, we like to joke that we skipped the Great
Recession. How have we done this? How, under these
circumstances, were we able to attract more students and make
college more affordable to the families in our state?
We did it through a unique business plan that relies on
strategic investments, measurable results, and accountability.
This model, which I can discuss further during the question-
and-answer period, responds to the needs of students in the job
market in Michigan.
It requires us to listen closely and respond quickly to the
voices of our employers and families, and it works very well,
as you can see from the story I just recited.
When Adrian started to flourish, we looked for innovative
partnerships with businesses that could advance the college's
educational mission while cultivating talent needs for our
business community.
Let me list very few here. In recent years, we allocated
money for students to conduct micro research studies with local
business leaders. Several students have worked with businesses
who want to optimize social media and web content marketing to
expand their operations.
Other examples include psychology students working with
local doctors to gain a broader understanding of the placebo
effect, students conducting research with businesses on
potential hydrocarbon reserves in our area, and a student
working with a startup apparel company to build a business
plan.
In addition to micro research, we recently finished
construction on three campus incubators that students can use
to start businesses in our small town of 23,000 people. These
incubators will not be limited to our students. If local
residents want to use our incubators, they are certainly
willing to do so and we are too at no charge.
My third example of innovative relationships occurred 2
months ago when 11 small college presidents in Michigan
organized a 2-day retreat with major business leaders to
discuss the talent gap, that gap between the skills business
leaders say they need when they hire recent graduates and the
skills these graduates actually bring to their new jobs.
Forty-five CEOs and high-profile executives from companies
such as Dow Chemical, the Kellogg Corporation, Amway, and
Stryker joined the presidents to exchange ideas on this
important topic.
Finally, we restructured our entire internship office to
place students in businesses that openly expressed a desire to
hire new workers. Students are told that their internship is
actually a 3-month interview. If the company likes them, they
will be hired.
I could provide you with many more examples of how
innovative partnerships with our local business community have
helped our region, but in the interest of time, let me say that
these partnerships give us the resources we need and the
financial offerings we have to provide greater access to our
students.
This emphasis on making education more affordable reached a
climax at Adrian College late last week when we announced a new
guarantee to all incoming freshmen. Beginning in the fall of
2014, all freshmen will be guaranteed a high-paying job of at
least $37,000 a year or part or all of their student loans will
be paid for them.
I thank you for the opportunity to share what we have done
at Adrian College. I look forward to your questions.
[The statement of Mr. docking follows:]
Prepared Statement of Jeffrey R. Docking, Ph.D., President,
Adrian College
I am providing this testimony because I am worried. I am worried
about the plight of small private liberal arts colleges in America. I
am afraid many are going to run out of money, reach insolvency, fail
the federal financial responsibility audit, close their doors, or be
swallowed up by large state universities as satellite campuses over the
next several years. If this happens, if small liberal arts colleges
continue to struggle to the point of insolvency, we will lose one of
the greatest educational assets this country has. Many of our national
leaders graduated from private colleges and universities including over
half of the U.S. House of Representatives. (219 of 435) Private
colleges offer students a different type of education, an education
where students can get tremendous amounts of personal attention and
where faculty are committed to ``teaching first.'' Many students who
would fall through the cracks of large lecture halls at huge public
institutions will lose the option to enroll in places where professors
take attendance in class and will take the time to pull students aside
after class if they are falling behind in their work. Many students
need this type of environment in order to graduate. Without this option
they simply will not earn a college degree.
Additionally, small communities in which these colleges are located
will lose the largest economic engine they have to supply the
prosperity, jobs, and cultural activities to the businesses surrounding
the college. Many restaurants, bookstores, markets, and small retailers
rely on college students and their guests to spend money in their
establishments to stay afloat. The loss of a college not only hurts
educational options for students, it severely impacts the surrounding
community. The loss of students and their disposable incomes is
compounded when the highly educated workforce that is required to teach
and administer an institution is gone. These individuals and their
families fill the K-12 buildings in a town as well as buy homes and
attend cultural events. When a community loses such people, the effects
that ripple throughout it are hard to calculate.
My anxiety is not without merit. During the past ten years more
than 30 institutions shut their doors for the final time, terminated
their faculty, and told their students to transfer to other schools.
This list includes:
Barat College (Lake Forest, IL)
Beacon University (Columbus, GA)
Bethany University (Scotts Valley, CA)
Bradford College (Haverhill, MA)
Cascade College (Portland, OR)
Chester College (Chester, NH)
College of Santa Fe (Santa Fe, NM)
D-Q University (Davis, CA)
Dana College (Blair, NE)
Eastern Christian College (Bel Air, MD)
Far North Bible College (Anchorage, AK)
Kelsey-Jenney College (San Diego, CA)
Lambuth University (Jackson, TN)
Lon Morris College (Jacksonville, TX)
Marycrest College (Davenport, IA)
Marymount College (Tarrytown, NY)
Mary Holmes College (West Point, MS)
Mount Senario College (Ladysmith, WI)
New College of California (San Francisco, CA)
Notre Dame College (Manchester, NH)
Pillsbury Baptist Bible College (Owatonna, MN)
St. John's Seminary College (Camarillo, CA)
Sheldon Jackson College (Sitka, AK)
Southeastern University (Washington, D.C.)
Summit Christian College (Fort Wayne, IN)
Trinity College (Burlington, VT)
Vennard College (University Park, IA)
Wesley College (Florence, MS)
William Tyndale College (Farmington Hills, MI)
These colleges had an average life span of 87-plus years. Some had
been in operation over 150 years. Many seemed resilient and
impenetrable. Several were established soon after our country was
founded, and they survived wars, the Great Depression, plagues, and
natural disasters. It seemed highly unlikely--if not impossible--that
these wonderful schools would ever go out of business, but they did.
And I believe that many others will over the next several years unless
we adopt a new paradigm for attracting students, forge new partnerships
with businesses and the non-profit community, and reimagine new ways to
keep college accessible and affordable.
In 2005 Adrian College faced all of these realities, and we
developed a revenue-building enrollment model that saved our
institution. I am providing this testimony, in part, because I think
that this model can work for other colleges and ultimately serve
students and their families.
This is how the Plan Works:
College administrators must begin by turning to business principles
that have served business owners well for years. It requires homework
and answers to some simple questions that are foundational to a viable
business plan.
The questions include:
What size is your college now?
1. What is your ideal college size?
2. What is your discount rate?
3. What is your ideal net tuition revenue?
4. How much revenue do you need to make from each student to
realize your revenue goals?
5. What is your ideal freshman class size?
6. What is your ideal in-state/out-of-state ratio?
7. What is your campus capacity?
Then, each institution must review their historic data:
1. How many new students can you count on every year with your
current recruitment efforts?
2. What is your annual retention rate?
3. Why do students leave your college early?
When you formulate the answers to the three questions:
1. What is your ideal college size?
2. What is your ideal tuition revenue?
3. What is your ideal freshman class size?
Then you have a goal, the number of students you need to bring to
campus each year to keep your institution fully-funded.
The next step is to look at the programs your school offers and
ask:
1. How many students is each academic major, athletic team, and co-
curricular activity bringing in now?
2. How many students should each major and activity be attracting?
3. Who is accountable for recruiting students for each activity?
After you have a firm grasp of the enrollment potential of current
activities, then you begin to add programs. And I am going to emphasize
that each program must have a recruiting goal associated with it, as
well as a coach or staff member responsible for achieving that goal.
The Business Model to Sustainable Growth
Once you have listed your financial goals, decided on new programs,
and assigned an individual to recruit for each activity then you can
begin to follow six steps that will lead to financial health and
indicate your success based on your return on investment. This is
illustrated below:
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
A good example of how this works can be illustrated through the
implementation of a marching band on our campus.
At Adrian College, we have enjoyed a long and storied history of
excellence in music. Students could earn a Bachelor of Music in
Performance or a Bachelor of Music in Education. They could also
graduate with a B.A. in Music, Musical Theatre, or Arts Administration,
and the program offered a music minor, as well. What Adrian College had
before we implemented this model was all sorts of ways to get a music
degree, but we did not have a marching band. We needed to leverage this
opportunity to build our enrollment. I argued that many high school
seniors love playing in the marching band--it's their peer group, it's
a big part of their social lives, and it's an important part of their
identity. If we offered a quality marching band opportunity, we would
quickly get 100-plus students on campus who would not be here
otherwise.
One recruiting advantage Adrian College uses is a result of our
size. Most kids active in high school bands are never going to play in
the marching band at large state universities. Bands at those schools
are too competitive. But Adrian College has a ``no cut'' policy, so
every student who wants to play is guaranteed a spot on the ``team.'' A
student who wants a good education and that experience of playing in
the band on the field every home game is going to choose Adrian
College.
MARCHING BAND RETURN ON INVESTMENT
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Start-up costs (director's No. of students recruited Annual return on
salary & first year budget) Ideal roster size per year investment (4-year total)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
$145,000 80 25 $359,600 ($1,438,400)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This simple example can be replicated time and time again with
other athletic and academic programs. For example, we have experienced
a major return on investment by starting lacrosse and a student
symphony. We built a hockey rink on campus and attracted over 200
hockey players and figure skaters that would not have looked at us
without an ice arena and these wonderful co-curricular activities. We
are currently looking at new academic majors in graphic design and
fashion merchandising to see if the ROI makes sense.
The point of this business model is to evaluate all new academic
and athletic programs through the prism of an ROI to determine if it is
worth the investment. In doing so colleges are forced to listen to
student needs, respond to the market, and provide educational
opportunities that people want. Ultimately the business plan will
provide additional funds to direct to financial aid and scholarships
that promote access and affordability.
Once a college or university stabilizes its finances it can begin
to look for business relationships that can add additional value to the
College and to the educational experience of all students. I have
outlined several of these relationships in my oral testimony; I could
certainly add many more. New business relationships lead to
partnerships that pull colleges outside their cloistered boundaries.
They force colleges to pay closer attention to our changing economy and
the skills employers want in their graduates. They introduce college
officials to new industries and changes in our economy that require new
majors and new curriculum in the classroom. The future of education in
America will be dependent on these partnerships in order to ensure that
education is relevant and affordable to the future students we welcome
each fall.
______
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you.
I now recognize Ms. Singer for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF PAULA R. SINGER, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE
OFFICER, LAUREATE GLOBAL PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
Ms. Singer. Good morning. I am Paula Singer, and I
appreciate the opportunity to speak today on behalf of Laureate
Education. We are a network of 72 institutions located in 30
countries serving almost 800,000 students.
Each of our institutions is unique in its mission and holds
the highest accreditation available within its country.
Laureate's institutions and our partner institutions share a
common commitment to making quality higher education accessible
and affordable.
With today's increasingly complex and demanding educational
environment, an increasing number of traditional institutions
could face financial challenges and decline in relevance.
Innovative partnerships and collaborations provide three
benefits; efficiency and cost savings for both an institution
and its students, access to capital, and speed to market.
In regards to cost, building new support services, a new
program development platform, or online infrastructure is a
major undertaking. At many institutions, the faculty or
administration has little or no prior experience in these
areas.
Starting from scratch can be inefficient, costly to the
student, and risky to the institution's reputation.
Partnerships can help eliminate these risks.
Second, we cannot overstate the importance right now of
private capital when governments are increasingly limited in
the resources that they can provide. Partnerships can help fill
these gaps.
Finally, speed is increasingly essential; speed to market
with the latest educational technology, access to data, and the
ability to use that data in a more efficient manner with
demonstrated outcomes for our students.
In this evolving higher education environment, no
institution should be standing still, and all of us -
institutions, governments, accreditors, and the providers of
capital--should be working together to turn these types of
opportunities into reality for students.
Alignment of the missions between the collaborating parties
is critical to realizing these three benefits. Some examples:
internationally, over a decade ago, Laureate provided the
University of Liverpool the ability to be an innovator in
international online education. Today, thousands of students
from 180 countries have access to a UK accredited education
formerly unavailable to them.
Laureate's recent initiative with top-ranked Monash
University in South Africa will advance our joint mission to
provide access to a greater number of underserved students in
sub-Saharan Africa.
In the U.S., Laureate worked with Johns Hopkins University
and Teach for America to deliver an online master's degree in
education. This program allowed Hopkins to quickly reach TFA
instructors around the country without the need to divert its
own capital, successfully realizing an important goal for all
three parties.
In Santa Fe, New Mexico, the state and local governments
initiated a partnership with Laureate to provide the resources
necessary to keep the oldest chartered college in the state
open and to ensure options for its students.
How regulators adapt and respond to these types of
innovative models will determine whether or not other
institutions are able to meet the rapidly changing needs of
their students and remain competitive.
We believe one of the most important partnerships in the
U.S. is the regulatory triad, which we support. Successful
partnerships are built with a good dose of trust and
transparency, and the role of each triad member needs to be
clarified and strengthened to allow for both.
Each third of the triad should rely more heavily on the
review and evaluation done by the other two-thirds. With
reauthorization now due, we are hopeful that the Congress will
examine ways to encourage these types of innovations, but only
while ensuring institutional integrity and accountability to
students.
We need to encourage innovation through regulation.
Uncertain, inconsistent, and inequitable regulation slows
innovation down right when we need speed. Instead, we strongly
support a regulatory structure based on demonstrated outcomes
applicable to all institutions.
Regulators in other countries face similar challenges in
higher education, and we are watching them adapt. The U.S.
needs to adapt too. This is critically important to the
competitiveness and success of our students and our country.
Thank you very much.
[The statement of Ms. Singer follows:]
Prepared Statement of Paula Singer, Chief Executive Officer,
Global Products and Services, Laureate Education, Inc.
Chairwoman Foxx, Ranking Member Hinojosa, and subcommittee members,
on behalf of Laureate Education (Laureate), I appreciate the invitation
to appear before the subcommittee on the important topic of ``Keeping
College Within Reach: Improving Access and Affordability through
Innovative Partnerships.'' I am Paula Singer, Chief Executive Officer
of Laureate's Division on Global Products and Services. I have served
in a number of senior leadership roles since joining Laureate and its
predecessor company, Sylvan, in 1993. The Global Products and Services
division, which I lead, includes Laureate's portfolio of international
online institutions and offerings, including our flagship U.S.
institution Walden University and those provided through partnerships.
I also oversee all campus-based institutions in our international
network that educate in the fields of hospitality, art, architecture,
and design. Finally, my division also includes all U.S. partnership
initiatives and our network products and services group, which offers
higher education best practices to institutions throughout our network.
I would like to provide the subcommittee with more information
about Laureate and its global presence in higher education. The
Laureate International Universities network includes 72 institutions
located in 30 countries, serving almost 800,000 students, approximately
600,000 of whom live in one of the 8 Latin American countries in which
we are located. Each of our institutions is unique in its offerings and
missions, and holds the highest accreditation available within their
country.
Although we operate under a corporate structure, we are a network
of institutions that act in essence as partners with a common
commitment to making quality higher education accessible and affordable
in the regions, countries, and localities in which each institution is
located. Laureate provides institutions in our network, as well as the
institutions with which we ``partner,'' with resources and best
practices to provide students the desired level of support services,
program offerings, and modern modalities of teaching.
Laureate, previously operating as Sylvan, began its work in higher
education in 1997 with acquisition of a company called Canter
Associates. With Canter, we focused on the professional development and
higher education of teachers in the classroom through agreements with
more than 30 institutions of higher education around the U.S. Our
additions of Universidad de Europea (UE) in Spain and Walden University
extended our commitment in this area. Since then, we have become the
largest global network of institutions providing access to a quality
higher education to the rising middle class around the world. We
continue our commitment to individuals who most need access, whether it
is through fully owned institutions, or through strategic alliances
with the types of institutions and organizations, like those I describe
below.
Given this experience, I am particularly appreciative of the
opportunity to speak about the impact of innovation on access and
affordability on institutions and their students, and the importance of
a regulatory structure that understands this connection. It is a topic
of immense importance to the future of higher education in the U.S. and
around the world. I will focus in particular on the use of
constructive, careful and effective partnerships and other
collaborative efforts\1\ with those institutions that seek or need
private capital, and/or services and resources in order to expand their
access and academic offerings to students. In our case, this also
includes the ability to provide institutions a global footprint--i.e.,
we provide institutions and their students access to other campuses
throughout the globe, without the cost and effort of building their own
facilities. Paramount to the success of these endeavors is the
fostering of an individual institution's existing mission and quality.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The use of the terms partnership or partner is not meant to
focus solely on the legal construct of a relationship. Instead, this
testimony is intended to recognize the importance of the full continuum
of possible relationships--from articulation agreements and other
contractual arrangements to different forms of partnerships and
affiliations.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
What Do These Strategic Alliances Provide an Institution?
In today's global education marketplace, without the ability to
innovate quickly, we believe an increasing number of traditional
institutions could face financial challenges and a decline in
relevance. Innovation occurs in many ways. Collaborative projects, like
partnerships, are just one example. They can be helpful by providing
efficiency and cost savings for both an institution and its students,
access to capital, and speed to market. I will briefly speak on each of
these.
First, regarding cost. Responding to the changing demographic and
needs of students can be expensive, particularly if the institution has
no prior experience in offering a certain service, program, or modality
for teaching. Building new support services, a new program development
platform, or online infrastructure is a major undertaking, and at many
institutions, the faculty or administration has little or no prior
experience in these areas. Reinventing the wheel or starting from
scratch can be inefficient, costly, and risky to the institution's
reputation. One way institutions can solve these problems is by turning
to others with the expertise and demonstrated best practices to assist
the institution.
Ultimately, this also results in cost-savings to the student who
otherwise might have these costs passed down to them in higher tuition.
Second, we cannot overstate the importance right now of private
capital in education. States and the federal government are
increasingly limited in the resources they can provide, and again, we
certainly want to protect the students from further increases in
tuition. Private capital from sources with deep understanding and
experience in higher education can be critically important to all types
of institutions--from the small community college to private nonprofit
college or large state system.
Finally, speed is increasingly essential: I am talking about speed
to market with the latest in educational technology, access to data,
and ability to educate in a more efficient manner with demonstrated
outcomes for our students, including the growing segment of working
professionals. Adapting quickly will be critically important to the
success of all institutions and to satisfying the needs of our students
and our country's economic demands. Speed in innovation is also
important to maintaining our institutions' ability to compete in a
global marketplace where institutions and students in other countries
are increasingly able to leap-frog over our own. With the knowledge and
best practices that an institution's ``partner'' provides, the
institution can accelerate what would otherwise be a lengthy build-out
process.
In this evolving higher education environment, no institution
should be standing still and all of us--all types of institutions,
government, accrediting agencies, and the providers of private
capital--should be working together--in partnership or otherwise--to
turn these types of opportunities into reality for students. We need to
be able to move as quickly and efficiently as possible, while at the
same time being careful that we don't jeopardize the student's academic
experience.
Laureate's Experience with Partnerships and Collaborative Relationships
With 72 institutions in 30 countries, Laureate's network of
institutions operates on a global scale, and Laureate has also had the
additional opportunity to work directly with many institutions outside
its network, regulators, governments, organizations, and foundations
around the globe. Over 15 years or so, we have learned that
partnerships and other endeavors like them are much more than just an
infusion of new capital. When entering into a partnership or some other
contractual relationship, it is essential that each partner fully
understands, supports, and respects the mission under which the
institution serves its students and the vision and purpose of the
arrangement. In our experience, the partners or parties we choose to
support are those that want to take the good education they already
provide and leverage it--often either through the introduction of
online education or new global locations or experiences or the
provision of new services or program offerings to their students.
These collaborative projects often include multiple types of
entities. This conversation should not be just about vendor-institution
relationships nor should the conversation be about one-to-one
relationships between two institutions. In many cases, local
government, foundations, or other sources of private capital are
important participants to a strategic alliance and to the successful
innovation of an institution. In each of our strategic alliances, our
goals and those of the institutions or organizations with whom we
engage are perfectly aligned in mission.
Let me provide some examples.
Arrangements Between Laureate and Other Institutions
University of Liverpool
For over a decade, Laureate has had an innovative and impactful
partnership with the UK's University of Liverpool. Liverpool is a
highly selective member of the UK's elite Russell Group of research-led
universities. It is ranked in the top 1% of world universities,
according to the QS World University Rankings for 2013.
Laureate is Liverpool's partner in delivering a suite of online
master's and doctoral degree programs. There are now approximately
10,000 students from more than 180 countries studying in these
programs. Liverpool retains full control of academic and admission
standards and for their student outcomes.
In addition, this partnership led to the creation of a third
institution in China, Xi'an Jiaotong Liverpool University (XJTLU),
founded in 2006. XJTLU is the result of a joint venture between four
entities: University of Liverpool, Laureate, a top-ranked public
university, and a regional private sector company in China. It was the
first institution of its type to be licensed by the PRC Government. It
has in excess of 7,500 students today and continues to grow rapidly. It
is widely acknowledged as the most successful Sino-Foreign provider in
China today.
Monash University
Laureate's most recent initiative with Monash South Africa (MSA)
represents our entry into sub-Saharan Africa and an opportunity to
provide greater access to students in that region. MSA is already a
leading institution in Johannesburg with 4,000 students. It is operated
by Monash University, one of Australia's top universities and is also
ranked in the top one percent of the world's universities by the 2012--
13 Times Higher Education World University Rankings.
Collaboration between Laureate, Other Institutions, and Other Third
Parties
At Laureate, we have found that including other non-educational
third parties in our partnerships also provides an opportunity to align
social missions and goals.
Laureate and the International Finance Corporation
Laureate and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which is
part of the World Bank, have partnered for a number of years to provide
capital to universities in Latin America. This year, the IFC made an
additional investment in Laureate in order for us to work together to
expand access to quality higher education in Sub-Saharan Africa. This
relationship provides the IFC an educational organization with which to
work and provides us additional capital so that both organizations,
together, can meet the same goals.
Laureate, Johns Hopkins, and Teach for America
In the U.S., Laureate began a three-way partnership this past fall
with The John Hopkins University and Teach for America (TFA) to deliver
an innovative online master's in education degree program. Under the
partnership, Teach for America teachers enroll in a customized Hopkins
degree program, where the curriculum is based on Teach for America
principles and pedagogy. Previously, Johns Hopkins offered just a
traditional ground-based master's program for TFA teachers who were
based in Baltimore, but the online delivery format provided by Laureate
allows Hopkins to reach TFA instructors around the country. This
program is ideally suited for TFA teachers who were excellent
undergraduate students and now want a master's degree from a top-ranked
institution but may lack access to one in the rural or urban school
district in which they teach.
Public-Private Initiatives Between Laureate and Government
Morocco and Saudi Arabia
Our projects in Morocco and Saudi Arabia demonstrate how private
sector higher education organizations can work together with
government, financing bodies, and industrial groups to create new
education models and meet employment demands within country.
The Universite Internationale de Casablanca (UIC) is the result of
a joint effort between Laureate, the Moroccan government, and the
Societe Maroc Emirats Arabes Unis de Developpement (SOMED). It is the
first private university in Morocco and in Casablanca and serves a
region that has a large demand for highly skilled workers. A new state-
of-the-art campus is being built there that will be able to accommodate
more than 12,000 students. We expect students enrolled at UIC to
benefit from being part of our network, and likewise, expect it will
provide opportunities to some of our already-existing students to study
abroad in Morocco.
In Saudi Arabia, we currently have a number of institutions created
through partnership with the government there, industrial groups, and
employers. One example is The Higher Institute for Water and Power
Technologies (HIWPT), founded in 2011, as a public-private initiative
launched by the government of Saudi Arabia to meet the increasing
demand for Saudi nationals in the power and water industry.
Laureate operates the institution through a joint venture with
Obeikan Research and Development, one of the largest industrial groups
in Saudi Arabia.
New Mexico: Santa Fe University of Art & Design
We have entered into arrangements with government in the United
States as well. The roots of Santa Fe University of Art & Design
(SFUAD) grow directly from New Mexico's oldest chartered college, St.
Michael's College, which was founded in 1859 and granted a charter
for higher education in 1874. In the 2000s, SFUAD (formerly the College
of Santa Fe) was struggling to remain viable. In September 2009, the
college's doors remained opened thanks to a private-public partnership
between Laureate Education, the state of New Mexico, and the City of
Santa Fe. This partnership was initiated by the state and local
government officials who saw the need to maintain higher education
options in their state and were not afraid to be innovative in their
approach.
The Importance of Partnership Between the U.S. Regulatory Triad and
with Institutions
How regulators adapt and respond to existing and new forms of
innovation in higher education will determine whether institutions are
able to meet the rapidly changing needs of students in the U.S. and to
remain competitive worldwide. With reauthorization of the Higher
Education Act now due, we are hopeful that Congress will examine ways
to allow for more innovation whether through collaborative
relationships or otherwise, while continuing to maintain the diversity
in our higher education system and to ensure a good return on
investment for students.
Of course, one of the most important partnerships in the U.S.
higher education system is the regulatory triad between accreditors and
the federal and state governments. I know that this committee has
discussed the triad in other hearings and that it is the subject of a
Senate HEA reauthorization hearing tomorrow. Successful partnerships
are built with a good dose of trust and transparency and the regulatory
construct is a partnership that needs to be clarified and strengthened
to allow for both. The triad should be strengthened to remove
unnecessary duplication and instead, each third of the triad should
rely more heavily on the review and evaluation done by the other two-
thirds.
The role of accreditors is critical to the success of any
partnership or other contractual arrangement in which an institution
enters. The accreditors' current focus on protecting institutional
mission and quality is not only appropriate--it is necessary. With our
own institutions and with our partner institutions, we have found our
goals and interest in continuous improvement and demonstrated results
to be consistent with those of our accreditors. Any changes to the
accreditation during HEA reauthorization need to ensure accreditors
have the right tools to understand and approve appropriate private
investment and to allow accreditors to distinguish proposals by
existing and established institutions or models.
In their new book, Frederick Hess and Michael Horn speak of the
relationship between regulation and the ability private enterprise has
to bring innovative power to education. They write that in the
regulatory environment ``transparency, appropriate regulation, sensible
policy, and good information on results and performance are * * * all
crucial elements to a healthy marketplace.'' They continue by noting
that policy-makers review private enterprise mostly in terms of good
versus evil.
I believe the existing federal regulatory framework that regulates
in part on tax status will become increasingly arbitrary, irrelevant
and difficult to apply as the student marketplace demands the types of
innovation and partnerships described above. We strongly support the
growing interest of federal policy-makers and others to create a
regulatory structure that is based on outcomes and demonstrations of
academic quality and financial responsibility across all of higher
education. We believe this model would be much more conducive to
innovation than our current construct.
In addition, during reauthorization, Congress should consider how
to adapt the manner by which regulators examine and interpret an
institution's financial capacity and responsibility in order not to
impede new innovative models, like partnerships. There should be
regulatory provisions that allow and encourage regulators to recognize
demonstrated and existing experience and quality in the marketplace,
such that they may better distinguish institutions during eligibility
and other decision-making. As higher education becomes even more
complex, ``one-size-fits all'' regulatory practices and decision-making
will not work.
We agree with concerns raised regarding the Department's use of the
current financial composite score formula and that this area needs some
restructuring, while, of course, continuing to prioritize the
protection of federal funds and students. The current construct has
unintended consequences in some situations because the regulations
largely rely on institutional structure as a gauge, rather than on
outcomes. I know that during the new gainful employment proceedings,
the Department will continue to consider new program approval
processes. While we understand and share the department's interest in
preventing the introduction of poor performing or unnecessary programs,
we believe that the Department needs to weigh that concern carefully
against the possibility that layering on new, duplicative regulation
may result in the stunting of the innovation and growth that we're
seeking to promote at this hearing today.
Regulators in other countries face similar changes in higher
education, and we are watching them adapt. It would be unfortunate if
other countries continue to adapt in education at a more rapid pace
than the U.S. It is essential that all of our regulators in the triad
have the right tools, level of understanding, and ability to adapt and
accept new innovative models as they arise. This is critically
important to the competitiveness and success of the students we all
serve.
Conclusion
I would like to thank the Chairwoman, the Ranking Member, and the
subcommittee for giving me the opportunity to testify. I look forward
to continuing to work with both Congress and the Administration on
higher education reform.
______
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you very much.
Dr. Baraniuk, I now recognize you for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF DR. RICH BARANIUK, PROFESSOR,
RICE UNIVERSITY, FOUNDER CONNEXIONS
Mr. Baraniuk. Thank you, Chairwoman Foxx, Ranking Member
Hinojosa, and members of the committee. I appreciate the
opportunity to be here today to speak with you about a new
approach we are developing at Rice University to lower the
costs of textbooks for college students.
As you know, the high and rapidly rising cost of textbooks
is a significant barrier to enrollment, persistence, and
success for millions of post-secondary students.
Since 1978, textbook costs have risen more than three times
the average increase of all goods and services in the consumer
price index. Indeed, the $300 textbook is near at hand and at
some locales, California community colleges for example, the
average cost of textbooks now exceeds the cost of tuition.
No wonder that a recent survey found that 70 percent of
college students forgo buying texts even though 78 percent of
those students believe that they will perform worse in their
course because of it.
Recently, new alternatives have arisen to address this
crisis of access. One example is massive open online courses or
MOOCs that we are going to hear about this morning. Today, I am
going to speak about another approach, one that is already
saving U.S. college students millions of dollars.
OpenStax College is a new nonprofit publisher based at Rice
University that is harnessing 14 years of experience and
expertise in open education to develop a library of 25 free,
high-quality textbooks for the highest impact college courses.
By high-impact, we mean those courses that combined high
enrollment with high textbooks costs.
OpenStax College textbooks are professionally authored and
are of the same quality as those from traditional publishers.
Our books are available for free 100 percent of the time in all
of the standard digital formats including web, PDF, and e-book
formats. The books are also available for very low cost in
print for those who prefer a hard copy.
OpenStax College published its first five books starting in
June 2012, College Physics, Introduction to Sociology, Anatomy
and Physiology, and two biology textbooks. Six more texts will
publish in the next 18 months.
We have been pleasantly surprised with the reaction from
students, educators, and administrators. In just over 1 year,
325 institutions nationwide have adopted our texts. This
represents 50,000 students who are saving money at community
colleges, 4-year colleges, and research universities. Examples
include the University of Texas, Pan American and North
Carolina A&T University, both who have adopted our physics
textbook.
In addition to formal adoptions our texts have been
downloaded more than 250,000 times and have been used on the
web by over 2 million unique learners.
We estimate that using our texts over the past year
students have saved in excess of $4.6 million which already
exceeds the cost of developing the first five titles.
In order to add value and sustain our free books, OpenStax
College has fostered an ecosystem of for-profit and nonprofit
partners who drive adoption and provide a way to return a
revenue stream to sustain our nonprofit long-term. Current
partners include John Wiley & Sons, Sapling Learning,
WebAssign, and the University of Michigan among others.
OpenStax College is also exploring partners with MOOC
providers to reduce barriers to student learning in such
settings. One example is the Coursera Introductory Biology MOOC
that UC Irvine is recommending our biology text.
The cost of authoring, marketing, and maintaining the
OpenStax College text has been underwritten by Rice University
and several philanthropic foundations including the Hewlett,
Gates, Arnold, Twenty Million Minds, Maxfield, Kazanjian, and
Lowenstein Foundations.
We employ a unique venture philanthropic funding model
where we pay back the investment of our foundation partners in
student savings. With free open textbooks, the return on
investment can be dramatic.
Assuming we reach a very conservative 10 percent market
share with our 25-book library, we estimate that we will save
1.2 million students over $120 million every year. Over a
decade, that is $1.2 billion in student savings, which is about
50 times the initial investment in developing the textbooks.
In closing, one could say that the textbook was the answer
to the educational challenges of the 19th century but it is the
bottleneck of the 21st century. New models for learning
materials like OpenStax College not only have the capability to
yield massive student savings but also provide a clear path
toward the revolutionary advance in the nation's and the
world's standard of education at all levels.
Thank you very much for your time today, and I am happy to
answer any questions that you might have.
[The statement of Mr. Baraniuk follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Rich Baraniuk, Professor,
Rice University, Founder Connexions
Summary
In 1911, Andrew Carnegie joined a movement to make knowledge more
accessible by institutionalizing the free public library as a resource
for lifelong learning for millions of people. One hundred years later,
technological advances have fueled a new disruption, with ramifications
now not only for access and efficiency, but also for efficacy. Since
1999, Rice University has offered free educational resources via
Connexions, a powerful e-textbook authoring and distribution platform.
Within the next two years, Rice's OpenStax College will complete a
library of 25 free, high-quality, on-line textbooks for the highest
impact college courses. All of the books will be available for free in
Connexions and on the OpenStax College website. At scale, OpenStax
College will save an estimated 1.2 million students approximately $120
million each year.
The access crisis
We tend to believe that all students have the opportunity to earn a
college degree through hard work in high school and college. But
because of record-high financial barriers, hard work is often not
enough.
The high--and rapidly rising--cost of traditional textbooks is a
significant barrier to enrollment, persistence and success for millions
of post-secondary students (see Figure 1). According to the GAO, first-
time, full-time college students spent an average of $886 at two-year
public colleges on books and supplies in 2003-2004, the equivalent of
72% of their tuition and fees. In some locales (California community
colleges, for example), the cost of textbooks now exceeds the cost of
tuition. No wonder a recent survey [R] found that 70% of college
students forgo buying texts, even though 78% of those students believe
they will perform worse in the course. The survey also found that 24%
of students take fewer credit hours due to the cost of textbooks.
Considering that 29% of community college students have an income under
$20,000, textbook costs can be a significant barrier to enrollment,
persistence, and performance.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Openstax College
Since 1999, Rice University has been developing new ways and means
of addressing the access crisis, starting with the Connexions open
education platform (cnx.org, more information below). OpenStax College
(see openstaxcollege.org) is harnessing this experience and expertise
to build a library of twenty-five free, high-quality textbooks for the
highest impact college courses (that combine high enrollments with high
textbook costs); see Table 1. In contrast to current textbook prices
that in some subjects are approaching $300, this library of titles will
be available for free to all students 100% of the time.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
OpenStax College textbooks are professionally authored and of the
same quality as a traditional publisher's textbook. Packaging high-
quality, turn-key educational content in a form familiar to faculty is
critical to its widespread adoption. In OpenStax College, both the
textbooks and the accompanying ancillaries (solutions manual, image
libraries, lecture slides, test bank) are available in widely accepted
digital formats, including free webview, PDF, and e-book formats and
low-cost print.
OpenStax College published its first five open textbooks starting
in June 2012 (see Figure 2). These texts, featuring professionally
developed, peer-reviewed content under the guidance of prestigious
editorial boards, have been met with positive media reaction [M]. As of
September 2013, adoptions have increased to over 335 institutions
representing 50,000 students at community colleges, four-year colleges,
and research universities. In addition to formal adoptions, the texts
have been downloaded from the OpenStax College website more than
250,000 times and used on the web by over 2 million unique learners.
Together, formal and informal adoptions have already saved students in
excess of $4.6 million, which exceeds the cost of developing the texts.
Six more textbooks will publish over the next 18 months (see Figure 2).
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
OpenStax College has fostered an ecosystem of for-profit and non-
profit partners (companies providing computer-based homework sets, for
example) that both help drive adoption and provide a way to return
revenue to sustain the initiative long term. Current partners include
Apple, John Wiley and Sons, Sapling Learning, WebAssign, Expert TA,
Veritas Tutors, SimBio and the University of Michigan.
OpenStax College is exploring partnerships with Massively Open
Online Course (MOOC) providers such as edX and Coursera to reduce
barriers to student learning in online settings. One example is the
Coursera Introductory Biology MOOC from UC Irvine [I]. (Beware that the
term ``open'' in MOOC denotes ``open enrollment'' and not necessarily
that the learning resources are open licensed or even free. Indeed,
some MOOCs require or suggest that students purchase an expensive
traditional textbook as part of the course.)
The cost of authoring, marketing, and maintaining the OpenStax
College textbooks has been underwritten by Rice University and by
grants from philanthropic foundations, including the William and Flora
Hewlett Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Laura
and John Arnold Foundation, the Twenty Millions Minds Foundation, the
Maxfield Foundation, the Calvin Kazanjian Foundation, the Leon
Lowenstein Foundation. In return for the foundations' venture
philanthropic investment, OpenStax College aims to make returns in
terms of student savings. The return on investment can be dramatic.
With even modest market penetration, free, high-quality textbooks can
produce benefits many times the value of an equivalent sum invested in
scholarships. A one-time investment to create a textbook produces
student savings year after year; a scholarship must be funded annually.
More specifically, assuming just a 10% market share, the 25-title
OpenStax College library will save 1.2 million students over $120
million every year.
The open road ahead
We live in an increasingly connected world, yet our educational
systems cling to the disconnected past. Moving forward, OpenStax
College will enable not only student savings but also new mechanisms to
democratize education by interconnecting ideas, learners, and
instructors in new kinds of constructs that replace traditional
textbooks, courses, and certifications. More generally, the open
education movement has real potential to realize the dream of providing
not only universal access to all of world's knowledge but also all the
tools required to acquire it. The result will be a revolutionary
advance in the nation's and world's standard of education at all
levels. And the ``perfect storm'' resulting from the combination of the
global financial downturn and powerful new communication and
information technologies means the future will likely arrive much
sooner than we think. Clearly the education world is in for a
turbulent, yet fruitful next decade.
appendix: open textbooks and connexions
The textbook was the answer to the educational challenges of the
19th century, but it is the bottleneck of the 21st century. The
textbook of today remains static, linear in organization, time-
consuming to develop, soon out-of-date, and expensive. Moreover, a
textbook provides only ``off the rack'' learning that doesn't cater to
the background, interests, and goals of individual students.
Communication and information technologies give us a golden opportunity
to reinvent the textbook.
Open Educational Resources (OER) include text, images, audio,
video, interactive simulations, problems and answers, and games that
are free to use and re-use in new ways by anyone around the world. The
key elements of OER are:
open copyright licenses like the Creative Commons licenses
(creativecommons.org) that turn educational materials into living
objects that can be continuously developed, remixed, and maintained by
a worldwide community of authors and editors; and
information technologies like the Internet and Web, which
enable easy digital content re-organization and virtually free content
distribution.
The OER approach to textbooks provides several key opportunities,
including:
bringing people back into the educational equation. Those
who have been ``shut out'' of the traditional publishing world, like
talented K-12 teachers, community college instructors, and scientists
and engineers in industry can add tremendous diversity and depth to the
educational experience.
reducing the high cost of teaching materials. In many US
states, college students now spend more on textbooks than tuition.
reducing the time lag between producing learning materials
and getting them into students' hands. Many books are already out-of-
date by the time they are printed. This is particularly problematic in
fast-moving areas of engineering, science, and medicine.
enabling re-use, re-contextualization, and customization
such as translation and localization of course materials into myriad
different languages and cultures. This is critical if we are to reach
the entire world's population, where clearly ``one size does not fit
all'' for education.
Several OER projects are already attracting millions of users per
month. Some, like MIT OpenCourseWare (ocw.mit.edu) are top-down-
organized institutional repositories that showcase their institutions'
curricula. Others, like Wikipedia (wikipedia.org), are grassroots
organized and encourage contributions from all comers.
In 1999, Rice University founded Connexions (cnx.org) with three
primary goals: to convey the interconnected nature of knowledge across
disciplines, courses, and curricula; to move away from a solitary
authoring, publishing, and learning process to one based on connecting
people into open, global learning communities that share knowledge; and
to support personalized learning (more on this below). Over the last
fourteen years, Connexions has grown into one of the largest and most
used OER platforms; each month millions of users access over 22000
educational ``building blocks'' and 1300 e-textbooks (September 2013).
In addition to web and e-book outputs, a sophisticated print-on-demand
system enables the production of inexpensive paper books for those who
prefer or need them at a fraction of the cost of conventional publisher
books. Contributions come from authors worldwide in over 40 languages,
including Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Afrikaans. Siyaula
(cnx.org/lenses/siyavula) is developing a complete K-12 curriculum for
South Africa. Vietnam is using Connexions as a faculty development tool
(voer.edu.vn). Professional societies like the IEEE are advancing their
global educational outreach and inreach through content development and
peer review (ieeecnx.org).
references
[B] R. G. Baraniuk, ``Opening education,'' The Bridge, National Academy
of Engineering, Vol. 43, No. 2, 2013. Available online at
http://www.nae.edu/Publications/Bridge/81221/81237.aspx
[I] A. Williams and D. O'Dowd, ``Introductory Biology: DNA to
Organisms,'' UC Irvine course on Coursera.
Available online at https://www.coursera.org/course/introbiology
[M] OpenStax College New Coverage. Available online at http://
openstaxcollege.org/news
[P] M. J. Perry, ``The college textbook bubble and how the `open
educational resources' movement is going up against the
textbook cartel,'' Carpe Diem Blog, American Enterprise
Institute. 24 December 2012.
[R] M. Redden, ``7 in 10 students have skipped buying a textbook
because of its cost, survey finds,'' Chronicle of Higher
Education, 23 August 2011. Available online at http://
chronicle.com/article/7-in-10-Students-Have-Skipped/128785
______
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you very much.
Dr. Isbell, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF DR. CHARLES LEE ISBELL, JR., PROFESSOR AND SENIOR
ASSOCIATE DEAN, COLLEGE OF COMPUTING, GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF
TECHNOLOGY
Mr. Isbell. Madam Chair, Ranking Member, distinguished
members of the subcommittee and of this panel, thank you for
the opportunity to appear here today.
As requested by the subcommittee, my testimony today will
explain the origin and intent of Georgia Tech's new online
Master of Science in Computer Science degree. I would like to
convey why we have chosen this particular path and to place the
degree in the context of the wider landscape of higher
education.
Georgia Tech has a decades-long tradition of delivering
high-value educational opportunities to students at all points
of the demographic spectrum.
For many years, Georgia Tech's professional education unit
has led our efforts to reach out to nontraditional students
through distance learning and other specialized programs.
Two years ago we created the Center for 21st-Century
Universities to serve as a living laboratory for new
pedagogical practices, particularly those focused on
technology.
It is in that context that earlier this spring Georgia Tech
made its boldest move to date in online education with the
announcement of a Master's of Science in Computer Science
delivered through the new MOOC-based platform, or OMSCS.
Offered in collaboration with Udacity and AT&T, the OMSCS
is the first attempt by any accredited university to deliver a
full degree program completely through the massive online
format and at an estimated cost of less than $7,000 for the
entire degree for most students.
The question I get asked often is why are we doing this.
Put simply, we are doing it because we can and because we
should. So why should we? Rising student costs for higher
education threaten enrollments at a growing number of
institutions.
Structural shifts in the economy have simultaneously
created a sizable population of un-or underemployed workers in
need of affordable education and training. At the same time,
there has been a growing demand for a larger technological
workforce. Part of our mission at Georgia Tech is to create
such a workforce.
So how is it that we can manage to do this? Fundamentally,
technology has made feasible and affordable the delivery of
elite quality education, not only through the proliferation and
penetration of broadband internet, but through affordable and
portable recording technology, through collaboration tools that
allow teams of experts necessary to create and support these
courses to work across large distances, and through online
social networking that allows students themselves to self-
organize.
The facts together allow us to lower overhead and to take
advantage of scales to offer not only a higher-quality degree,
but an affordable one.
Even with this new technology, the OMSCS would not be
happening right now without the critical support and
collaboration of Georgia Tech's partners in Udacity and AT&T.
AT&T's technical workforce represents a key constituency for
this degree, and AT&T has provided critical startup funding
with an unrestricted gift to Georgia Tech.
Udacity meanwhile brings more than a mature delivery
platform. Its approach to course development and leadership in
massive online education made it the right fit at the right
time to help support our MOOC-based degree.
Our top concern is, and will always remain, degree program
quality. If we cannot offer a Master's in Computer Science
whose rigor is as good as that of Georgia Tech's on-campus
program, we simply will not continue to offer the degree.
To that end, we will start relatively small to test the
additional infrastructure that the OMSCS requires and then ramp
up as we understand how to scale while maintaining the quality
that our students deserve.
Ultimately, we hope that this approach will allow us to
reach a much broader set of students, particularly
nontraditional ones who are unable to invest the time to attend
the 2-to 3-year program on campus.
Eventually, we hope to support multiple credentialing paths
offering professional certificates and other course credit so
the students have a range of options that fit their needs.
Those are the goals that we have set for ourselves.
Accomplishing these goals requires a tremendous level of
coordination among dozens of professionals in Atlanta and Palo
Alto, where Udacity is based.
It requires a public university located in the southeast
finding ways to work smoothly with a private company on the
West Coast negotiating time zones, state and federal
regulations, accreditation considerations, faculty and staff
schedules, production capacities, and any number of other
activities with everyone pointed in the same direction for a
program launch in January of 2014.
In conclusion, let me add that Georgia Tech does not
believe that MOOCs are a silver bullet for all the challenges
that face higher education. We are in a period of innovation,
it is true. We are also in a period of examination.
We envision a future where MOOCs and other yet-to-be-found
innovations will complement traditional education at all levels
from high school to college to graduate school and beyond.
Such a world will offer a much richer and more practical
menu of educational choices for people of all ages, which we
believe will result in a better educated and more productive
society.
On behalf of the Georgia Institute of Technology, I thank
you very much for your time and attention today, and I look
forward to our discussion and to working with you to help
achieve our common educational goals.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
[The statement of Mr. Isbell follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Charles Isbell, Georgia Institute of
Technology
Madam Chair, Ranking Member Hinojosa, and distinguished members of
this panel, my name is Dr. Charles Isbell and I am the Senior Associate
Dean for the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. Thank you for the
opportunity to appear before this Subcommittee to discuss how Georgia
Tech is improving access and affordability through innovative
partnerships.
As requested by the Subcommittee, my testimony today will:
1. Describe Georgia Tech's experience and impact in the use of
technology to advance the quality of higher education
2. Explain the origin, intent, structure and implementation of
Georgia Tech's new Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMS
CS) degree
3. Contextualize the OMS CS degree within the broader landscape of
higher education innovation and technological disruption
Madam Chair, as you and your fellow Subcommittee members well know,
the combination of rising cost pressures in higher education and
exciting new technologies is sparking some thrilling examples of
innovation in this sector. Structural shifts in the economy--such as an
increased emphasis on nontraditional students and lifelong learning
paths--have brought to the forefront the need to adapt our educational
system to new norms.
You might have read this past Sunday in the Washington Post that
the ``traditional'' student now comprises only about a third of current
college enrollments. The rest are a mix of older students, working
students, students with families to support, students without formal
high school degrees, and others whose educational needs historically
have been under-addressed.
Georgia Tech has a decades-long tradition of delivering high-value
educational opportunities to students at all points of the demographic
spectrum. Last year Georgia Tech Professional Education enrolled more
than 30,000 students across a curriculum that includes everything from
K-12 outreach programs to online and professional master's degrees,
including a new program to help transition veterans into the workforce.
Professional Education delivers individual courses on everything from
high school calculus to foreign languages, civil engineering to signal
processing, web development to Six Sigma--and many more subjects in
between. In 2012, Professional Education's reach extended to 82 sites
in 67 cities, spanning 23 states and seven countries.
Professional Education partners with NASA to operate the agency's
Electronic Professional Development Network (ePDN), offering both NASA-
specific certificate programs and free online professional development
programs for K-12 teachers in several STEM fields. Nearly 1,500
students took advantage of ePDN opportunities in fiscal 2012.
It is in that spirit that over the past two years, Georgia Tech has
invested significantly in the promise of ``massive-online'' education.
In 2011 we created the Center for 21st Century Universities, or C21U,
led by one of country's foremost thought leaders in higher ed
innovation (and former dean of our College of Computing), Rich DeMillo.
C21U's role is to serve as living laboratory for new pedagogical
practices, particularly those related to technology.
The center spearheaded Georgia Tech's early and highly successful
entry into the world of massive open online courses (MOOCs) through our
2012 partnership with online education provider Coursera. As part of
the second cohort of elite universities working with Coursera, Georgia
Tech is responsible for some 20 course offerings that together have
drawn more than 450,000 students in just 14 months. One of 77
institutions working with Coursera, Georgia Tech accounts for more than
10 percent of the company's overall enrollment.
With funding provided by the Gates Foundation, Georgia Tech has
produced three Coursera courses that push the boundaries of the format,
bringing MOOCs into the liberal arts and lab sciences. These courses--
First-Year English Composition, Introductory Physics (with lab) and
Introduction to Psychology as a Science--have attracted some 48,000
enrollments. And one of Coursera's most popular courses is taught by a
Georgia Tech Computing professor, Tucker Balch. More than 100,000
students have enrolled in Professor Balch's Computational Investing
course over three offerings, the most recent of which began three weeks
ago.
Earlier this spring, Georgia Tech made its boldest move to date in
online education with the announcement of an online Master of Science
in Computer Science delivered through a MOOC-based platform (OMS CS),
offered in collaboration with Udacity and AT&T. First conceived in Fall
2012 by Georgia Tech College of Computing Dean Zvi Galil and Udacity
founder Sebastian Thrun, OMS CS is the first attempt by any accredited
university in the world to deliver a full degree program completely
through the massive-online format--and at an estimated cost of less
than $7,000 for most students. Announced in May, OMS CS is set to
launch in January 2014 with its first cohort of fully qualified,
degree-seeking graduate students.
While OMS CS represents an opportunity to dramatically expand
access, through both cost and delivery method, to an elite-quality
education for students around the world, it also comes at no small risk
to Georgia Tech. For every believer in the potential of massive-online
education, there is an equally confident skeptic who maintains that
this format could undermine the foundation of higher education and
cheapen its value to students. OMS CS was supported by three-quarters
of College of Computing faculty and approved at every level of the
University System of Georgia; however, we acknowledge there are
skeptics even on our own campus. Finally, given the level of media
coverage OMS CS has received in just four months, failure would occur
on a large, brightly lit stage.
So why are we doing this? Put simply, we are doing it because we
can and because we should.
Why should we? Rising student costs for higher education threaten
enrollments at a growing number of institutions. Structural shifts in
the economy have simultaneously created a sizable population of un- or
underemployed workers in need of affordable education and training
together with a strong demand for a larger technological workforce.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate
for technology professionals nationwide stands at about three and a
half percent--roughly half the overall rate. Over the past decade,
employment in the IT sector has increased by 37 percent, and during the
recent recession, the Bureau estimates that the technology industry
lost only 1 percent of its workforce.
These factors present an opportunity to apply Georgia Tech's
official motto: Progress and Service. OMS CS addresses both parts of
this motto. As the first in the world to try this approach, Georgia
Tech intends to put real force behind the advancement of higher
education through technology. And the program's ultra-low cost,
combined with its availability to students anywhere in the world
through the Internet, promises to expand the global population of
trained computing professionals.
How can we? Technology has made feasible and affordable the
delivery of elite-quality education, not only through the proliferation
and penetration of the broadband internet, but through affordable and
portable recording technology; through collaboration tools that allow
the teams of experts necessary to create these courses to work across
large distances; and through online social-networking that allows
students themselves facility to self-organize across distance.
In the Institute's view, a Master's degree in computer science also
represents a natural first pilot in massive-online degrees. The
Master's degree is often a professional degree that emphasizes learning
through rigorous and structured coursework, as opposed to the rigorous
but highly unstructured research experiences of the doctoral student.
Master's students are often older and have the maturity and discipline
to self-motivate, traits that are critical to student success in a MOOC
environment. Finally, computing as a field is amenable to the MOOC
format, as much of its related coursework can be evaluated using
objective, large-scale processes.
Of course, OMS CS would not be happening right now without the
critical support and collaboration of Georgia Tech's partners in
Udacity and AT&T. An unrestricted $2 million gift from AT&T provided
critical startup funding, and the company continues to play a central
role in the program's development. A senior AT&T human resources
executive chairs the OMS CS advisory board, and AT&T will propose
course projects for OMS CS students--subject to the approval of Georgia
Tech faculty--and strengthen its own workforce with OMS CS graduates.
By supporting this program both financially and through its continued
participation, AT&T has strongly demonstrated a forward-thinking
commitment to improving education through innovation.
Udacity, meanwhile, is much more than a delivery vehicle for OMS
CS. Its approach to course development and leadership in massive-online
education made it the right fit to help support our MOOC-based degree.
Founder Sebastian Thrun taught one of the world's first MOOCs, in
artificial intelligence, as a Professor of Computer Science at Stanford
University. At Udacity he has created a focused, highly interactive
approach to MOOC education, with course segments that continually
reinforce learning through micro-quizzes and other exercises built into
the course content itself. These innovations have led to significantly
higher retention and academic performance rates when compared to other
MOOC offerings.
In spite of the anticipated quality of OMS CS courses, both Georgia
Tech and Udacity acknowledge that the program will not succeed without
achieving a scale far beyond that of a traditional program. Udacity-
style MOOC development is resource-intensive in terms of both dollars
and personnel time, and OMS CS course content will be supplemented by a
human infrastructure much larger than those supporting campus classes.
Program price is both the engine and outcome of necessary scale.
The expected price of $6,600--which is actually higher than many
students will pay, because overall cost depends on the time students
take to complete the degree--is critical to attracting sufficient
numbers of students to cover the high initial fixed costs, and
sustainable program scale also will enable OMS CS to remain at an
attractively low price to students.
We have identified a critical educational need in society, found
two brave and committed collaborators, and sketched out a compelling
vision for how OMS CS will function at full scale. So how do we get
started? At Georgia Tech, the College of Computing and Professional
Education are taking the lead in marshaling forces from across campus
to build the infrastructure necessary to support a program like this.
We are working with dedicated colleagues, who are devoting significant
time to OMS on top of their existing responsibilities, in units such as
admissions, financial aid, the bursar's office, information technology,
identity management, accounting and finance, communications,
assessment, compliance and many others.
As for the curriculum, a half-dozen faculty from the College of
Computing are working with Udacity developers and instructional
designers to create the first OMS CS courses for January's launch. We
anticipate offering five courses at launch:
Advanced Operating Systems
Computer Networking
Software Development
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence for Robotics
We anticipate that approximately 100 students will be admitted into
each course, though our enrollment plans are made difficult by the fact
that we cannot fully anticipate the number of qualified students who
will apply. This program has no comparable offering in the educational
marketplace against which to gauge demand. As stated previously, our
estimates for long-term demand are driven not just by current CS
enrollments around the world, but by our belief that a low-cost,
accessible degree will significantly expand the global pool of
prospective students.
Assuming demand scales as anticipated, we will start small to test
the additional infrastructure OMS CS requires, then ramp up gradually
over a three-year implementation period. This implementation will
involve not only the full Master of Science degree program but also
additional credentialing options that will accommodate a range of
student preferences. Not every student wants or needs a full-fledged
graduate degree--offering professional certificates and transferable
credit for individual courses gives students a range of options while
distributing the financial risk across multiple program tracks.
As we venture into this brave new world of massive-online
education, our top concern is and will remain degree program quality.
If we cannot offer a Master's in computer science whose rigor equals
that of Georgia Tech's on-campus program, we will not continue to offer
the degree. Further, our metrics for quality will not simply apply to
course content--students must receive adequate support for success.
They must be provided application, registration and payment procedures
that function smoothly and enable them to focus their attention on
academics. They must have access to trained, knowledgeable staff and
teaching assistants who can help them navigate both the intricacies of
computer science and the technology being used to teach it.
Those are the goals we have set for ourselves. Accomplishing those
goals requires a tremendous level of coordination among dozens of
professionals in Atlanta and Palo Alto, Calif., where Udacity is based.
It requires a public university on the East Coast finding ways to work
smoothly with a private company on the West Coast, negotiating time
zones, state and federal regulations, accreditation considerations,
faculty and staff schedules, production capacities and innumerable
other activities--everyone pointed in the same direction, toward
program launch on Jan. 15, 2014.
As I mentioned earlier, Georgia Tech believes there are very
specific reasons why a Master's degree in computer science will succeed
in the massive-online format, and we further believe that this mode of
delivery will have an important role in a diverse, technologically
enhanced future for higher education.
Having said that, we do not believe that MOOCs are a ``silver
bullet'' for the challenges that face higher education. Georgia Tech
built its international reputation on the acreage of its physical
campuses in Atlanta and around the world, and we do not believe online
degrees can easily replace the residential experience. We envision a
future where MOOCs and other, yet-to-be-found innovations will
complement traditional education at all levels, enabling high school
graduates to enter college better prepared, college students to
maximize the value of the time they spend on campus, and career
professionals to continually update their skills and qualifications
with high-quality, accessible content. Such a world will offer a much
richer and more practical menu of educational choices for people of all
ages, which we believe will result in a better trained and more
productive society.
In conclusion, let me add that one of MOOCs' most important
contributions to education is that they have engendered necessary
conversations among all the constituencies of higher education. What
does it mean to teach? What are the critical components of learning?
How can we leverage technology to bring quality, effective education to
the greatest number of people possible?
We have been exploring these questions at Georgia Tech for a long
time. And I for one feel privileged to be part of one our most daring
efforts yet in search of answers. On behalf of the Georgia Institute of
Technology, I thank you very much for your time and attention today,
and I look forward to working with you to help achieve our common
educational goals in service of this great nation.
Thank you, Madam Chair. This concludes my testimony.
online resources
Georgia Institute of Technology: www.gatech.edu
Georgia Tech College of Computing: www.cc.gatech.edu
Georgia Tech Professional Education: www.pe.gatech.edu
Udacity: www.udacity.com
AT&T Dynamic Solutions for Education: http://www.corp.att.com/edu/
Online Master of Science in Computer Science: www.omscs.gatech.edu
Charles Isbell: Georgia Institute of Technology
Sept. 18, 2013, hearing: ``Keeping College Within Reach: Improving
Access and Affordability Through Innovative Partnerships''
Charles Isbell: Georgia Institute of Technology
Sept. 18, 2013, hearing: ``Keeping College Within Reach: Improving
Access and Affordability Through Innovative Partnerships''
______
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you, Dr. Isbell.
Thanks to all of you for your very informative testimony. I
will be inviting each member of the subcommittee to ask
questions of you and I am going to begin with myself, and we
will have 5 minutes. The clock will be working in the same way,
so I would ask that you pay attention to that.
Ms. Singer, how does the regulatory structure in the United
States slowdown implementation of innovative partnerships? How
is that a detriment to schools trying to implement these types
of arrangements in a rapidly-evolving higher education
landscape? And in your written testimony, you allude to the
fact that our competition from other countries is a real
problem.
So if you would talk a little bit more about that in
answering the question, I would appreciate it.
Ms. Singer. Certainly. I would say that our experience has
been not that regulation is really prohibiting a partnership,
it is just not helping it.
What is happening with these kinds of partnerships that we
are involved with is that they are very complex and I have to
tell you, sometimes I feel very sorry for both the department
and accreditors and state officials who are trying to
understand them.
They are complex. They want to do the right thing by the
student, and so what is really happening is we kind of get
slowed down. There isn't the knowledge of how to handle some of
these.
I think we are at a stage where, while people really want
to help and do the innovation, there is not enough education
about them. So I think an openness to this, perhaps even some
staff that might know a little bit more about complicated
partnerships or at least resources to do that.
I would also encourage demonstration projects. I know that
when we were first starting online, the demonstration projects
were excellent in terms of us really experimenting in finding
out how online could be helpful in a way that was responsible.
So I think while there is not big barriers, there is just
not the encouragement of it and the complexity is what is
slowing us down. Demonstration projects would help a bit too.
Worldwide, we are seeing lots of different innovation that
is happening, and I think part of the advantage that some other
countries have over us about things is that they are not set in
a particular way.
Yes, we have the best higher education system in the world
and it is still valued that way, but they are fast coming on
board, watching what we do, and leapfrogging because they are
not wedded to certain bureaucratic ways of doing things or
certain investments that they have made. Those are the things
we have observed.
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you very much.
Dr. Isbell, what did you have to do to get programmatic
approval from your accreditor? Is there anything you have to do
differently compared to a traditional program at Georgia Tech
to comply with federal law or regulations, and did this impede
the college mission?
Mr. Isbell. At this point, the answer is we haven't had to
do much very different. The biggest problem that we have had in
working with our accreditor is the ambiguity in the rules.
We had a very long, hour-long conversation with people from
SACS, which is the accreditor for the southeastern region of
the United States, to work with us on what exactly it is that
we meant by this degree and whether we were actually going to
be able to go forward with it without having a full visit.
Georgia Tech is up for reaffirmation of its accreditation
in the next year, and they promised to come and to look very
carefully at what we are doing.
I think the good news is that everyone is on the same page
and that we are all trying to do the right thing together. They
want to do what is best for the students. We want to do what is
best for the students.
The difficulty arises in the complexity of our
relationships and that it isn't very clear what it means in
today's society for someone to own a platform or for someone to
own the curriculum in the education.
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you both very much.
Dr. Docking, we have just about a minute, but if you could
very quickly explain how you restructured your administrative
offices and what businesses you have entered into agreements
with, and what types of jobs are students getting as a result,
and are those jobs reflective of the local economy.
Mr. Docking. Yes, Chairwoman Foxx. Essentially, what we did
administratively was we layered a business model on top of a
higher education institution by asking two very simple
questions--how much does it cost to run this institution and
how many students do we need to have at this institution to
make it work?
That number came back at 1,400 students. So we then put
several strategic investments in place in which we knew how
much each investment was going to bring in in terms of
students. So even something like a student symphony--if you
have a recruiter who has responsibilities for the symphony, you
can then hold them accountable.
The relationships that we have gotten in with have to
support our local community in Southeast Michigan because most
of our kids are from Michigan--about 80 percent. They would
like to stay in Michigan, and so they need to be ready for the
Michigan workforce.
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you very much. My time has expired.
Mr. Hinojosa, I recognize you for 5 minutes.
Mr. Hinojosa. Thank you.
I want to commend each one of you because I hear lots of
panelists at congressional hearings that we have had and each
and every one of you have really stimulated my mind as to how
exciting it would be to have you just spend 1 month with each
member of this education committee so that we could learn from
you and be able to kick forward these new ideas that you all
are presenting.
I would like to start my first question to someone from my
State of Texas, Rich Baraniuk.
Can you elaborate on the number of ways in which the open
educational resources approach to textbooks can benefit
students and reduce college costs?
Mr. Baraniuk. I think that--thank you very much for the
question. There are a number of ways that open educational
resources are benefiting students right now.
The first is the fact that the resources are free, which
means that some of the most at-risk students in America have
access to resources in order to study, to be able to advance
their learning outcomes, to be able to actually work on their
homework at night or at their job when they are taking classes.
So the first is access.
The second really critical item behind open educational
resources is the fact that they can be customized to the local
context of the individual institution.
So a faculty member can customize so that his or her class
has the perfect textbook, if you will, that reaches their
students, their context, their background, so that they can
optimize their learning outcomes.
So this combination of free access and also openness that
allows the materials to be customized by faculty is a very
powerful combination.
Mr. Hinojosa. Let me put a face on this question. I had an
intern this summer by the name of Maria. She comes from my
congressional district from a family of four children and she
is at Rice University getting a masters and doctoral degree at
the same time. Can she use your textbooks and be able to get
all the credits that Rice will give so that she can get her
degrees?
Mr. Baraniuk. So that the key thing is that we are--
OpenStax College is a publishing initiative and so we aim to
lower the cost on the learning material side of the equation.
Of course the total cost of the student attending college
includes other costs like tuition, fees, et cetera, but there
is ample evidence that in many locales the cost of the
textbooks is a very significant percentage of the total cost.
So we aim to reduce that part down to zero.
Mr. Hinojosa. Thank you.
Ms. Singer, I read your material, and it is really exciting
to be able to say that you are serving 800,000 students. Tell
me. How do graduation rates for online programs developed
jointly by Laureate and universities typically compare to the
universities' traditional on-campus programs?
Ms. Singer. Our retention rates compare very favorably. We
started very carefully when we went into online, and we worked
mostly at the graduate level. We don't think that online is a
panacea and we don't think online should be used for every
student.
So we work very much at--36 percent of our students who are
at the doctoral level, and online is just fabulous for them in
terms of their research. So we have very, very competitive
retention rates and very strong cohort default rates. So I feel
that the programs do both the quality end of it----
Mr. Hinojosa. Your answer is music to my ears because we
are trying to increase the numbers of Latinos and Latinas doing
masters and doctoral programs, and looking at your material, it
seems to me that it would really work with us.
So tell me. Can we use some of the federal monies that are
available like Pell Grants and other scholarships for these
Latinos and Latinas to take advantage of what you just said?
Ms. Singer. Yes, absolutely. For the undergraduate programs
that we offer and actually--one of our institutions is National
Hispanic University in San Jose, California, and of course, we
have such a strong connection with Latin America----
Mr. Hinojosa. Why not the masters and doctoral programs?
Ms. Singer. Because they are focused on the undergraduate
programs. They have access to all of the loans.
Mr. Hinojosa. Do you plan to add the masters and doctoral
programs?
Ms. Singer. I think if we are targeting--I mean, that is a
big concern as a nation, being sure we reach this fast-growing
population. I think we should make those kinds of things
available.
Mr. Hinojosa. Thank you.
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you.
Dr. Heck, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Heck. Thank you, Madam Chair.
And thank you all for being here and for the presentations
this morning.
Dr. Docking, it is kind of amazing, the renaissance I
guess, that Adrian went through from 2005 to 2013, and a lot of
the strategic investments that were made to make that happen.
Can you tell me, what was the trajectory of the tuition and
fees at the college during that time period?
Mr. Docking. We have raised tuition and fees around 4 or 5
percent. However, I should also add that our financial aid has
gone up on an even higher trajectory. So we have put in more in
financial aid than we have charged students.
Mr. Heck. And I was interested in the meeting that was had
by the CEOs and the small college presidents to identify the
talent gap. I think that is something that is critical. A lot
that this committee has looked at is making sure that we are
investing resources to prepare future students for the jobs
that will be as opposed to the jobs that were.
What did you do, or what did that group of college
presidents do with that information once they identified the
talent gap?
Mr. Docking. Well, what the CEOs--let me start with what
they said they needed. What they said they needed were problem
solvers, people that are critical thinkers, people that can
work in teams. And the thing that really distinguishes our type
of institution from so many others is our size, which makes us
very nimble.
So we took that back. Our academic affairs vice presidents
looked at it, have already worked with professors to work it
into the curriculum and to do the types of things that we need
to do to prepare students for what these CEOs said they wanted.
Mr. Heck. And so, did that go back and change the actual
curriculums or was it in some of the delivery models? What was
done----
Mr. Docking. Well, both. Both the curriculum and the
delivery model. Again, you can do things so quickly in a school
with 1,700 students that it really only takes a couple of
meetings and those changes can be made.
And so yes, all of that was done. How we deliver it, even
the types of experiential education opportunities the kids get.
We are very, very big on sending kids off-campus and giving
them an opportunity to do rather than simply just learn in the
classroom.
Mr. Heck. Thank you.
Ms. Singer, in your written testimony you expressed some
concern that with a regulatory framework that somewhat is based
in part on tax status, and also you reference the regulatory
triad and the speed to market. How do you link those things
together?
I know it is very important, as was discussed by Dr.
Docking, about being able to react to changes in the academic
environment, to be able to have a speed to market. How does the
regulatory framework, specifically perhaps the framework
relating the part related to tax status or the regulatory
triad, impede or facilitate your ability to have speed to
market?
Ms. Singer. Yes, thanks for the question.
I think when we look at the triad, the facilitation can
happen if--I am talking about trust and transparency. It is
interesting. That is what is good about partnerships to begin
with. That is what you have to have.
And so I think what happens for us is that sometimes there
is ambiguity. Ambiguity in the regulation is probably more of
an issue. Uncertainty, more of an issue because then you
hesitate.
Should we be doing this? Is it okay? Is it not okay? It is
complicated. Are we going to be able to move? And then that
hesitation stops us from moving forward in a way that might
find new innovative ideas and implement right away on that.
And I think your comment about tax status, you know, being
in my position in my company, there is a lot of conversation
about tax status. Honestly, I have been an educator all my
life. I have only been in education. I am a reading specialist,
a Montessori teacher.
When I look at what I really think the criteria should be
is that I think the tax status is not the right criteria. The
right criteria is: are we getting quality outcomes for our
students? Are they measurable? Can you really show that? And
are we being good stewards of the taxpayers' dollars?
I think those are the things that ought to be the marks
that we use and we ought to use them across all universities
and not have advantages and disadvantages from one or the
other. All students, no matter where they go to school, need to
have the same kind of quality assurance.
Mr. Heck. Thank you. And lastly again, Ms. Singer, I am
aware that Laureate has a potential pending partnership with
the Thunderbird School of Global Management, a state that
borders mine. Can you tell us about the need for that
partnership and how you expect it to benefit students?
Ms. Singer. Yes, that partnership, while we intend to have
that partnership go through, I must tell you that it has not
passed all of the accreditation approvals yet, but I think it
is an interesting story.
Just very quickly a beautiful, fabulous school, great
faculty in the MBA world, international, did well for a long
time. The environment has changed.
There are many wonderful international business schools all
over the United States. Lots of competition even from around
the world. They didn't change that model quickly enough, found
themselves struggling a bit financially, and not able, more
importantly, to push forward their mission.
They did an RFP process, I think, which is very
interesting. The board went out and said, we need to change, we
need to get help. They had quite a lot of activity around that.
We were chosen because of the strategic and financial
support that we could give, but the strategic piece was most
important. Our international footprint allows them to fulfill
their mission very quickly.
Mr. Heck. Great, thank you.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I yield back.
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you.
Mr. Holt, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Holt. Thank you, Madam Chair.
I thank the witnesses. Very interesting. We see quite
obviously enormous changes taking place, and they will have to
because it seems the current system is not sustainable. But I
have to ask whether the proposals that you make or the examples
you give are sustainable either.
Let me start with you, Mr. Baraniuk. I certainly see
advantages to this. What is your goal for market penetration?
It looks like what you describe, saving a million students $100
million a year, that is taking $100 million out of the
publishing business, I suppose.
What is the long-term prospect for this if this becomes
dominant in providing textbooks?
Mr. Baraniuk. That is an excellent question. So to answer
the first part of the question, our goal is to first of all
underpromise and overperform, so we have a very conservative
goal of trying to achieve 10 percent market penetration in each
of the 25 subject areas that our books are targeting. As I
mentioned in my remarks, this will save about 1.2 million
students approximately $120 million per year.
As far as sustaining our particular initiative, we feel
that if we can achieve this kind of market penetration then the
ecosystem of partners that we are building will be able to
create a sustaining revenue stream that will come back to the
projects so that we can keep the books up to date, relevant,
correct and give them a life that can last many, many decades.
So that is the sustainability question.
I think the larger issue you bring up is where is the
publishing industry going, and I think that this is a very
interesting and deep question. I think that many of the players
in the publishing industry are moving from a content-based type
model to a technology type model.
And I think that initiatives like OpenStax College, because
we are open source, because we are willing to partner with
publishers and technology companies, there is a role for them
to play in this new world.
Mr. Holt. Okay, thank you.
Dr. Isbell, now Georgia Tech has this one computer science
graduate program. Are there others following soon? I read in
the Chronicle of Higher Education that the university's
curriculum committee said that they have received no written
proposal for any new graduate degree, I think including this
one. Is that right?
Mr. Isbell. That is not correct. What happened----
Mr. Holt. That is not correct?
Mr. Isbell. It is not correct.
Mr. Holt. So where does the University plan to go?
Mr. Isbell. So two parts to this. One is the University
is--first, in terms of governance, the degree program went
through all of the normal processes through the faculty--there
was a faculty vote where 75 percent voted for it inside of our
college. We presented it to the institute committee and we took
it up to our Board of Regents and it went through without a
problem.
The institute is watching very closely as are we all. This
is a pilot. We plan to move forward very quickly over the next
year or two and to scale it up as much as feasible given our
quality goals, and I believe that once we have done that, we
will expect to see other at least masters level programs follow
suit.
Mr. Holt. So is this a small perturbation on the system--to
use an engineering term--that isn't going to make a big dent in
college, in university costs in the long run or, if it is going
to make a big dent in university costs in the long run, how is
it sustained?
Mr. Isbell. The answer to both of those are the same. The
answer is scale. A lot of the costs that we deal with, both in
this program and in general at a university, are fixed costs.
So depending upon how you sign those costs, building one of
these courses on a MOOC platform costs anywhere between
$200,000 and $300,000.
That is a lot of money if you are talking about 40
students. But it is not a lot of money if you are able to reuse
the material again and again and serve thousands upon thousands
of students.
So at our current projections for our costs, if we can keep
2,000 or 3,000 students, maybe 4,000 students in the program
overall, we will more than break even.
That is how we are going to make the sustainability. It all
boils down to scale so that as you bring in more people, it
overcomes the large fixed costs, the initial investment that
you have to make in the program.
Mr. Holt. Well, I thank the witnesses. Very interesting, I
think, attractive prospects.
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you, Mr. Holt.
Mr. Bishop, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Bishop. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
And I want to thank the panel. This has been really a very
interesting and helpful discussion. I thank you very much.
Dr. Isbell, let me just start with you. I just want to be
clear on something. We hear a lot about how the regional
accrediting process is often an inhibiting force in terms of
program development and program innovation.
And if I understood you correctly, the program that you
have described is the first master's degree program in the
country that will be offered exclusively on a MOOC platform. Is
that correct?
Mr. Isbell. That is correct.
Mr. Bishop. And you were able to in effect, gain the
concurrence of your accreditor by virtue of an hour-long
conversation and then I would assume some other conversations.
Is that right?
Mr. Isbell. That is correct.
Mr. Bishop. So it is fair to assume that the accreditor was
cooperative and helpful as opposed to inhibiting?
Mr. Isbell. Absolutely.
Mr. Bishop. Okay. Thank you. And congratulations to you.
Really. It is very impressive.
I want to go to Dr. Docking. I used to work at an
institution similar to one--we had perhaps more dandelions than
you had, more leaky roofs, but I am deeply impressed with what
you were able to do, and I have a lot of questions about how
you were able to do it. But when you met with the CEOs, you and
the other 11 college presidents, did you discuss at all the
possibilities or the promise of cooperative education?
I know you have an internship program which differs
somewhat from cooperative education. One of the things I have
been talking about and thinking about for a long, long time, is
the utility of cooperative education both in terms of preparing
students for meaningful careers, helping businesses basically
try on employees so they can determine whether they have what
they need, and also the affordability aspect of earning while a
student is enrolled as an undergraduate.
Is that a model that you think might work for you or that
might work for some of your sister colleges?
Mr. Docking. I think it is a model that can work with us on
some level. We have been around since 1859, so people are
pretty steeped in tradition at these small private liberal arts
colleges, but the whole idea of cooperating with the business
community is key for us, and I will just give you a couple of
good examples.
We have something called externships where we tell the kids
during their first year in school, you don't want to study for
4 years and then get out of here and realize I don't like what
I am doing. I have an accounting degree and I don't like being
an accountant.
So we tell them, go away with an accountant for a day, see
what they do. If you want 2 days, we will let you off from
class, but at least experience it and see if you have a passion
for this. That has worked very well by helping students
understand very early on this is what I want to do.
Obviously, the internship model that I described in which
we say we really want to find internship sites with companies
that say, ``We want to hire.'' So it can turn into a 3 month or
1 semester interview rather than an hour in a CEO's office.
In terms of broader cooperative educational efforts, as I
mentioned earlier, we have a lot of experiential learning
opportunities in which our professors get out into the business
community and work with folks, but they do that on a very
class-individual basis and we haven't mandated it across the
college.
Mr. Bishop. You made several references to the strategic
investments that you made to begin the turnaround. Where did
you get the seed money for those strategic investments? Was it
internal reallocation of resources? Were you able to get a lead
gift? How did you pull that off?
Mr. Docking. Yes, I needed $30 million in 2005. I went and
raised $15 million, and I borrowed $15 million from the banks.
Mr. Bishop. Okay. Next question. Your tuition has gone up,
your financial aid expenditures have gone up as well. What is
your student discount rate?
Mr. Docking. 52 percent.
Mr. Bishop. And that is across all 4 years or just for
freshman?
Mr. Docking. It is across all 4 years.
Mr. Bishop. Okay, but you have been able to make that work
in terms of the volume that you have developed as a result of
that discount rate?
Mr. Docking. That is correct. We have been able to make it
work.
Mr. Bishop. Okay. But I take from that that you have a
population that is very dependent on student aid.
Mr. Docking. We do; 98 percent of our students need
financial aid.
Mr. Bishop. Have you been able to assess what impact
ongoing sequestration will have on your campus-based programs
and on Pell?
Mr. Docking. I have not been able to assess that. At these
small schools, we don't have a big staff to do that, and so we
had not looked at that closely, but that would be a problem.
Obviously, we are very appreciative of the support that you
all have given to student aid programs to our types of schools.
That is key to us to continue to provide greater education.
Mr. Bishop. Real quick, I am about to run out of time.
If campus-based goes down or Pell goes down, does that mean
that your discount rate goes up or your enrollment goes down or
some combination thereof?
Mr. Docking. It would be devastating. Our discount rate
would go up some but we would certainly lose a lot of students.
Mr. Bishop. Okay. Thank you very much and congratulations.
Mr. Docking. Thank you.
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you.
Mr. Walberg, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Walberg. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Mr. Isbell, interesting program; exciting to think about
the potential. Could this model that you are working in now in
the sciences--could it work with liberal arts, humanities to
make it be cost-effective as well as the quality that would be
there?
Mr. Isbell. Sir, I will defer to my liberal arts colleagues
for an answer for that, but we believe that for a lot of the
sort of courses that are out there, the answer is probably yes.
There are people who are exploring options like this mostly
at the undergraduate level, and at the master's level we have
been targeting with this or the sorts of courses that are well-
understood and can manage where we can disseminate information
to thousands of people at once.
We do have people who work on more liberal arts sort of
courses even in the College of Computing, and they are
currently exploring ways to take all of this work.
Publishing is actually a big issue here. What does it mean
to provide readings to people possibly all over the world
without violating copyright? There are a lot of technical
details that have to be worked out, but in principle, it is
possible.
Mr. Walberg. The present pricing structure that you have,
could you go in a little more detail on that? To hear that a
master's total cost is $7000 for the student, you have the
basic cost worked out. Go into a little more detail of how your
pricing structure operates.
Mr. Isbell. We did something very simple. We sat down--it
was a very difficult exercise, but it was fairly
straightforward--we sat down and we tried to capture all of the
costs. It turns out the bulk of the costs again are fixed
costs.
What does it mean to produce one of these courses? We
worked out how much it would cost us in order to do this. If we
assumed that we had a steady-state in the low thousands, how
would we be able to break even, and then we priced it
accordingly.
We started out with the goal of try to do something under
$10,000, expecting that we might be able to get as low as
$4,000, and we ended up roughly where we are at about $6,600.
So we tried to account for all of our costs, put a little bit
of a buffer in there, and then priced accordingly.
Mr. Walberg. Great, thank you.
Dr. Docking, how real is the threat to small liberal arts
colleges of closing, and what is the key facilitator of the
closing?
Mr. Docking. Yes, I think I just read recently that 70 to
75 percent of small liberal arts colleges either have flat or
falling revenues right now.
I did a study recently at the college that showed about 30
colleges that closed over the last 10 years, small liberal arts
colleges, and it would really be devastating I think to the
landscape of higher education in America if these were not
available as an option to young people. It is a very real
concern.
Mr. Walberg. I had the opportunity to watch the turnaround
take place and innovation that went on there, risks that were
taken, roadblocks that were in the way. Talk a little bit more
about the first steps in taking that simple strategy of what
does it cost to run the program, how do we get to the
enrollment to achieve that.
Mr. Docking. Yes, well, as I mentioned earlier, efficiency
at these small liberal arts colleges is absolutely key. I only
have 93 professors, a small staff, and it is an environment in
which you have to pay attention to every single penny.
So when we knew we had to get to 1,400 students, we said,
well, how many are we going to get just by being here on the
map? And it only came up to about 600. So we knew we had a lot
of growth.
And we put people in charge of specific programs much like
a salesperson with a sales quota and they needed to meet that
number and if they couldn't meet that number, then it wasn't
going to work out at the college.
What we learned about it was that people like that
accountability. Whether it is a hockey coach looking to fill a
hockey team or someone filling numbers for a marching band or
even thinking about doing it in something like health care
management in which we started a new major in health care
management because our area needs this but we have----
Mr. Walberg. Was it just numbers? Were there other factors
that you mandated in that process?
Mr. Docking. Were there numbers for other faculty did you
say?
Mr. Walberg. Well no, was it just numbers like a hockey
coach? He needed to find more players.
Mr. Docking. No, obviously there were academic standards
that the young people had to meet, and they had to be good
students, but he needed to bring in numbers of good quality
kids that could do the academic work and play hockey.
Mr. Walberg. Federal barriers in the process? What federal
barriers would you list quickly here in the final seconds?
Mr. Docking. Well, the financial responsibility standards
is the one that is the most difficult for us right now. I don't
know if it is a one-size-fits-all view, but it really takes a
lot of time and does not reflect the economic strength of an
institution. That is the problem right now. It really should be
looked at.
Mr. Walberg. So as we move ahead with reauthorization,
financial standards account----
Mr. Docking. 100 percent. Of 160 schools like Adrian last
year, about that did not pass and it is crazy. These are good
strong schools. They have been around longer than most of the
banks.
Mr. Walberg. Thank you.
I yield back.
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you.
Ms. Bonamici, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman.
This has been a fascinating discussion. I have really
appreciated it, and I want to follow up for a moment if I may,
Dr. Docking, on your comment about the talent gap in bringing
together colleges and business leaders.
We have had a lot of success in that area in the district I
represent. Portland Community College, for example, has a
renewable energy system program where students can learn to be
renewable energy technicians.
And interestingly, at Chemeketa Community College we have a
viticulture program where students can study the wine business,
vineyard management, and winemaking, which is a big part of the
economy there. So those partnerships have been very successful.
I want to follow up on your internship program that you
mentioned. Our goal and purpose of this hearing today is
talking about improving access and affordability through
innovative partnerships.
Access is an issue with internships that often raises
equity issues because low income students often have to take a
paid job, can't take an internship, which is often times
unpaid.
So how do you address those challenges of low income
students? And I want to mention that I am working on the
Opportunities for Success Act to try to deal with that equity
issue and make unpaid internships more available for low income
students. So paid internships or how do you address that issue?
Mr. Docking. Sure. First of all, let me say that over 900
of our students are on Pell. So we are a very working-class
college, almost 10 percent students of color. So it is very
important that they make money in their internships. So we
almost look exclusively at paid internships.
The second thing that I wanted to mention that was pointed
out, this talent gap program that we went to, is that the
business leaders that were there said the two things that they
find most helpful in students is A, that they have an
internship so that they know what they are getting into and B,
that they do a sort of senior project in which everything comes
together in a capstone and the kids can synthesize all of the
information they received over 4 years.
I found the business community to be very, very open to
both sharing those ideas, and then once they get to know us,
working with our kids to give them paid internships. It is
something that they are very, very happy to participate in.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you so much, and obviously it helps
them a lot when they graduate to have that experience.
So I want to talk about the MOOCs. So, like many people
across the country, I'm really interested in the potential of
these massive online courses, but to me, the jury is still out.
I am still a little wary about their widespread adoption before
we really talk about the consequences, positive and negative.
So what I've found is that out there, in the real world, in
the business world, and in society that qualities like the
ability to work as a team member, communication, relationship
building skills, those are all developed throughout a student's
time in school. Growing in these areas continues of course in
post-secondary education and they are very important to success
in the world.
So though MOOCs have potential, especially with older
nontraditional students, and I know, Dr. Isbell, you mentioned
that. Can we talk a little bit about whether they neglect this
in-person development and those skills that students need to
really go on and be successful?
I think we will start with Dr. Isbell. What are your
thoughts on that because that type of teamwork, communication
and relationship building doesn't happen with online learning?
Or maybe you think it does.
Mr. Isbell. So this is one of the reasons why we started
with a master's degree, so that we were mainly focused on
people who were already professionals, who were already in an
environment where they had built a lot of those skills.
So our expectation--you will have to ask me in a couple
years how it worked out--but our expectation is that many of
these people will be from places like AT&T, places like GE,
where they actually have a cohort locally where they can work
on projects together as they continue their education. So we
think at that level, it is going to be a big win.
At the lower level, at undergraduate, it is very unclear
how we would be able to leverage that sort of thing alone. Our
current belief is that at least at Georgia Tech we are going to
try to use things like MOOCs to complement the undergraduate
education. Certainly not to replace it.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you.
Anyone else care to comment?
Ms. Singer. If I might, I think the MOOCs--you have to--one
thing about MOOCs is that right now, a little different than
what you are doing, is that they are mostly about courses and
what I understand that you are working on are degree programs
and a degree is much more than the sum of its parts as you are
indicating.
So I think really careful design of a degree program
whether at the undergraduate level or at the graduate level,
starting with the employer outcomes that are necessary, and
really what happens with online and with MOOCs is that you can
actually just design the scaffolding and the way that you want
those students to go through to assure success.
But the other thing about an online environment is you have
to build the support structure around it. We talked about
retention rates and so forth. It is about the support
structure. It is about the conductivity that happens, but I
will disagree about one thing.
The collaboration that can happen online particularly
around the world--and it is not just online--I think sometimes
we have a misnomer there, even MOOCs, it is more than that. It
is about using educational technology to connect people. That
is how business is working now. We are working across countries
and across borders.
Ms. Bonamici. Exactly. Well, thank you so much. My time has
expired.
I yield back. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you.
Mr. Tierney, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you very much.
Mr. Baraniuk, I am curious to talk a little bit about the
savings that can be there for students with regard to textbooks
being online, for those resource materials.
How are we going to expand that out from where you are now,
25, and get to a larger number? What barriers are there to
doing that, and what policy implications might there be for us
in trying to make that happen?
Mr. Baraniuk. Thank you very much for the question. Very
interesting.
So our plan is to start with an initial library as I
mentioned of 25 textbooks. The reason why we selected these 25
books is because they capture a very large percentage of the
total college enrollment across community college, 4-year
college, and even elite universities.
So we believe that by focusing initially on those 25
courses, we will be able to make the most impact and also be
able to save the most students the most money.
That said, if the project is a success and we have good
reason to think that it will be, we are very interested in
looking at expanding into other domains and also expanding our
collaborations both with other ecosystem providers like
publishers, like computer-based homework providers, MOOC
providers, et cetera.
I think that because the choice of the textbook in a class
is primarily the choice of a faculty member or a college
textbook committee, we feel that there are not necessarily many
barriers in the way to having our books be adopted on a wide
scale.
All that said, I think that the key issue that we face
today or the key barrier that we face is just getting the word
out about the project.
We find that when students--or when faculty, rather, find
out about the project, they are usually ecstatic because they
know that their students are at risk, and they would like to do
anything they can in order to see that they can get access to
high-quality educational materials.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
I want to talk a little bit--I am not sure who to direct
this question to, so I open it to anybody, about the online
potential for nontraditional students.
We have a number of institutions in Massachusetts that
really have a lot of nontraditional students who need to be
able to afford to go to school. They need to be able to have
the flexibility time-wise around the rest of their life,
whether it is family or work or both of those, and they really
need to have some credentialing because they stop in and out.
They don't want to wait until they finish a 4-year completion
program or even a two.
Sometimes you like to know that when you reach a certain
level of accomplishment, there will be something there that you
can take tangibly with you and it encourages you to come back
and build on that.
How do we see online courses addressing those factors?
Ms. Singer. I can take a first stab at that.
I think nontraditional students and that is a wide range of
people. So it could be first time--it sounds to me like first-
generation students coming in perhaps or the working
professional, the working adult.
I think one of the comments that you made is they need to
be able to get the credential and then go back to work and come
back.
One of the things that is important about online, I think,
is that it makes it more accessible because you can keep a job
going if the degree has been created correctly so that you can
actually keep your job, do your work at a pace that is
appropriate for you.
But, I think the other thing that you are insinuating here
that is important is that there is a way to design programs for
students that they can get a certificate or be certified in a
certain area, up their skill set, go back to work, come back,
finish that degree.
So I do think the way we think about designing programs and
being sure that courses can lead to certificates and can lead
to those degree programs and then making them accessible in the
home is very important. You have to put the right services
around it.
Mr. Tierney. I was just going to say that. Their
indications are that this population in particular has some
experience in the online course but find that they need more
support----
Ms. Singer. They need much more support----
Mr. Tierney [continuing]. Individuals that they can
contact----
Ms. Singer. And that is why it is not always less
expensive.
Mr. Tierney. That was my next point is how does that affect
the price----
Ms. Singer. The course design--I will just say to you,
content is a commodity. Content is a commodity. So what is it
that the institution of higher education is giving to it
students? It is taking them from where they are, understanding
what skills they need, giving them the support, the bridge
support that they need around it so that they can be
successful----
Mr. Tierney. So in the end, it may be more expensive to
address that population with online----
Ms. Singer. It could be if you have a group that really
needs--you have got to be able to--it may be a little bit more
expensive, but the value won't be there for the student if you
allow them to enroll in a self-paced--and online is not all
self-paced--I would tell you that those students need to be in
a class, online class with a professor who knows how to work
with students who might be struggling and the support structure
needs to be in there. You will have a savings on the content
end of it.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you very much.
I want to thank the witnesses for their comments. This has
been a very, very useful hearing today, and I want to thank you
for taking your time to testify before the subcommittee today.
Mr. Hinojosa, do you have any closing remarks?
Mr. Hinojosa. Yes, thank you.
I would like to thank our expert panelists for joining us
today and for sharing their invaluable experience and
expertise, and I have to say that from my perspective, this is
one of the best congressional hearings that I have participated
in, and we thank each and every one of you.
In fact, when this is over, I am going to come down there,
and shake your hand. [Laughter.]
Ms. Singer. Thank you.
Mr. Hinojosa. As we move forward, on the HEA
reauthorization, I look forward to working with you and all of
our higher ed stakeholders to encourage innovative partnerships
that really promote affordability and accessibility and college
graduation success.
With that, I yield back.
Chairwoman Foxx. Thank you very much.
And again, I want to thank all of you for coming.
I always have a lot more questions than we have time to ask
so these hearings could go a lot longer, but what I would like
to say to you is we will be submitting some questions to you.
And the overriding question that I would like to ask you to
respond to, in writing when you get an opportunity and the
staff will handle this much more formally, is we are going to
be dealing with the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act
and I would like to hear from you what policy changes you would
suggest to make public-private partnerships easier and more
effective.
I think that is obviously at the heart of what we are
hoping to get at by a hearing like this is how can we make them
more effective.
I have mentioned before at these hearings that I have been
around in higher education for a long time. I have heard some
of the comments that have been either spoken or alluded to
today for a long time and we sometimes--I sometimes feel we
aren't getting much closer to them.
The issue of outcomes versus inputs. I have always felt
that that should be where we should be looking. We haven't been
able to move higher education very far in that direction in my
opinion, but with the technology that we have and the ability
to use that technology, it seems to me we should be moving much
closer.
I think that we have all heard the old cliche that trying
to change higher education is like trying to turn a battleship.
It takes a long time to do it. Fortunately again, we have been
delivered of a lot of opportunities, particularly through
technology and with the interest of the private sector.
I believe higher education has been failing in many cases
to produce the skills in people that the private sector needs,
and so I am very happy to see the private sector pushing higher
education to do more to meet the needs of the workplace, and
that is obviously what higher education is for.
I say we should emphasize the fact that 4-year degrees,
online degrees, whatever they are, they are focused on helping
people get jobs.
I think there has not been enough recognition sometimes of
that by the higher education community, which has in the past I
think been pretty insulated and looking to itself for what it
likes to do and not necessarily what needs to be done for the
broader society, although there are wonderful exemptions to
that.
So I thank you all again for being here today, for helping
stimulate some very good conversations and new ways of thinking
because that is important for us on this subcommittee and the
larger committee too.
There being no further business, the subcommittee stands
adjourned.
[An additional submission of Chairwoman Foxx follows:]
Prepared Statement of Javier Miyares, President,
University of Maryland University College
I would like to thank Chairwoman Foxx and Ranking Member Hinojosa
for inviting University of Maryland University College (UMUC) to submit
testimony for the record of this important hearing on innovative
partnerships in higher education.
Let me begin with a brief description of UMUC, its history and its
current direction.
UMUC is a public university and is part of the University System of
Maryland. With over 97,000 students stateside and internationally, it
is the nation's largest public institution of higher education.
UMUC has a long and proud history of creative approaches to
challenges in higher education. In fact, UMUC was created in 1947 to
fulfill the educational needs of the people considered our first non-
traditional students--the GIs returning from World War II. They were
older, had jobs and families and did not seek the traditional college
experience.
UMUC brought higher education to them--where they lived and
worked--across Maryland and in the process became a trailblazer in
distance education.
In 1949, UMUC was the first to answer the call from the Pentagon to
send faculty overseas to teach active duty military personnel in Europe
and Asia. The university has continued to serve the military and their
families to this day. Over half our current students, about 55
thousand, represent active duty military, veterans, and their
dependents.
UMUC also was one of the earliest adopters of the Internet as a
course delivery platform, offering its first online course in 1994.
Since that time the university has continued to innovate with course
and curriculum design. Today, 85 percent of the courses UMUC offers are
online and the remainder is delivered in a hybrid--or blended--format.
UMUC is focused on the goals of high quality, affordable education,
addressing the needs of non-traditional students, harnessing
technology, emphasizing prior learning and competency-based learning
and shortening the time to graduation.
To help achieve these goals, the university has sought innovative,
strategic partnerships.
UMUC's Innovative Partnerships
UMUC has entered into several types of partnerships to facilitate
learning and reduce the time to a degree. These partnerships fall into
three categories:
1. Partnering with companies and organizations that provide
services such as learner analytics or specific training courses
2. Partnering with other higher education institutions
3. Partnering with companies that hire--or could hire--our
graduates to consult on curriculum development and specific skills
necessary for employees.
Learner Analytics Help Avoid Negative Outcomes and Promote Success
UMUC has partnered with Civitas Learning, a Texas-based company
that builds predictive models of student behavior. As a result, UMUC
can now reliably predict certain student outcomes allowing the
university to take proactive steps to improve student performance and
retention.
With 85 percent accuracy these models allow UMUC to predict, on the
first day of an online class, who is likely to succeed and who might
struggle. With these data, faculty and support staff can design
interventions to help students overcome difficulties.
Data analysis indicates that students who sign up for an online
class the day before it begins are much more likely to struggle and
withdraw or fail than students who register four or more days ahead of
the first day of class. To decrease the withdrawal and failure rate,
UMUC now closes registration four days prior to the first day of class.
Results indicate an increase of over 2% in successful course completion
rates. This can result in hundreds of more successful students.
Civitas Learning and UMUC also determined that familiarity with the
syllabus is a predictor of success. Students who access a course
syllabus early and often are more likely to succeed in a class than
those who do not.
Within Three Years, UMUC Will No Longer Require Hard Copy Text Books,
Providing Significant Savings for Students
By partnering with several organizations, including non-profit
Merlot.org, (Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online
Teaching), UMUC, through use of Open Education Resources, will move
away from hardcopy textbooks, while eliminating the cost of other
course materials. Digital resources, learning activities, and content
will ultimately be available for students 24/7 online. By fall of 2014,
50% of course materials will be available online. UMUC plans to
eliminate all costs for course materials in undergraduate programs by
fall 2015, and in graduate programs by fall 2016.
Professional Development Classes Foster Ongoing Personal Advancement
Because UMUC seeks to serve the learning needs of all adult
students, the university offers a wide variety of non-credit/
professional development classes. The university partners with the firm
EXTOL which has developed and structured courses that are particularly
successful for adult learners. While these are non-credit courses, they
can provide helpful professional credentials for participating
students.
Partnering With Other Higher Education Institutions Expands Academic
Reach
Through contracts with the Department of Defense, UMUC provides a
range of degree programs to active duty military personnel in Europe.
The DoD recently sought graduate and undergraduate degrees in social
work. UMUC responded by partnering with Salisbury State University in
Maryland to offer social work degrees to its overseas students.
Partnering with Community Colleges Saves Students Time and Money
UMUC has partnerships with 93 community colleges nationwide and is
the only university that has partnered with all sixteen community
colleges in Maryland. These partnerships ensure that students who have
earned credits from 351 selected programs from any of the identified
schools can automatically transfer those credits to UMUC. Too often,
students take classes they assume will count toward their degree only
to find that other schools will not accept those credits. By entering
into these academic alliances, UMUC takes the guess work out of
transferring. Students know before they take classes whether they will,
in fact, transfer to UMUC.
UMUC's transfer agreements also promote associate degree
completion, which has been shown to be an important milestone
achievement in a student's education. With programmatic transfer
agreements, pathways to completion are the focus at both the community
college and UMUC.
UMUC Corporate Learning Solutions--Partnering with Businesses to
Develop Workforce Ready Graduates and Retain Highly Skilled
Employees
Through its Corporate Learning Solutions Department, UMUC partners
with companies, associations, government agencies and local
organizations to accomplish key goals:
a. Provide currently offered programs to employees in more direct
and supported ways, and
b. When appropriate, develop certificate programs, programs to
strengthen professionalism, tactical skills and leadership capabilities
in line with the organization's specific strategic objectives. UMUC
works with organizations to customize curricula to specific needs, so
employees master the skills and competencies necessary for advancement
and to become more highly productive. Two examples are outlined below:
Booz Allen Hamilton
The university has established a successful partnership with Booz
Allen Hamilton, one of the nation's leading providers of cybersecurity
talent and expertise. With the rapid rise in demand for skilled
cybersecurity employees, UMUC partnered with Booz Allen to develop
curricula and programs for three UMUC Graduate Certificates:
1. Foundations of Cybersecurity,
2. Cybersecurity Policy,
3. Cybersecurity Technology.
To date, more than 500 Booz Allen employees have taken courses. The
goal is to help Booz Allen build a talented, ``Best in Industry,''
cyber workforce.
Because the State of Maryland is considered the epicenter of
cybersecurity activity, UMUC designated a senior academic administrator
to serve as liaison to the cyber industry. This ensures that UMUC is
offering cutting edge programs to an expanding workforce.
Baltimore Police Department
UMUC partnered with the Baltimore Police Department to develop a
customized Leadership Program. By consulting with the department and
understanding its unique challenges and constraints, UMUC designed a
curriculum that fits the needs of both individuals and the department.
Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld sought an education program
that would also instill the desire to learn in his department. UMUC is
proud of this partnership and the role it has played in making the
Baltimore Police Department more effective.
For more information on these partnerships, visit, http://
www.umuc.edu/corporate/index.cfm
In conclusion, I would like to compliment the subcommittee on the
interest it has taken in exploring innovative strategies being pursued
by universities like UMUC. If the higher education community as a whole
is to meet the workforce demands of the 21st century, it must embrace
change. UMUC is proud of its history of proactive efforts to embrace as
well as harness new technology to meet evolving workforce needs.
Thank you.
Javier Miyares, President,
University of Maryland University College,
3501 University Boulevard East, Adelphi, Maryland 20783.
www.umuc.edu
corporate learning solutions--education alliance partners partial list
American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL)
American Chemical Society (ACS)
AmerisourceBergen
Armed Forces Communications & Electronics Association (AFCEA)
Analytical Services & Materials (AS&M)
Applied Integrated Technologies (AIT)
ARINC
ASM Research
Association of United States Army (AUSA)
AT&T
Baltimore Police Department
Boeing
Booz Allen Hamilton
CACI
Calvert County Sheriff's Office
CGI
Connections Academy
DC Office of Unified Communications
DC Water
Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA)
Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences (FAES)
G4S
GEICO
Global Network Services (GNS)
Health & Human Services (HHS)
InfraGard
Jacobs Technology
Jiffy Lube
K12
L-3 STRATIS
Lockheed Martin
Lunarline
Luxottica
ManTech
MedStar Health
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC)
National Technical Honor Society (NTHS)
NJVC
Northrop Grumman
Ongoing Operations
Open System Sciences (OSS)
Patricio Enterprises
Precise Systems
Prince William Chamber of Commerce
Raytheon
Ross Technologies (RTGX)
SAIC
Smithsonian Institution
Social Security Administration
StraighterLine
TASC
TerpSys
TISTA
UMBC Training Centers
URS
US Pharmacopeial Convention (USP)
Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC)
Walgreens
Yellow Ribbon Fund
______
[Questions submitted for the record and their responses
follow:]
U.S. Congress,
Washington, DC, October 29, 2013.
Dr. Richard G. Baraniuk, Victor E. Cameron Professor,
Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering, Rice University, MS-380, 6100 Main
Street, Houston, TX 77005.
Dear Dr. Baraniuk: Thank you for testifying before the Subcommittee
on Higher Education and Workforce Training at the hearing entitled,
``Keeping College Within Reach: Improving Access and Affordability
through Innovative Partnerships,'' on Wednesday, September 18, 2013. I
appreciate your participation.
I have enclosed an additional question for inclusion in the final
hearing record. Please provide a written response no later than
November 15, 2013. Responses should be sent to Brian Melnyk or Emily
Slack of the committee staff who can be contacted at (202) 225-6558.
Thank you again for your important contribution to the work of the
committee.
Sincerely,
Virginia Foxx, Chairwoman,
Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training.
chairwoman virginia foxx (r-nc)
What policy changes would you recommend in the upcoming
reauthorization of the Higher Education Act to make public/private
partnerships easier and more effective?
______
Dr. Baraniuk's Response to Question Submitted for the Record
What policy changed would you recommend in the upcoming
reauthorization of the Higher Education Act to make public/private
partnerships easier and more effective?
Considerable funding has been allocated to the creation of open
education resources (OER). However, efforts to grow the burgeoning
ecosystem of OER, increase awareness of OER options, and increase local
adaption of OER are not as mature. To address these needs and increase
OER use, I recommend a two phased approach.
First, I recommend creating incentives for non-profit and for-
profit developers to create resources and training programs that both
facilitate learning and drive-down costs. These incentives should be
available to programs that increase development and use of adaptive
learning/technologies, create interactive learning objects, or
facilitate training and deployment in classrooms. Such monetary
incentives would help for-profits manage financial risks and allow non-
profits to enhance offerings at greatly reduced cost.
Second, institutions and faculty should be encouraged (either
monetarily or programmatically) to support local adoption and
adaptations. Funds used to adapt OER provide much greater impact
leverage than those used to build redundant content from scratch.
However, institutional and faculty investments are required to make
systemic changes that increase adoption. Some institutions recognize
this hurdle and have responded with models that could be replicated
across the country. For example, Tacoma Community College in Washington
State has an OER group that works with faculty to increase awareness of
OER and provide them adaptation grants. The University of Oklahoma's
Center of Teaching Excellence promotes the use of OER and provides
faculty with resources to locally adapt materials.
I believe that the next step in OER adoption will be the maturation
of the OER marketplace. Incentivizing developers to train and
institutions to adapt OER will help drive demand for additional high-
quality OER and give Congress an opportunity to lower costs and
barriers to education for students across the country.
______
U.S. Congress,
Washington, DC, October 29, 2013.
Dr. Jeffrey R. Docking, President,
Adrian College, 2131 Heatherwood Drive, Adrian, MI 49221.
Dear Dr. Docking: Thank you for testifying before the Subcommittee
on Higher Education and Workforce Training at the hearing entitled,
``Keeping College Within Reach: Improving Access and Affordability
through Innovative Partnerships,'' on Wednesday, September 18, 2013. I
appreciate your participation.
Enclosed are additional questions submitted by members of the
subcommittee after the hearing. Please provide written responses no
later than November 15, 2013 for inclusion in the final hearing record.
Responses should be sent to Brian Melnyk or Emily Slack of the
committee staff who can be contacted at (202) 225-6558.
Thank you again for your important contribution to the work of the
committee.
Sincerely,
Virginia Foxx, Chairwoman,
Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training.
chairman john kline (r-mn)
Dr. Docking, what did Adrian College learn from participating in
the talent gap retreat you discussed in your testimony? What new
initiatives or partnerships did you implement as a result of the multi-
college retreat?
chairwoman virginia foxx (r-nc)
What policy changes would you recommend in the upcoming
reauthorization of the Higher Education Act to make public/private
partnerships easier and more effective?
representative susan brooks (r-in)
You spoke about the Adrian College internship program and
pa1tnerships that exist with businesses.
1. Could you please explain in detail how this program works?
2. Are students required to intern?
3. If so, how many semesters?
4. Are the intern programs credit earning?
5. If they are not credit earning, do students get paid?
______
Dr. Docking's Response to Questions Submitted for the Record
chairman john kline (r-mn)
Q: Dr. Docking, what did Adrian College learn from practicing in
the talent group retreat you discussed in your testimony? What new
initiatives or partnerships did you implement as a result of the multi-
college retreat?
A: Roundtable discussions with Michigan Colleges Foundation (MCF)
member campus presidents and leaders from signature Michigan
corporations and organizations explored the topic of talent
development, engagement and retention in Michigan. The format was
designed to understand the employer data related to ``skill gap'' in
new graduate career readiness and develop best practice solutions to
address them.
Outcomes from the event include the strengthening of industry-
campus relationships at MCF institutions, a greater understanding of
what employers believe college graduates need to know and be able to
do, and new approaches to improving career readiness. The specific
strategies that resulted from conversations between the suppliers and
consumers of young talent are currently being utilized to further MCF's
work connecting students to internships, project work, and career
opportunities, as well as millennial retention initiatives. Special
emphasis was placed on the leadership role of smaller, independent
colleges and universities in preparing students for career success.
The ideas generated to address perceived talent gaps and the
underlying issues were classified based on the concept of alignment.
The participants identified strategies to help better align college
learning and experiences with the social, work, and personal skills
graduates need for career and life success after graduation. Three
categories were created:
1. Alignment of Educator and Employer Expectations (Includes
efforts to more closely align curriculum with workforce demands, and
initiatives to provide greater interaction between employer and college
faculty for awareness building)
2. Alignment of Student Programming (Includes development of
practical off-campus experiences to apply learning, increased industry
exposure on campus, and enhanced student understanding of professional
career skills and expectations)
3. Alignment of MCF Role and Resources (Includes MCF facilitated
connections and project work related to career readiness and
articulation of quality factors that differentiate MCF graduates in
career performance)
An advisory committee was established to help facilitate the
implementation of pilot projects, support MCF's follow-up activities,
direct future roundtable topics and evaluate the outcomes.
chairwoman virginia foxx (r-nc)
Q: What policy changes would you recommend in the upcoming
reauthorization of the Higher Education Act to make public-private
partnerships easier and more effective?
A: Often, seed money for innovation can be the most challenging
money to identify. For a small college that is thin on administrative
staff, identifying all of the available resources is a prohibitive time
expense.
It would be great if one of the responsibilities of the Department
of Education, perhaps through FIPSE (The Fund for the Improvement of
Postsecondary Education), was to serve as a type of clearinghouse for
various federal programs. For example, I know the Department of
Agriculture has some low-interest loans available for rural community
development. Making these loans known to small colleges in rural
communities might be an impetus for regional development. In many rural
towns, colleges are the major economic resource in the community, and
the largest employer.
representative susan brooks (r-in)
Q: You spoke about the Adrian College internship program and
partnership that exist with businesses.
1. Explain how the program works?
The Institute for Career Planning coordinates the Adrian College
Internship Program. The goal of the internship program is to provide
all students with the opportunities to test their career interests and
develop job-related skills through college-approved work experiences.
Faculty sponsors guide students as they link theoretical knowledge with
the practical learning gained in part-time or full-time internships.
Any Adrian student in good standing (minimum 2.00 cumulative GPA)
is eligible for participation in the internship program following
completion of 12 credit hours at Adrian College, provided the student
is acceptable to the employer, obtains the approval of his/her advisor
and secures a faculty sponsor for the internship.
Adrian College offers two types of internships. Exploratory
internships, designated as course number 199 on the student's
transcript, are part-time experiences open to second-semester freshman,
sophomores, and upper class students with a credit limit of three hours
per semester. Exploratory internships are designed to acquaint students
with work in a particular setting, to bring them in contact with
professionals in the field and, in more instances, to give them the
opportunity to assume limited responsibilities in the career area being
explored. Professional internships, designated as course number 399 on
the student's transcript, are experiences for juniors and seniors in
which they may utilize and enhance entry-level career skills.
Career Planning maintains a list of approved internship sites,
though any student, faculty or staff member at the College may propose
such a site. All proposed sites must be approved by the Internship
Committee prior to a student beginning the internship. Students may
pick up an internship packet at Career Planning or access it online and
discuss the program with a Career Planning staff member.
Role of Internship Committee
This committee establishes procedures governing the internship
program, reviews proposed sites, monitors the quality of the program
and hears requests for variances from normal policy.
Role of Career Planning
The Institute is the central coordinating facility for all
internships conducted through the College. In cooperation with the
faculty Internship Committee, the Career Planning staff establishes,
administers and publicizes procedures governing the program. Any
questions regarding the internship program should be directed to this
Institute.
Role of the Faculty Sponsor
The faculty sponsor is responsible for designing an academic
component for the internship experience. This academic component should
be above and beyond the normal work responsibilities the student
assumes at the site, and will be outlined and agreed upon by the
faculty sponsor and the intern prior to the start of the internship.
The faculty sponsor insures compliance with established procedures,
monitors student performance during the internship, maintains contact
with the on-site supervisor, assesses student progress and grades the
experience.
2. Are students required to intern?
Some majors do require an internship within the department or as an
optional course.
Required programs are:
SCJ--Sociology and Criminal Justice (minimum of 2 credits)
ESPE--Exercise Science: Health Management & Pre-
Professional (3 credits)
ART--Art Management (6 credits)
PSCI--Political Science (1 credit hour)
BAD--Business Administration, Sports Management (3 credit
hours)
3. If so, how many semesters?
Students earn from one to six semester hours of credit during a
single semester of an internship; the number of credit hours available
for internships is designated by the Internship Committee. Students may
complete internships as they wish, with a maximum of 15 hours of
internship credit applying toward the baccalaureate degree, depending
on approval by program of study.
4. Are the intern programs credit earning?
Yes, students can earn departmental credit for the internship (if
not a department requirement, can earn departmental credit if approved
by department chair). Students may also earn elective credits.
5. If they are not credit earning, do students get paid?
A student may receive salary or wages for internship services,
depending on the employer's policy.
______
U.S. Congress,
Washington, DC, October 29, 2013.
Dr. Charles Lee Isbell, Jr., Professor and Senior Associate Dean,
College of Computing Georgia Institute of Technology, 190 Imperial Way,
Fayetteville, GA 30214.
Dear Dr. Isbell: Thank you for testifying before the Subcommittee
on Higher Education and Workforce Training at the hearing entitled,
``Keeping College Within Reach: Improving Access and Affordability
through Innovative Partnerships,'' on Wednesday, September 18, 2013. I
appreciate your participation.
Enclosed are additional questions submitted by members of the
subcommittee after the hearing. Please provide written responses no
later than November 15, 2013 for inclusion in the final hearing record.
Responses should be sent to Brian Melnyk or Emily Slack of the
committee staff who can be contacted at (202) 225-6558.
Thank you again for your important contribution to the work of the
committee.
Sincerely,
Virginia Foxx, Chairwoman,
Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training.
chairman john kline (r-mn)
Dr. Isbell, how did Georgia Tech develop the coursework and
curriculum for its new master's program? Is the program as rigorous as
your on-campus master's degree programs?
chairwoman virginia foxx (r-nc)
What policy changes would you recommend in the upcoming
reauthorization of the Higher Education Act to make public/private
partnerships easier and more effective?
______
Dr. Isbell's Response to Questions Submitted for the Record
Congresswoman Foxx: Thank you very much for your follow-up inquiry
regarding my testimony to the Subcommittee on Sept. 18.
In response to your question--``What policy changes would you
recommend in the upcoming reauthorization of the Higher Education Act
to make public/private partnerships easier and more effective?''--the
upcoming reauthorization should encourage the creation of regional and
state agreements surrounding state authorization, such as the one being
created through the State Authorization Network (SAN) (see: http://
wcet.wiche.edu/advance/state-authorization-network). This would create
partnerships between institutions of higher education and state
authorizing bodies to allow for online and MOOC providers to offer
services across states and regions. The creation of the SAN would also
represent a huge step towards reducing cost, complexity, and
duplication of effort for institutions of higher education.
In response to Chairman Kline's question--``How did Georgia Tech
develop the coursework and curriculum for its new master's program, and
is the program as rigorous as your on-campus master's degree
programs?''--the answers are that the curriculum is (somewhat) a work
in progress but it is the College of Computing's position that our
online Masters of Science in Computer Science (OMS CS) will be every
bit as rigorous as our traditional programs or we will cease to offer
the OMS degree. Please allow me to elaborate.
As you can certainly imagine, we've had an established curriculum
for the on-campus MS CS degree for several decades, and it is our
intent to transfer as much of this curriculum as possible to the OMS CS
program, given certain limitations. The most conspicuous limitation is
the lack of significant personal contact between OMS students and their
instructors. This creates an inherent barrier to certain types of
courses, particularly those in such areas of computing as human-
computer interaction and learning sciences, which draw heavily on
knowledge from the liberal arts. Courses in these areas tend to rely on
a greater amount of group discussion to help students both learn new
concepts and apply what they're learning to novel problems.
However we do not concede that this barrier is insurmountable.
Online students are ingenious in devising ways to create virtual
communities to support their studies, and indeed a small industry is
springing up around this very issue. Further, given the recent
technological advances that have made OMS possible in the first place,
we believe it's highly possible if not probable that the near future
will see additional innovation to facilitate small-group discussion in
a massive-online setting. Will this mean that all computing courses
will then be amenable to the MOOC format? Not necessarily, but the
large majority should be.
As we've been working to launch OMS CS for the past several months,
we've learned that perhaps the most significant barrier to creating a
full curriculum for OMS CS is nothing revolutionary at all: logistics.
We are a public university on the East Coast partnering with a private
company on the West Coast to create course materials that are extremely
resource-intensive, and the central ``talent'' behind these courses--
namely, Georgia Tech faculty--have very busy schedules. Creating a
Udacity MOOC has been compared to producing a short film, and as
someone who is in the middle of producing one myself, I can attest that
this is true. It takes a tremendous amount of logistical support to
plan the courses (whose arrangement is completely different from their
on-campus counterparts), write the material, film the instruction,
create quizzes and course work, review the filming, etc.--and this is
completely separate from the technical work to support Udacity's model
of in-course testing and student engagement.
In short, it is a major commitment to produce a MOOC, and it will
take time for the OMS curriculum to add enough course material to catch
up to the on-campus version. On campus, we have 15 specializations for
MS students; we are initially offering eight specializations for OMS
students. Traditional MS CS students have a catalogue of some 90
courses (including electives) from which to choose; OMS students will
start with five choices. All this to say that, in the end, time is the
most significant barrier to Georgia Tech's ability to offer a 100%
online curriculum that rivals its on-campus equivalent.
Which leads me to your question regarding rigor. Georgia Tech has
stated publicly and repeatedly that quality is our No. 1 goal. If we
cannot offer an online MS in computer science with the same rigor as
our on-campus degree, we will cease to offer OMS CS, period. This
covers not only difficulty of the coursework but also admissions
standards, student honor code enforcement, integrity of testing and
grading, and all other factors that contribute to a degree's rigor. In
fact, at least regarding admissions standards, we feel the criteria are
more rigorous for OMS students than for on-campus students, given that
the former need to achieve B's or better in their first two OMS courses
to remain enrolled. It is true that on-campus students must supply an
adequate GRE score to be admitted, however we feel the ``two B's''
requirement for OMS students trumps the GRE in terms of difficulty.
I hope this additional testimony adequately addresses your
questions. If you or any other members of the Subcommittee would like
additional information or clarification regarding the OMS CS program,
please do not hesitate to contact me or any other official at Georgia
Tech.
______
U.S. Congress,
Washington, DC, October 29, 2013.
Ms. Paula R. Singer, President & CEO,
Laureate Global Products and Services 650 South Exeter Street,
Baltimore, Maryland 21202.
Dear Ms. Singer: Thank you for testifying before the Subcommittee
on Higher Education and Workforce Training at the hearing entitled,
``Keeping College Within Reach: Improving Access and Affordability
through Innovative Partnerships, `` on Wednesday, September 18, 2013. I
appreciate your participation.
Enclosed are additional questions submitted by members of the
subcommittee after the hearing. Please provide written responses no
later than November 15, 2013 for inclusion in the final hearing record.
Responses should be sent to Brian Melnyk or Emily Slack of the
committee staff who can be contacted at (202) 225-6558.
Thank you again for your important contribution to the work of the
committee.
Sincerely,
Virginia Foxx, Chairwoman,
Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training.
chairman john kline (r-mn)
Ms. Singer, what are some key reasons institutions look to partner
with a company like Laureate? What is holding institutions back from
expanding their academic offerings and what can Laureate provide to
these colleges and universities to help them overcome these obstacles?
chairwoman virginia foxx (r-nc)
What policy changes would you recommend in the upcoming
reauthorization of the Higher Education Act to make public/private
partnerships easier and more effective?
______
Ms. Singer's Response to Questions Submitted for the Record
Dear Chairwoman Foxx: I appreciate your letter of October 29, 2013
requesting additional information on the subject of innovation and
partnerships in higher education. I am pleased to provide the following
responses. Please let me know if you or the Committee needs any
additional information. We look forward to working with you during the
Higher Education Act reauthorization process.
question from chairman john kline
What are some key reasons institutions look to partner with a
company like Laureate? What is holding institutions back from expanding
their academic offerings and what can Laureate provide these colleges
and universities to help them overcome these obstacles?
Higher education is advancing very quickly at the same time demand
for access grows and pressure to ensure timely completion increase.
While this confluence provides opportunities to many institutions and
their students, it also presents many institutions with a challenge. We
believe the most significant hurdles are the cost to innovate, the lack
of capital and human resources to do so, and the need for speed to
innovate quickly in order to remain relevant in the student
marketplace. Additionally, for more traditional institutions, adapting
to more innovative modalities, methodologies or offerings requires the
input and approval of tenured faculty, which can sometimes be difficult
and cause delays. Companies like Laureate provide the ability to
successfully meet many of these challenges. With our experience and
resources, our institution partners are provided content, technology,
student support services, and a system of accountability with access to
outcomes data and results. Institutions, therefore, can implement
innovation more quickly at a much lower price, without having to
reinvent the wheel themselves. Many institutions are interested in
Laureate in particular because of its long history of partnerships in
higher education and its successful track record of operating its own
institutions on ground, online and around the world.
As addressed in more detail below, current statutory and regulatory
provisions in the Higher Education Act, as well as certain standard
processes, also present hurdles and delay to innovation and
partnerships.
question from congresswoman virginia foxx
What policy changes would you recommend in the upcoming
reauthorization of the Higher Education Act to make public/private
partnerships easier and more effective?
First, as innovation continues, we believe the relevancy of tax
status will become even more arbitrary and irrelevant in the regulation
of higher education institutions. In order to meet the increased demand
for access while maintaining quality and focusing on the employability
of all students, all institutions, regardless of tax status, will need
the benefit of increased private capital. With declining federal and
state budgets, even public institutions will be unable to rely on
government funding.
Similarly, we hope that in reauthorization, attention will be paid
to the current regulations by which the Department examines and
interprets an institution's financial capacity and responsibilities.
Those rules create significant unintended consequences where
institutions with demonstrated academic quality and return on
investment for their students and the federal government are unfairly
restricted in their ability to innovate or add new offerings. For
example, the manner by which new program approval regulations are
applied to certain institutions--and not others--is not fully
transparent or consistent. The program approval regulations are also
applied without any required timeframes by which the Department must
make a determination. These restrictions definitely delay innovative
new offerings. In this age of innovative models, including
partnerships, regulators need better tools, understanding and
flexibility to distinguish between institutions or models and to
effectively apply regulations. With a focus on the right data,
definitions and outcomes in HEA reauthorization, we believe the
Department would be better able to promote innovation and
accountability, while also ensuring financial responsibility to Title
IV funds.
Finally, we support the current regulatory triad created by the
Higher Education Act, but believe it needs strengthening during the
next reauthorization. There is no doubt that with more innovative
models in the marketplace, higher education is becoming more diverse
and complex, making essential the need for more clarity in the role of
each regulatory body and increased trust regarding those
responsibilities. There have been several proposals and commentary
written recently about accreditation. As I said during the hearing and
in my testimony, we believe the assessment of academic quality and
improvement in higher education should remain with accreditors. This
evaluation is very important to ensuring that an innovative partnership
and other types of innovation maintain or improve the quality of
offerings to students and do not negatively impact an institution's
quality. Review of academic outcomes and inputs, like instruction and
student support services, are critically important. It is essential
that the Higher Education Act provides accreditors with direction and
guidance on the types of assessment and evaluation needed, while also
ensuring they have the ability and mandate to demonstrate flexibility
and timely efficiency in independent decision-making.
My colleagues and I at Laureate look forward to being a resource to
you and the Committee during the reauthorization process and I
appreciate the invitation to testify.
______
[Whereupon, at 11:25 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]