WASHINGTON, D.C. — Shortening paths to degrees, getting rid of college deans and basing completion on what students learn instead of seat time were all proffered during a Congressional hearing on Wednesday as effective ways to stem the rising tide of college costs.
“Streamlining costs and reducing tuition in higher education is not just a good idea. It is essential to our future,” said Jamie Merisotis, president of the Lumina Foundation on Education and one of four witnesses who testified at a hearing titled “Keeping College Within Reach: Discussing Ways Institutions Can Streamline Costs and Reduce Tuition.”
The hearing was held Wednesday before the Higher Education and Workforce Training Subcommittee of the House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce.
The partisanship that has rankled Washington politics lately and thwarted the recent Congressional effort to reduce the federal deficit remained evident throughout the hearing.
For instance, in her opening statement, Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., chairwoman of the subcommittee, cast aspersions on the Obama administration’s initiatives to make college more affordable, such as a recent debt relief measure and the 2009 elimination of banks from the student loan process.
“Clearly, the rise in the cost of higher education in the United States is a problem, but the answer cannot be found in loan forgiveness gimmicks or a federal takeover of the student loan industry,” Foxx said.
Ranking subcommittee member Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, D-Texas, however, credited his fellow Democrats during the 111th Congress for ending the bank-based Federal Family Education Loan Program and replacing it with the William D. Ford Direct Loan program, “making federal college loans more stable and efficient at no cost to taxpayers.”
