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KEEPING COLLEGE WITHIN REACH: 

MEETING THE NEEDS OF 

CONTEMPORARY STUDENTS 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION 

AND THE WORKFORCE 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, APRIL 2, 2014 

Serial No. 113–56 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and the Workforce 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/ 

committee.action?chamber=house&committee=education 

or 

Committee address: http://edworkforce.house.gov 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE 

JOHN KLINE, Minnesota, Chairman 

Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin 

Howard P. ‘‘Buck’’ McKeon, California 

Joe Wilson, South Carolina 

Virginia Foxx, North Carolina 

Tom Price, Georgia 

Kenny Marchant, Texas 

Duncan Hunter, California 

David P. Roe, Tennessee 

Glenn Thompson, Pennsylvania 

Tim Walberg, Michigan 

Matt Salmon, Arizona 

Brett Guthrie, Kentucky 

Scott DesJarlais, Tennessee 

Todd Rokita, Indiana 

Larry Bucshon, Indiana 

Trey Gowdy, South Carolina 

Lou Barletta, Pennsylvania 

Joseph J. Heck, Nevada 

Susan W. Brooks, Indiana 

Richard Hudson, North Carolina 

Luke Messer, Indiana 

George Miller, California, 

Senior Democratic Member 

Robert C. ‘‘Bobby’’ Scott, Virginia 

Rube ́n Hinojosa, Texas 

Carolyn McCarthy, New York 

John F. Tierney, Massachusetts 

Rush Holt, New Jersey 

Susan A. Davis, California 

Rau ́l M. Grijalva, Arizona 

Timothy H. Bishop, New York 

David Loebsack, Iowa 

Joe Courtney, Connecticut 

Marcia L. Fudge, Ohio 

Jared Polis, Colorado 

Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan, 

Northern Mariana Islands 

Frederica S. Wilson, Florida 

Suzanne Bonamici, Oregon 

Mark Pocan, Wisconsin 

Juliane Sullivan, Staff Director 

Jody Calemine, Minority Staff Director 

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(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on April 2, 2014 ................................................................................ 1 

Statement of Members: 

Kline, Hon. John, Chairman, Committee on Education and the Workforce 1 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 3 

Miller, Hon. George, Senior Democratic Member, Committee on Education and the Workforce ............................................................................. 4 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 6 

Statement of Witnesses: 

Boughman, Joann A., Dr., Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, 

University of Maryland, Adelphi, MD ......................................................... 50 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 52 

Gilligan, Kevin, Chairman and CEO, Capella Education Company, Minneapolis, MN ................................................................................................. 17 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 19 

Jones, Stan, President, Complete College America, Indianapolis, IN .......... 57 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 59 

Keel, Brooks A., Dr., President, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, 

GA .................................................................................................................. 71 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 73 

Moldoff, David K., CEO and Founder of AcademyOne, Inc. ......................... 28 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 31 

Pruitt, George A., President, Thomas Edison State College, Trenton, NJ .. 10 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 12 

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(1) 

KEEPING COLLEGE WITHIN REACH: MEETING 

THE NEEDS OF CONTEMPORARY STUDENTS 

Wednesday, April 2, 2014 

House of Representatives, 

Committee on Education and the Workforce, 

Washington, D.C. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:04 a.m., in Room 

2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John Kline [chairman 

of the committee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Kline, Wilson, Foxx, Price, Walberg, 

Salmon, Guthrie, DesJarlais, Bucshon, Brooks, Messer, Miller, 

Scott, Hinojosa, Tierney, Holt, Davis, Courtney, Fudge, Polis, and 

Bonamici. 

Staff present: Janelle Belland, Coalitions and Member Services 

Coordinator; Amy Raaf Jones, Deputy Director of Education and 

Human Services Policy; Nancy Locke, Chief Clerk; Daniel Murner, 

Press Assistant; Krisann Pearce, General Counsel; Jenny Prescott, 

Legislative Assistant; Emily Slack, Professional Staff Member; Alex 

Sollberger, Communications Director; Alissa Strawcutter, Deputy 

Clerk; Juliane Sullivan, Staff Director; 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; Julia Krahe, Minority Communications Director; Brian Levin, Minority Press Secretary; Megan 

O’Reilly, Minority General Counsel; Rich Williams, Minority Education Policy Advisor; and Michael Zola, Minority Deputy Staff Director. 

Chairman KLINE. A quorum being present, the committee will 

come to order. Good morning and welcome. 

Thank you for joining us for the committee’s 14th and likely final 

hearing in preparation for the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. I look forward to a robust discussion with my colleagues 

and our witnesses on ways institutions can better serve contemporary students. 

As we have discussed in previous hearings, student demographics are changing rapidly and remarkably. The days when the 

majority of college students were between the ages of 18 and 22, 

attending college full-time right after graduating from high school, 

are over. Today more than half of postsecondary students are socalled ‘‘nontraditional’’ students. 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

2 

These contemporary students often have families, work full- or 

part-time, and are financially independent. They return to school 

with one overarching goal: to quickly and affordably gain new skills 

that will help them compete for area jobs and new career opportunities. 

Recognizing this new demand, higher education institutions are 

exploring new modes of education delivery. To help students earn 

a degree faster, a number of schools now offer prior learning assessments. Students are evaluated based on their existing knowledge in a particular subject, providing the opportunity to progress 

in a degree program without being forced to first complete redundant or unnecessary courses. 

At a previous hearing, Council for Adult and Experimental 

Learning President and CEO Dr. Pamela Tate shared examples of 

students who have benefitted from prior learning assessments, 

such as the Navy veteran who was able to use his military and job 

training to gain credits toward his bachelor’s degree in industrial 

manufacturing engineering. 

Other institutions are embracing technology, providing new opportunities for students to complete online courses at their own 

pace. At Western Governor’s University, the largest online-only institution, a flexible, competency-based education model makes it 

easier for students to earn a degree while balancing demands of 

family and work. 

Recognizing some contemporary students may have previously 

earned college credits or would like to earn a degree at a lower cost 

by fulfilling some course requirements at local community colleges, 

states are collaborating with institutions to implement comprehensive articulation agreements. These agreements make it easier for 

students to transfer credits between institutions, reducing redundancy and helping raise degree completion rates. 

In Louisiana, for example, associate’s degrees earned at 2-year 

community colleges are guaranteed to transfer completely to 4-year 

institutions. Additionally, some states are expanding their articulation agreements to include bordering states and private institutions, providing students more flexibility and options when earning 

a postsecondary degree. 

We are fortunate to have with us today an excellent panel of witnesses who can offer more examples of ways postsecondary institutions, private entities, and states are working to help contemporary 

students realize their education goals. 

We look forward to your testimony. 

Supporting innovation in the nation’s colleges and universities 

remains a key priority for the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. However, as we have seen in the K–12 education system, such innovation should be encouraged from the ground up, not 

mandated from Washington. 

In recent years the administration has tried repeatedly to impose 

new, burdensome regulations on the nation’s colleges and universities in the name of program integrity. The gainful employment, 

credit hour, and state authorization regulations have been widely 

rejected by education stakeholders, Congress, and the federal court 

system for the simple fact that these rules will hamper innovation, 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

3 

reduce academic freedom, and limit choice and opportunity in higher education. 

The committee has advanced legislation to combat these controversial regulations and will continue to explore additional opportunities to rein in the administration’s efforts to impose harmful 

mandates on students and schools. Additionally, as we begin drafting legislation to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, we must 

include policies that promote—not dictate—continued innovation 

and flexibility in postsecondary institutions. We cannot allow federal barriers to stand in the way of the services and opportunities 

students deserve. 

Once again, I would like to thank our witnesses for joining us 

today. 

And I would now like to yield to the senior Democratic member 

of the committee, Mr. George Miller, for his opening remarks. 

[The statement of Chairman Kline follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Hon. John Kline, Chairman, Committee on 

Education and the Workforce 

Good morning and welcome. Thank you for joining us for the committee’s 14th 

and likely final hearing in preparation for the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. I look forward to a robust discussion with my colleagues and our witnesses on ways institutions can better serve contemporary students. 

As we have discussed in previous hearings, student demographics are changing 

rapidly and remarkably. The days when the majority of college students were between the ages of 18 and 22, attending college full-time right after graduating from 

high school, are over. Today more than half of postsecondary students are so-called 

‘‘non-traditional’’ students. 

These contemporary students often have families, work full- or part-time, and are 

financially independent. They return to school with one overarching goal: to quickly 

and affordably gain new skills that will help them compete for area jobs and new 

career opportunities. Recognizing this new demand, higher education institutions 

are exploring new modes of education delivery. 

To help students earn a degree faster, a number of schools now offer prior learning assessments. Students are evaluated based on their existing knowledge in a particular subject, providing the opportunity to progress in a degree program without 

being forced to first complete redundant or unnecessary courses. 

At a previous hearing, Council for Adult and Experimental Learning president 

and CEO Dr. Pamela Tate shared examples of students who have benefitted from 

prior learning assessments, such as the Navy veteran who was able to use his military and job training to gain credits toward his bachelor’s degree in Industrial Manufacturing Engineering. 

Other institutions are embracing technology, providing new opportunities for students to complete online courses at their own pace. At Western Governor’s University, the largest online-only institution, a flexible competency-based education model 

makes it easier for students to earn a degree while balancing the demands of family 

and work. 

Recognizing some contemporary students may have previously earned college 

credits, or would like to earn a degree at a lower cost by fulfilling some course requirements at local community colleges, states are collaborating with institutions to 

implement comprehensive articulation agreements. These agreements make it easier for students to transfer credits between institutions, reducing redundancy and 

helping raise degree completion rates. 

In Louisiana, for example, associate’s degrees earned at two-year community colleges are guaranteed to transfer completely to four-year institutions. Additionally, 

some states are expanding their articulation agreements to include bordering states 

and private institutions, providing students more flexibility and options when earning a postsecondary degree. 

We are fortunate to have with us today an excellent panel of witnesses who can 

offer more examples of ways postsecondary institutions, private entities, and states 

are working to help contemporary students realize their education goals. We look 

forward to your testimony. 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

4 

Supporting innovation in the nation’s colleges and universities remains a key priority for the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. However, as we have seen 

in the K–12 education system, such innovation should be encouraged from the 

ground up, not mandated from Washington. 

In recent years, the administration has tried repeatedly to impose new, burdensome regulations on the nation’s colleges and universities in the name of ‘‘program 

integrity.’’ The gainful employment, credit hour, and state authorization regulations 

have been widely rejected by education stakeholders, Congress, and the federal 

court system for the simple fact that these rules will hamper innovation, reduce academic freedom, and limit choice and opportunity in higher education. 

The committee has advanced legislation to combat these controversial regulations, 

and will continue to explore additional opportunities to rein in the administration’s 

efforts to impose harmful mandates on students and schools. Additionally, as we 

begin drafting legislation to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, we must include 

policies that promote – not dictate – continued innovation and flexibility in postsecondary institutions. We cannot allow federal barriers to stand in the way of the 

services and opportunities students deserve. 

Once again, I’d like to thank our witnesses for joining us today. I would now like 

to yield to the senior Democratic member of the committee, George Miller, for his 

opening remarks. 

Mr. MILLER. Good morning. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and 

thank you for holding this hearing. 

And thank you for the witnesses for giving this your time and 

expertise. 

By 2018 we know that our economy will need 22 million new 

workers with college degrees and that we will fall short of that 

need by three million people. To hit those goals we need to recognize that many of today’s students are very different from the students for whom the Higher Education Act was created. 

More than one-third of today’s college students are over 25. The 

average age of community college students is 29. And two-thirds of 

community college students attend part-time. 

Students rely on diverse ways of learning like online education, 

which served over five million students in 2012. Institutions are exploring with new models of education, like competency-based education. 

But students face substantial barriers to completing their degrees and graduating as they move through the higher education 

system. To ensure that we are preparing sufficient college graduates to meet the workforce demands, we need to eliminate the 

barriers that prevent too many students from earning their degree 

and securing their place in the middle class. 

Time and again I hear that students are wasting time and money 

as they try to transfer between institutions. More than one-third 

of college students switch schools prior to receiving a degree, and 

many transfer more than once. 

Unfortunately, too many students find themselves losing credits 

and unnecessarily repeating classes when they transfer. These 

points of friction increase as more students utilize different modes 

and pathways toward graduation, such as online education and 

credentialing of prior learning, and that friction wastes money for 

the taxpayers and for the students, as well as the students’ time. 

It also makes students much less likely to complete their degrees 

and graduate, and this is unacceptable. 

Right now nearly 15 percent of students transferring from community colleges lose 90 percent or more of the credits, which essenCEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

5 

tially means they have to start over. These are students the vast 

majority of which are borrowing money to pay for their education. 

Chairman, I thank you for mentioning articulation agreements. 

I hope that we can incorporate this in a rewrite of the Higher Education Act. 

Under a bill I introduced yesterday with Representatives Hinojosa and Polis and Fudge, an in-state student attending a public 2- 

year college would be able to ensure that their associate degree 

transfers to an in-state public 4-year college. They would receive 

junior status at the 4-year school and save nearly $18,000 compared to the students who are forced to start over. That would 

make a big dent in the cost of college. 

Around the country at least 36 states have already passed legislation to establish clear transfer pathways and articulation agreements, so the Transferring College Credit and Completion Act of 

2014 draws on those state policies. The bill provides a framework 

for states to establish a statewide transfer arrangement so that it 

will save students time and money, including a 30-credit minimum 

general education core of classes shared across 2-and 4-year public 

institution with common course numbering and a guarantee that 

the associate’s degree fulfills the two years of a related program at 

any public 4-year institution within the state, allowing community 

college students to transfer with junior status. 

These kinds of policies have a proven track record in raising 

graduation rates and lowering the cost by increasing transparency 

and creating guaranteed pathways to graduation. 

In addition, we will hear today that too many students are starting college behind and are not given support they need to catch up 

and complete their degrees. Remediation presents a substantial 

hurdle to college completion, particularly for low-income students, 

resulting in a high dropout rate and failure rates. 

Across the college, colleges are beginning to identify new best 

practices to increase the success rate of remedial education. Rather 

than mandating enrollment in non-credit-bearing remedial classes 

as a prerequisite to college-level coursework, some institutions are 

experimenting with a corequisite model, in which students enroll in 

college-level courses but are simultaneously receiving extra instruction and support. 

Competency-based education offers another avenue to prevent 

wasting time and money and focusing on self-paced attainment of 

competencies in a variety of subject areas rather than the accrual 

of credit hours. 

Mr. Chairman, with the federal government committing $140 billion a year in loan and grant dollars to fund students working toward a degree, states and institutions need to do much more. Too 

many students work hard to reach college only to find out that they 

are unprepared and cannot enroll in college-level coursework. 

They started at community college to avoid the burdensome debt, 

only to find out their credits will not transfer to a chosen 4-year 

college and they need to repeat courses. They are forced to take 

classes in subject areas they have already mastered, in which they 

have real-world experience. We need to eliminate these barriers to 

completion and empower students to complete their degrees and 

enter the workforce. 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

6 

And thank you again for holding this hearing. I think it is very 

timely. 

[The statement of Mr. Miller follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Hon. George Miller, Senior Democratic Member, 

Committee on Education and the Workforce 

Good morning, Chairman Kline. Thank you for holding this hearing on meeting 

the needs of contemporary students. 

By 2018, we know that our economy will need 22 million new workers with college 

degrees— and that that we will fall short of that need by 3 million people. 

To hit those goals, we need to recognize that many of today’s students are very 

different from the students for whom the Higher Education Act was created. 

More than one-third of today’s college students are over age 25. The average age 

of a community college student is 29, and two thirds of community college students 

attend part-time. 

Students rely on diverse ways of learning, like online education, which served 

over 5 million students in 2012 alone. Institutions are also exploring new models 

of education, like competency-based education. 

But students face substantial barriers to completing their degrees and graduating 

as they move through the higher education system. 

To ensure that we are preparing sufficient college graduates to meet workforce 

demands, we need to eliminate the barriers that prevent too many students from 

earning a degree and securing their place in the middle class. 

Time and again I hear that students are wasting time and money as they try to 

transfer between institutions. 

More than one-third of college students switch schools prior to receiving a degree, 

and many transfer more than once. 

Unfortunately, too many students find themselves losing credits and unnecessarily repeating classes when they transfer. These points of friction increase as more 

students utilize increasingly different modes and pathways toward graduation, such 

as online education and credentialing of prior learning. 

And that friction wastes money for taxpayers and students, as well as students’ 

time. 

It also makes students much less likely to complete their degree and graduate. 

This is unacceptable. 

Right now, nearly 15 percent of students transferring from community colleges 

lose 90 percent or more of their credits, which essentially means that they need to 

start over. 

Under a bill I introduced yesterday, with Representatives Hinojosa, Polis, and 

Fudge, an in-state student attending a public two-year college would be able to ensure that their associate degree transfers to an in-state public four-year college. 

They would receive junior status at the four-year school and save nearly $18,000 

compared to a student who is forced to start over. 

That would make a big dent in their college costs. 

Around the country, at least 36 states have already passed legislation to establish 

clear transfer pathways and articulation agreements. 

So the ‘‘Transferring Credits for College Completion Act of 2014’’ draws on those 

state policies. 

The bill provides a framework for states to establish statewide transfer arrangements that will save students time and money, including: 

* A 30-credit minimum general education core of classes shared across all twoand four-year public institutions, with common course numbering, and; 

* A guarantee that an associate’s degree fulfills the first two years of a related 

program at any public four-year institution within the state, allowing community 

college students to transfer with junior standing. 

These kinds of policies have a proven track record of raising graduation rates and 

lowering costs by increasing transparency and creating guaranteed pathways to 

graduation. 

I hope the committee will consider them. 

In addition, we’ll hear today that too many students are starting college behind 

and are not given the support they need to catch up and complete their degrees. 

Remediation presents a substantial hurdle to college completion, particularly for 

low-income students, resulting in high drop-out and failure rates. 

Across the country, colleges are beginning to identify new best practices to increase the success rate of remedial education. 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

7 

Rather than mandating enrollment in non-credit-bearing remedial classes as a 

‘‘pre-requisite’’ to college-level coursework, some institutions are experimenting with 

a ‘‘co-requisite’’ model, in which students enroll in college-level courses but simultaneously receive extra instruction and support. 

Competency-Based Education, or CBE, offers another avenue to prevent wasted 

time and money by focusing on the self-paced attainment of competencies in a variety of subject areas, rather than the accrual of credit hours. 

Mr. Chairman, with the federal government committing $140 billion a year in 

loan and grant dollars to fund students working toward a degree, states and institutions need to do much more. 

Too many students work hard to reach college only to find that they are unprepared and cannot enroll in college-level coursework. 

They start at community colleges to avoid burdensome debt, only to find that their 

credits will not transfer to their chosen four-year college and they need to repeat 

courses. They are forced to take classes in subject areas they have already mastered 

and in which they have real-world experience. 

We need to eliminate these barriers to completion and empower students to complete their degrees and enter the workforce. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Chairman KLINE. I thank the gentleman. 

Pursuant to committee rule 7(c), all committee members will be 

permitted to submit written statements to be included in the permanent hearing record. And 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. 

And I am going to start by recognizing the gentleman from New 

Jersey, Mr. Holt, to introduce our first witness. 

Mr. HOLT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I am delighted to introduce my friend, Dr. George Pruitt, 

who is president of Thomas Edison State College, which was founded in 1972 as a state institution, not a private or for-profit institution. It is the second-largest university, public or private, in New 

Jersey, and Dr. Pruitt has been president of Thomas Edison for 

most of that time. 

He serves on the board of directors of the American Council of 

Education, has advised numerous secretaries of education under 

various presidents of both parties. He serves as vice chair of the 

Commission on Higher Education Attainment, which focuses on retention and some of the things that we are talking about today. 

And Dr. Pruitt also chairs the board of the Middle States Commission of Higher Education, which is the accreditation organization 

for mid-Atlantic states and Puerto Rico. 

With regard to Thomas Edison State College—and maybe I can 

save the president some of his testimony time by pointing out, it 

has been named one of the 50 best colleges for nontraditional students. I think that is weak praise; it deserves much more than ‘‘one 

of 50 fine schools.’’ 

Forbes Magazine called it one of the top 20 universities in the 

nation of the use of technology. The New York Times has called 

Thomas Edison one of the brighter stars in higher education. 

Whether you call it—the kind of education they provide there— 

specialized or nontraditional or relevant or adult or mid-career, it 

is a very important national model that we would do well to look 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

8 

at carefully. And it has thrived under Dr. Pruitt’s leadership, with 

his vision, and I am sure we will get insight from Dr. Pruitt today. 

Thank you. 

Chairman KLINE. I thank the gentleman. 

If he could have talked for four or five more minutes, you would 

have been number one without any doubt. 

[Laughter.] 

Let me resume today’s introductions. 

Mr. Kevin Gilligan serves as chairman and CEO of Capella Education Company in Minneapolis, Minnesota. 

And we are delighted that you are here today, and I know you 

were delighted to leave Minnesota in the same snowstorm that was 

prevailing when I was there. 

Prior to joining Capella, Mr. Gilligan held leadership roles at 

United Subcontractors, Inc., and Honeywell International. 

Mr. David Moldoff founded AcademyOne, Inc., in 2005 and serves 

as its chief executive officer. Over the past four decades he has 

built a reputation as an industry expert in software architecture 

and systems integration across the education sector. 

Dr. Joann Boughman serves as the senior vice chancellor for academic affairs, a position she has held since 2012. 

I want to recognize Mr. Messer to introduce our next witness. 

Mr. MESSER. Yes. This is a tremendous privilege. Thank you, Mr. 

Chairman. I want to first read his introduction here and then tell 

you what I know about Stan. 

Mr. Stan Jones is the president and founder of Complete College 

America. He has been involved in higher education for three decades, serving as Indiana’s commissioner of higher education and as 

a state legislator in Indiana. 

Stan and I got to know each other working on dropout policies 

and legislation in Indiana that, once we were able to get it passed 

in a very bipartisan way, has created a set of tools on those issues 

that have improved Indiana’s dropout rate from 70 percent to almost 90 percent now over a period of six or seven years. And I 

would just want to say about Stan Jones is—I don’t want to undercut your bona fides here, but there is nobody I know who has a bigger heart for kids; there is nobody I know who has spent more time 

working on these issues, trying to truly understand what we can 

do to create better opportunities for young people in America; and 

there is nobody I know more willing to set party and politics aside 

and find the true common ground that can make a difference for 

young people. 

And it is my pleasure to introduce Stan to the committee today. 

Thank you. 

Chairman KLINE. I thank the gentleman. 

I want to back up just a second. I quickly pointed out that Dr. 

Boughman serves as a senior vice chancellor for academic affairs 

and neglected to mention that is at the University of Maryland, so 

sorry. Apologize. 

I would now like to recognize, I guess, Dr. Price to introduce our 

final witness. 

Mr. PRICE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There is a lot of pride on 

the panel up here today introducing folks from home, and I am so 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

9 

proud to be able to have the opportunity to introduce Dr. Brooks 

Keel, who is the 12th president of Georgia Southern University. 

Georgia Southern is an institution that serves more than 20,000 

undergraduate and graduate students, offering 115 degree programs through eight colleges, including bachelor’s, master’s, and 

doctoral programs. Dr. Keel has been president at Georgia Southern for a little over four years. He comes to Georgia Southern by 

way of LSU and Florida State, and we forgive him for that. 

He is a native Georgian, receiving his Ph.D. in reproductive endocrinology from the Medical College of Georgia. His illustrious 

academic career includes work at the University of Texas; University of South Dakota; and the University of Kansas, Wichita, where 

he established the Women’s Research Institute and Reproductive 

Medicine Laboratories, becoming the first recipient of the Daniel 

Roberts Distinguished Professorship and Endowed Chair at U.K. 

He carried out all of those remarkable accomplishments always focusing on cutting-edge research in biomedical and biological 

sciences. 

Dr. Keel has served with distinction in national professional organizations and societies. He has authored 65 peer-reviewed scientific publications, 19 book chapters, and edited four books. And 

I will tell you that there are few individuals who have the breadth 

of experience in higher education, and in his current position, the 

real-life success of leading an institution that daily meets the needs 

of a diverse and exciting student body group. 

So Georgia is very proud of Dr. Keel, and we are honored to 

share him and his experience with the committee today. 

Chairman KLINE. I thank the gentleman for the introduction. 

I welcome all the witnesses. 

We could get in a battle up here very quickly, as you see. I am 

not sure about this policy of allowing members to introduce witnesses. We would all be number one in something out there pretty 

quickly. 

Before I— 

Mr. MILLER. [Off mike.] 

Chairman KLINE. I knew it. I just knew it. 

Before I recognize each of you to provide your testimony, let me 

just remind you of the lighting system. You see the lights in front 

of you. 

You will each have five minutes to present your testimony. When 

you begin the light will turn green; after four minutes the light will 

turn yellow—start looking at wrapping up your testimony, if you 

would, please; and when it turns red, please wrap up as expeditiously as you can. 

All of your written testimony will be included in the record. 

After you have all testified, each of the members on the committee will be allotted five minutes to ask questions. I will do my 

best to hold my colleagues to their five minutes so everybody has 

a chance to participate. 

I would now like to recognize Dr. Pruitt for five minutes. Sir? 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

10 

STATEMENT OF DR. GEORGE A. PRUITT, PRESIDENT, THOMAS 

EDISON STATE COLLEGE, TRENTON, NJ 

Mr. PRUITT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With your permission I 

would like to thank my friend, Congressman Holt, for his kind and 

generous introduction. 

We certainly want to—we will miss you and your service to this 

committee, to the Congress, and to the nation. I wish you well over 

the next phase of your career, and I am glad you will still be in 

the neighborhood. 

Thomas Edison State College is one of 11 senior public colleges 

and universities in New Jersey. We are a specialized institution. 

We were founded in 1972 with the mission of providing flexible, 

high-quality collegiate learning opportunities for self-directed 

adults. 

We are not a classroom-based college. The average age of our student body is approximately 40 and, while there are exceptions, we 

do not normally admit students under the age of 21. 

We begin a new semester every month. Our students come to us 

when they are ready and they graduate when they have completed 

all degree requirements. They satisfy our degree requirements by 

choosing from a menu of high-quality credit-earning options that 

include independent study, distance education, prior learning assessment, transferring credit earned at other colleges, and courses 

taken through the military and with other non-collegiate providers. 

With an enrollment in excess of 20,000 students, we are the second-largest college or university in New Jersey. While the majority 

of our students are in-state, the remainder can be found in every 

state in the union and scores of countries around the world. We are 

a military-friendly institution that enrolls more veterans than the 

rest of the senior public institutions in New Jersey combined. 

Our total annual in-state tuition is $5,700, which makes us one 

of the most affordable senior public colleges or universities in the 

country. 

From our very beginning as an innovative, nontraditional college, 

we have been obsessive about quality. We are constantly looking 

for objective third-party confirmation of the quality of the work we 

do. 

For example, for two out of the last three years our undergraduates had the highest pass rate on the CPA exam of any college or 

university in the state. Graduates from our school of nursing, one 

of the state’s largest, perform in the top tier when compared to 

their peers on the state board exams. 

We believe that as an exemplar of innovation, quality, and affordability. We, along with some of our public sector peers, have pioneered strategies that many other institutions are now emulating. 

I believe that this is a good thing. 

However, I must advise you that the biggest impediment we face 

in adapting higher education to the contemporary needs of our nation is the current regulatory culture of the Department of Education. During my 31-year presidency, I have served in an advisory 

capacity to five secretaries of education, under three Presidents of 

both parties, and I have never before seen a predisposition for overreaching, intrusive, and sometimes destructive use of regulatory 

authority. 

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Such initiatives as credit-hour definition, state authorization, 

and the proposed federal ratings system, while well-intentioned, 

are ill-conceived and actually harmful. They stifle innovation, undermine sound academic judgment, and drive up cost. 

We need a regulatory framework that supports accountability 

and innovation. However, what we have now supports compliance 

over quality, conformity over diversity, and attempts to federalize 

and bureaucratize judgments that should be left to the academy, 

the accreditors, and the states. 

It is a culture that assumes that higher education is the exclusive purview of 18-to 22-year-olds going to college full time. But 

this has not been true for a generation. 

The majority of college students today are over 25 and studying 

part time. The federal IPEDS system only counts first-time, fulltime freshman, treats transfer students as dropouts, and excludes 

40 percent—40 percent of the students enrolled in colleges and 

about 100 percent of the students enrolled at Thomas Edison. 

It is dangerous to rely on data from this system to make policy 

judgments. I would certainly acknowledge that there have been 

abuses around the margins, but I would urge you not to impose 

remedies that inflict more harm than the maladies they are attempting to cure. 

My best advice to you collectively and individually is that when 

you return to your districts, meet with the presidents of your colleges and universities and get their counsel about the issues that 

concern you. I think that you will find that we all share the same 

objectives, but right now we are headed in the wrong direction. 

Thank you. 

[The statement of Dr. Pruitt follows:] 

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Chairman KLINE. Thank you very much, Dr. Pruitt. 

Mr. Gilligan, you are recognized for five minutes. 

STATEMENT OF MR. KEVIN GILLIGAN, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, 

CAPELLA EDUCATION COMPANY, MINNEAPOLIS, MN 

Mr. GILLIGAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Miller, and distinguished members of the committee. 

Thank you. 

As the chairman indicated, my name is Kevin Gilligan and I am 

the chairman and CEO of Capella Education Company. Our company is comprised of several parts, including our most significant 

and well-known entity, Capella University, which began 20 years 

ago with a mission to help adults pursue a master’s or doctoral degree while working full time and pursuing a career; Sophia Learning, which provides low-cost pathways to general education credits; 

and an employer solutions business, which partners with largescale employers to create online learning solutions. 

Thank you for having this hearing today. I believe the topic we 

are here to discuss—keeping college in reach for contemporary students—is a national imperative. American competitiveness is directly linked to our ability to make higher education more affordable, deliver increased value better aligned to workforce needs and 

opportunities, and broadly increase educational opportunity. The 

path to addressing this national imperative is through innovation. 

Innovation has always been at the core of Capella’s history and 

our contribution to higher education. We were at the vanguard of 

online learning and for the last decade we have been a nationally 

recognized leader in competency-based education. This expertise in 

competency-based education enabled us last year to become the 

first institution in America approved by the Department of Education to offer financial aid-eligible bachelor’s and master-level degrees based on the direct assessment of learning rather than the 

traditional model, built around the time-based credit hour. 

It is this latest innovation that I have been invited to address 

here today. 

The average Capella University student, a 40-year-old female, is 

in the middle of her career and in many ways is the face of the 

contemporary student. The innovation of a degree based on the direct assessment of learning can be a uniquely good fit for her. 

In some cases adults bring real-world experience that they can 

apply to move more quickly through a degree program. The direct 

assessment model allows institutions to be more flexible in the delivery of learning. 

Direct assessment degrees are not a panacea or a perfect fit for 

every student, and it will not replace the credit hour-based system 

of higher education. However, earning degrees based on the direct 

assessment of learning rather than the traditional time-based 

model has the potential to dramatically increase flexibility for students, significantly reduce the cost of a degree, speed time to degree completion, and increase access for working adult populations 

that are not currently served by today’s higher education model. 

In my written testimony I have provided a deeper explanation of 

how our competency-based model works and how it has enabled us 

to offer direct assessment degrees through a program we call 

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FlexPath. I have also provided some thoughts on how federal policy 

can better support this innovation by allowing us to offer hybrid 

programs and decouple the credit hour from federal financial aid. 

I look forward to discussing it in more detail with you here today. 

Let me close, Mr. Chairman, by thanking you and Representative 

Miller for the opportunity to come here today and tell our story. 

Thank you for your national leadership and commitment to 

strengthening American education and competitiveness. 

And finally, let me say I am deeply proud to lead such a missiondriven organization. It is an honor for me to represent Capella’s 

faculty and staff, who believe in and are committed to the innovation of competency-based learning. And I am equally proud of the 

service we provide to our adult graduates and learners who represent the great resource that exists in America’s workforce. 

I look forward to being part of the discussion and answering your 

questions around federal policy that enhances this important innovation. Thank you. 

[The statement of Mr. Gilligan follows:] 

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Chairman KLINE. Thank you. 

Mr. Moldoff, you are recognized. 

STATEMENT OF MR. DAVID K. MOLDOFF, CEO AND FOUNDER, 

ACADEMYONE, INC., WEST CHESTER, PA 

Mr. MOLDOFF. Thank you, Chairman Kline, Ranking Member 

Miller, and members of the committee. My name is David Moldoff 

and I am CEO of AcademyOne, a technology consulting company 

located in West Chester, Pennsylvania. And thank you for inviting 

me to testify. 

AcademyOne’s focus is addressing the implications of student 

mobility, academic credit portability, and prior learning recognition. The company has developed a suite of navigational tools that 

assist states and institutions in addressing the diverse patterns 

students pursue as they follow their aspirations. 

For over 35 years I have led teams in creating, implementing, 

and supporting student information systems for thousands of colleges and universities. I directed this work as a senior executive of 

several technology companies, including the ones I have started. 

Back in 2000 the standalone systems I helped design, develop, 

and deploy were slowly impeding degree completion as higher education institutions adjusted to the growth of the nontraditional programs. Traditional students progressing through a single college or 

university in four years was the exception and no longer the norm. 

‘‘Alma mater’’ was being replaced with ‘‘I am mobile.’’ 

This fueled my desire to launch AcademyOne in 2005 to address 

the implications of college transfer and prior learning recognition 

to begin with. We assembled the first national course atlas of 3.5 

million courses and indexed millions of course equivalencies. We 

also indexed about 20,000 articulation agreements, which were 

treasure maps, promising gold at the end of the hunt. I learned 

most were not followed to completion. 

Today over 1,200 institutional profiles are summarized on 

AcademyOne’s national website, called collegetransfer.net. They 

are viewed by millions of students and parents each year seeking 

the answer to the question, ‘‘Will my credits transfer?’’ 

Economics, and in some cases state legislation, have resulted in 

an increase in the number of articulation agreements and course 

equivalencies published. This is an evidence that the landscape has 

changed and institutions have responded to the significant challenge of student mobility. 

I estimate that our federal agencies, and states, and industry 

partnerships, and foundations, and institutions have invested well 

over $2 billion addressing transfer articulation agreements since 

2010. 

Most of us remember what it is like trying to find our way on 

roads we never traveled before. My wife would suggest I stop and 

ask someone for directions instead of fumbling with paper maps. 

Some of us have a sense of direction. I don’t; I am directionally 

challenged. 

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me. Now I can easily navigate roads as I know I want to—where 

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nology was conceived from the U.S. government’s launch of satellites. 

In essence, AcademyOne has developed a GPS for students and 

institutions. 

AcademyOne pioneered the automation of transfer maps. Thousands of maps every month are generated on behalf of participating 

institutions based on the academic rules that govern how institutions accept learning outside of their own classrooms. 

Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Texas, Delaware, Florida are just among some of the states employing 

AcademyOne’s technology to serve statewide initiatives instead of 

home-growing their own technology. For example, Pennsylvania 

uses collegetransfer.net for several initiatives, including managing 

the Department of Education’s statewide transfer framework to 

guarantee transfer of targeted courses to any of the majors if students are attending participating institutions. 

Another is through the state’s Bureau of Career Technical Education, funded by the Perkins Act, to prepare high school students 

for the high-priority 21st century occupations. Students Occupationally and Academically Ready Project, SOAR, provides online articulation agreements between the state’s popular high school vocational programs and postsecondary institutions. 

And Tennessee is using our software to build a statewide reverse 

transfer system to determine eligibility of students pursuing their 

undergraduate degree and attending a 4-year institution that 

transferred from the in-state community college but never earned 

their associate’s degree. 

I have included additional state summary briefs in my written 

testimony. 

The state-based web portals and apps AcademyOne powers publishes informational resources for students and institutions to assist in the contemporary learner as they go step-by-step through 

the guidance and saves them time and effort. 

It has not been easy to overcome the institutional bureaucracy. 

In some institutions, they will have to wait months after enrolling 

to learn what courses they have previously taken will be accepted 

and applied to their degrees. Or they might learn that the institution denied transfer credit because courses were differentiated subjectively rather than validating learning outcomes. 

Students can continue to experience transfer shock when prior 

learning, initially accepted based upon general course descriptions, 

turns out to be nontransferable to the major after faculty review. 

On average, a transfer student does lose more than a semester 

of credits by the time they graduate. This is what I called a transfer tax and it adds about 10 percent to the cost of the undergraduate degree. Furthermore, financial aid and loans are stressed 

by increased time to degree completion. 

Education is diverse and decentralized. Our sector is not monopolized by a few players. There are thousands of institutions, each focused on their uniqueness. 

Like roads, we have local, state, and interstate. Just like the 

landscape along the road is unique, so are our institutions. 

There are numerous challenges facing our nation that can be addressed with GPS-like technology that can replace the treasure 

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maps with prescriptive directions, minimizing the friction of college 

completion. I have outlined some of these steps in my written testimony. 

AcademyOne’s success with statewide initiatives proves that we 

can bridge institutional information systems. 

I want to thank the Chairman Kline and full committee for the 

opportunity to testify, and I am available to answer questions. 

[The statement of Mr. Moldoff follows:] 

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Chairman KLINE. Thank you, sir. 

Dr. Boughman. 

STATEMENT OF DR. JOANN A. BOUGHMAN, SENIOR VICE 

CHANCELLOR FOR ACADEMIC AFFAIRS, UNIVERSITY SYSTEM OF MARYLAND, ADELPHI, MD 

Ms. BOUGHMAN. Thank you very much, Chairman Kline and 

members of the committee. I am Joann Boughman, senior vice 

chancellor for the University System of Maryland. 

Others here are addressing some of the modes of delivery and assessment that the University System of Maryland institutions are 

working on to enhance, with our University of Maryland University 

College leading the way in many of these. But I would like to spend 

my few minutes talking about the needs of the contemporary student that transfers. 

Transfer students account for two of every three students coming 

into the 12 institutions in the University System of Maryland—this 

year well over 20,000 of them, half of whom come from Maryland 

community colleges. Community college transfers have increased 

25 percent over the last five years. 

Over 70 percent of these enrolled full time in our institutions, 

and of those, more than 80 percent matriculated at sophomore status or above; 66 percent of those that enrolled graduated within 4 

years, a rate comparable to those freshmen 6-year graduation 

rates. 

And while statistics are compelling, I would like to mention a few 

of our lessons learned, which I think are the most important. 

Leadership and partnerships are critical. Each higher education 

segment, from community colleges, public four-year universities, 

and the private colleges and universities, has worked hard on the 

development of meaningful transfer and articulation policies and 

processes. 

Maryland is a relatively small state, with just under six million 

people, and we have the luxury of conducting a lot of face-to-face 

conversations among our institutions through the active P–20 

Council and the office of Governor Martin O’Malley, meetings of 

the community college presidents and our public institution presidents, and regular convening of the Segmental Advisory Council 

that includes the private institutions as well. 

In 2013 the state legislature passed the Maryland College Completion and Readiness Act of 2013. This law sets the bar very high 

with mandates for programmatic and process improvements, including: statewide transfer agreement that at least 60 credits of an 

Associate of Art or Associate of Science degree transfers to our 

four-year institution; reverse transfer of at least 30 credits back toward the A.A. degree; scholarship incentives for students to complete their associate’s degree before coming to our four-year institutions; capping of degrees at 60 credits for an associate’s degree and 

120 credits for a bachelor’s degree; implementation of pathway systems and degree plans at all institution; and enhancement of our 

online articulation system, ARTSYS. 

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tutions. Course equivalencies are detailed so anyone can see if any 

one course will transfer from one to any other institution. 

Entire transcripts can be evaluated in real time online so that 

one knows exactly what courses will transfer with credit. Recommended transfer programs are described in detail so a student 

may plan ahead and find the most robust and efficient pathway to 

both an associate’s and a full four-year degree. 

Continuous updating and refining of ARTSYS requires substantial faculty input because it is the faculty that assess whether any 

one course should transfer from one institution to another, and 

that is an intensive process. But in fact, the articulation system, 

worked in this way, does negate the need for debate about common 

course numbering, per se. 

Current Maryland regulations guarantee the transfer of 30 to 36 

credits of general education credit from community college to 4- 

year institutions, but the recent legislation requires that we transfer 60 credits from the associate’s degree to the bachelor’s degree. 

We have addressed challenging specific areas of transfer directly 

through statewide articulation agreements. Faculty have been convened to develop clear pathways for an Associate of Arts in Teaching, Associate of Science in Engineering, and the R.N. to BSN pathway. 

Now students can move absolutely smoothly from our community 

colleges to our four-year institutions in all of these areas without 

swirling or meandering in non-degree-related courses or otherwise 

accumulating extraneous credits. In fact, students transferring 

from our community college with 60 credits or more graduate from 

our USM institutions with an average of 122.8 credits. That is less 

than one full course above the 120 in a bachelor’s degree. 

Most institutions identify one or very few primary feeder colleges. They create specific agreements and programs that ensure 

smooth transfer of students from one to another. 

While it is essential that credits transfer, it has become obvious 

to us that successful matriculation through higher education also 

requires investment in student services, activities, and cultural engagements by institutions. Support of students across the full spectrum of higher ed and the spaces in between will lead to successful 

retention and completion for students challenged by the cost of 

higher education and other competing life priorities. 

Look forward to answering your questions and engaging in the 

conversation. Thank you very much. 

[The statement of Dr. Boughman follows:] 

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Chairman KLINE. Thank you. 

Mr. Jones, you are recognized for five minutes. 

STATEMENT OF MR. STAN JONES, PRESIDENT, COMPLETE 

COLLEGE AMERICA, INDIANAPOLIS, IN (DEMOCRAT WITNESS) 

Mr. JONES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Representative Miller, 

and members of the committee. 

I would like to start in a different place. 

During the worst of the recession we had record enrollment in 

our colleges across this country, so people were voting, saying, in 

essence, ‘‘Our way to a better economic future is to go back to college.’’ The freshman class, not only being bigger, it was more representative of America than it has ever been. There were more African Americans, more Hispanics, more first-generation students, 

more contemporary students than ever before. And certainly we 

should be proud of this record enrollment in terms of access. 

But we also have to ask the question, what happens to these students after they start? And if we look at the spring graduation day, 

who is there? At a community college, two-thirds of those that start 

have dropped out; if we look at 4-year colleges, especially the nonflagships, we have lost half of those students. 

And so for many of them those dreams are not realized. For the 

transfer students that Representative Miller spoke of, one-third of 

community college students transfer. One-third of those graduate. 

So 11 percent of those students that started at a community college 

intending to get a bachelor’s degree are successful. 

We also know that, unfortunately, far too many of these students 

start out their college career in remediation. It is overwhelming. 

At community colleges 60 percent of students start in remediation, and in some cities like D.C., 90 percent; Chicago, 90 percent; 

Philadelphia, 80 percent started remedial courses. It is true at 

many of the 4-year, open-access institutions, as well. 

We also know that when you start in remediation, immediately 

your chances drop by 50 percent as to whether you are going to 

graduate. Only 10 percent of those starting in remediation at a 

community college ever get a degree or certificate of any kind. 

And one of the, I guess, more profound statistics is that 70 percent of those that are—in community colleges—referred to remedial 

math, within two years don’t even attempt a regular college math 

class, and otherwise they don’t even get to go. 

Many, many students start in remedial class, that is their first 

college experience, that is their last. They didn’t like math in high 

school, they find themselves in remedial math. 

We also know why remediation doesn’t work, and it is because 

of attrition. Some students are placed in three levels down of mathematics—fractions and decimals. Only one percent of those students ever get a degree or certificate of any kind. Some students 

spend a year or even two years taking remedial courses. They 

never get degrees. 

There is a different way to think about this, and that is think 

about remediation not as a prerequisite but as a corequisite—not 

something you have to do before you start, but something that you 

do when you start, more time on task. It can be as simple as taking 

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four class hours rather than three, staying after class 45 minutes 

every class, having assigned tutoring two hours a week. 

And those practices have shown extraordinary results. Just to 

point to two: One is in Carnegie Mellon—I am sorry, not—Carnegie 

Center for Advancement of Teaching and Learning at 30 different 

colleges offer a statistics course and a quantitative reasoning 

course. Their success rate has gone from five percent to 55 percent 

in one year. In Indiana, my home state, across the state at statewide community college, their success rate in English has doubled 

from 25 to 50 percent, and math has gone from 10 percent to 50 

percent. 

These strategies can work, and they can work in a big way. 

As Complete College America, our single focus is on college completion. We work with 34 states. Remediation is a part of what we 

do; we also work on other strategies like performance funding, like 

encouraging students to take 15 credit hours. There are more students taking 12 credit hours than taking 15 as incoming freshmen, 

so those taking 12, they are already on the five-year plan before 

they even get started. 

So what role can Congress play? Two roles. 

One is, the federal government collects a lot of data in what is 

called IPEDS. You have not been collecting—the government has 

not been collecting graduation rates, for example, on these remedial students I spoke of; you do not collect graduation rates on Pell 

students, where we spend billions of dollars every year; we don’t 

collect graduation rates on adult students, the contemporary students that we are talking about, or veterans. So we don’t know 

those answers. 

So that is the first place, and I think that is a simple fix, but 

that would drive policy. The second place is as you look at HEA, 

consider incentives for students to take 15 hours, incentives to 

progress toward a timely degree, incentives to graduate. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The statement of Mr. Jones follows:] 

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Chairman KLINE. Thank you. 

Dr. Keel, you are recognized. 

STATEMENT OF DR. BROOKS A. KEEL, PRESIDENT, GEORGIA 

SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY, STATESBORO, GA 

Mr. KEEL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning. 

Chairman Kline, Ranking Member Miller, and members of the 

committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on the need for 

a workforce-grant university, preparing the 21st century workforce. 

I would like to also especially thank Congressman Price for his representation and support of higher education in the great state of 

Georgia. 

My name is Brooks Keel and I have the privilege of serving as 

the president of Georgia Southern University, located in the southeast Georgia city of Statesboro. It is my privilege to speak to you 

today on the role that our university plays in workforce development. 

Complete College Georgia, a statewide effort championed by Governor Nathan Deal, has estimated that 60 percent of jobs in Georgia will require at least some postsecondary credential by 2020. Because of the future workforce demands of business coupled with the 

increasing awareness of the relationship between college education 

and job placement, universities must now focus not only on college 

completion—that is, graduation rates—but also on worker readiness—that is, job placement rates—of their students following 

graduations. 

While technical schools address a critical workforce need, many 

businesses are realizing that their employees now need a more indepth, highly specialized skill set. These skills include a deeper 

working knowledge of the discipline, greater critical thinking ability, team-based problem solving experience, advanced communication skills, an appreciation for innovation and creativity, and an 

enhanced ability to translate advanced learning directly into practice. In many cases these competencies can only be realized 

through a four-year degree and are most often provided by comprehensive universities who are uniquely positioned to emphasize 

the importance of worker readiness in their curriculum. 

In order to meet the workforce needs of the 21st century, higher 

education must rethink its role in educating students. Perhaps it 

is time to extend the original tenets of the land-grant university 

mission, created more than 150 years ago, by supporting the concept of a workforce-grant university. 

Georgia Southern is the perfect example of such a workforcegrant university. As Congressman Price mentioned, we currently 

enroll more than 20,500 students from all 159 Georgia counties, all 

50 states, and more than 100 countries. But what makes us 

unique, though, is that across all fields our students are taught not 

only the theory of the discipline but also the practical aspects of 

how to apply the theory to a real-world work situation. 

Our students learn how to work in teams, how to think critically, 

and how to express themselves creatively. As an example, our engineering students spend more than twice the amount of physical 

laboratory time than most other engineering programs, directly applying knowledge gained during the lecture sessions. They are 

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taught by faculty who have industry experience and who know 

what skills the industry is going to be looking for. 

We graduate work-ready generalist engineers who have the 

knowledge required to build as well as design and who are as comfortable out on the shop floor as they are behind a desk. Because 

of this practical experience, our engineering graduates know how 

to translate a computer design drawing into a product that can actually be machined efficiently and manufactured inexpensively. 

Industry itself plays an important role in promoting the workforce-grant university culture at Georgia Southern. We currently 

have 28 industry advisory boards, consisting of more than 380 industry business leaders, spanning the gamut from mechanical engineering to nursing to graphics communication management to forensic accounting. These external boards meet regularly with our 

deans and faculty, helping to create state-of-the-art curricula and 

to design practical work training experience for our students. 

Through industry sponsored internships, and especially co-ops, 

our students gain valuable work experience which helps the student decide if that industry is, indeed, the right career path; affords industry the opportunity to learn if the individual student is 

the right fit for that particular job; and reduces industry-specific 

on-the-job orientation, making our students even more work-ready. 

All of this significantly increases job satisfaction, reduces the quit 

rate, and aids in keeping these newly hired individuals employed 

in the state. 

We are actively exploring the concept of industry-sponsored, forgivable worker-readiness education loans, awarded to students who 

participate in co-ops and subsequently commit to working with the 

sponsoring industry for a 1-to 3-year term following graduation. 

This will further reduce new employee turnover and increase the 

return on investment made by industry in such programs. 

Such assistance may also provide need-based scholarship opportunities for many of our financially challenged students. Forgivable 

loan programs aimed specifically at this challenge can have a profound impact on preparing a highly trained and diverse workforce. 

In conclusion, Georgia Southern University is an institution committed to applied research and learning through scholarship and 

service. We bring together education, research, and industry in 

ways that benefit the state of Georgia, our region, and our nation. 

The economic prosperity in this country depends heavily on job 

creation, and in the availability of a highly-skilled, educated, and 

trained workforce. If adequately supported, workforce-grant universities like Georgia Southern will play a significant role in developing this economy and in producing this workforce. 

There is a role for everyone, including industries, businesses, 

communities, and government, in making sure that the United 

States will have the workforce needed for the 21st century and beyond. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you again for the opportunity to share with 

you our thoughts on this important issue. 

[The statement of Dr. Keel follows:] 

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Chairman KLINE. I thank you very much. 

I thank all the witnesses. This is probably the best I have ever 

seen for a panel this size in staying to the five-minute rule. Now 

if I can just get my colleagues to cooperate. 

It has been fascinating testimony. You are largely in violent 

agreement, which is really—a really nice thing to hear. 

Lots of innovation going on. We want to be very supportive of 

that. 

Mr. Jones mentioned IPEDS—Institutional Postsecondary Education Data System. I had to write that down to remember what 

the acronym was. 

Dr. Pruitt, since we have determined that you are number one 

or near number one here, I assume that the majority of your students graduate and go on. Is that correct? 

I know it is. That is a rhetorical question. 

So the real question is, your official graduation rate is sort of 

nonexistent, right, because we are living—we have got an incredible system where you have to be a first-time, full-time freshman 

in order for this to count. Talk about the split between traditional, 

nontraditional, where we are today with contemporary, and where 

we were when these sorts of rules were written. 

So I want to ask you then, Dr. Pruitt, is there a way to improve 

upon the data collected through this IPEDS system without significantly increasing the reporting burden on institutions? 

Mr. PRUITT. Yes, Mr. Chairman. It is simply counting and tracking all of the people participating in the community. 

It only counts first-time, full-time freshman. I have 20,000 students that, on average, transfer in 57 credits when they come to 

us. It doesn’t count any of our students. Most adult students are 

totally excluded from the IPEDS rate. 

To give you an example, too, about the issue of even calculating 

graduation rates. In my written testimony I gave you an example 

about a student that came in—transferred-in 120 credits, we evaluated the transcripts when the student graduated. Student was with 

us for 30 days. 

So, what is the graduation rate on that? Was it 30 days or was 

it the 25 years that the student was working, satisfying the credits 

to get the credit to satisfy the degree? 

We need data because we make decisions that assume data that 

is faulty. So when we look at IPEDS—I would challenge you to say 

that you—we don’t really know what the current condition is of 

American students in higher education because we don’t have good, 

comprehensive data that actually tells you pictures. So to legislate 

based on IPEDS is a problem because the data is inherently 

flawed. 

Chairman KLINE. Thank you. I think we probably all on this 

panel up here would agree that you need good data, and we know 

that this system is flawed. And in fact, with the example of your 

very successful school and the rule it just becomes absurd to look 

at that. 

But we do want to be careful not to pile on more reporting requirements, because we have had testimony in this committee before where one of the witnesses brought in a stack about this big 

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of three-ring binders that were just the table of contents for the 

federal regulations they have to report on. 

Mr. Gilligan, just sort of continuing on this, what we do—discussion about what we do and what we, the federal government, federal policy requires, do you have some recommendations about 

things that we should avoid putting in federal law? 

Mr. GILLIGAN. Well, so we are an outcome-based institution and 

we believe strongly that institutions should be held accountable for 

their outcomes. We believe, though, that should apply to all institutions, and I think it is important that institutions are transparent 

about their outcomes. 

But as we indicated, the student population in the United States 

is very diverse and it takes diverse models to serve that population. 

And so I think we have to be careful as we establish requirements 

that we don’t fall into the trap of a one-size-fits-all, because I think 

that can lead to unintended consequences. So I think it is important to acknowledge in our measurement system the diversity of 

the models and the diversity of the student populations we serve. 

Chairman KLINE. Thank you. 

And then, Dr. Brooks, my time is sort of running out but I am 

interested to see that you have a whole pile of industry advisory 

boards—28 is the number, I think, out of your testimony. And so 

presumably you are interacting directly with these. Do you change 

your curriculum based on this? And if you do, does this happen 

every year or—I mean, what is the frequency of being able to upgrade your courses based on these advisory boards? 

Mr. KEEL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That is a great question, 

and that is really the purpose of bringing in these advisory boards 

is to help us make sure that our curriculum is fresh, that it is actually providing these—these young people with the skill sets they 

are going to need when they graduate in many cases three or four 

years down the road. 

These advisory boards meet on a regular basis anywhere from 

monthly to quarterly. Our professors and the deans take input 

from these advisory boards and change their curriculum sometimes 

on the fly. 

We also have these advisory board members in many cases come 

to our classes and interact with our students so that our students 

can see firsthand and ask the industry leaders firsthand, what is 

it that they are going to be looking for? What is it like to work in 

your industry? What am I going to have to be when I graduate in 

order for you to be competitive in this market? 

So I think these advisory boards have been absolutely crucial in 

us having that type of state-of-the-art curriculum. 

Chairman KLINE. Thank you. My time has expired. 

Mr. Miller? 

Mr. MILLER. Thank you very much. 

I will go back to my basic point, which is American students and 

families are borrowing something around $140 billion a year to go 

to school, and the question is, how can they best navigate that 

playing field? I would also think that the testimony here today suggests that playing field is rapidly changing, including competencybased education not just at Capella but I think at other univerCEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

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sities now are looking at—they have to do this—prior learning assessments. 

I know there is great controversy over these assessments and 

whether they are really trustworthy and what have you or not, but 

the fact of the matter is many people have come back from the 

wars in the Middle East with great competencies and they are not 

getting credit for that. We have to figure that out. 

A common word in much of your testimony is ‘‘pathways.’’ And 

so when I look at the problem of trying to—trying to get articulation agreements across old systems, you know, 30 units, 60 units, 

90 units, graduation, what have you, that has been hard enough. 

At least in my state it has been very difficult to do, and I commend 

those of you who have advanced far beyond where the state of California is in these agreements. 

But when I look at the new plans that the state—that our state 

college system is undertaking—state university system is undertaking, they are now including how do you—how are you going to 

measure the internships, how are you going to measure employment-based curriculums, how are you going to walk across these to 

get through those 60 units to get out of—get your A.A. degree, to 

get your—and I think that, you know, we have a fire and boat drill 

going here because we recognize the value of these alternatives to 

seat time, to credit hours and the rest of that, and I want to know 

how that is going to be done. 

I mean, I see the total reevaluation that is taking place in our 

state college system and it is very exciting, and I think it is very 

student-friendly and very welcoming and allows a lot of additional 

players to come in and deliver competencies and information and 

curriculums to that system. But that sounds like one that is going 

to have a lot of rejection within the traditional institution, and that 

is my concern. 

And, Mr. Jones, I appreciated everybody here is graduating all 

their students, but your statistics are just devastating. I don’t care 

if we are just measuring first-time students. That is a hell of a lot 

of students, but if only 19 percent complete their degrees on time, 

that is money, that is time. 

When I went to school it didn’t make any difference because it 

didn’t cost you any money and you had a lot of time. I was young. 

But that is not today. 

So I just would like to know how you think we best navigate this. 

And I guess I would throw in the other one is, when I look at some 

of the MOOCs and the online courses I also think that helps us in 

the other direction, which is from the freshman year of college back 

into the high schools, in terms of preparation. 

Remediation just isn’t hard to do; it is almost a killer of college 

completion. And yet I talk to universities that, you know, are looking to use the Khan Academy to help with basic math. They think 

that is a much more—role. I don’t know if college professors are 

going to accept the Khan Academy, you know, in terms of whether 

they will accept in an articulation agreement, but those are the 

things, to me, that we have to sort out and we have to do it in a 

rapid fashion, opening up all of the opportunities that you are 

bringing to your students with the changes in these delivery formats. 

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And I appreciate the comment, one from Capella and, Dr. 

Boughman, certainly from you, because Maryland has been a leader in this effort. 

And, Mr. Jones, if there is time you can still tell us how we get 

above 19 percent. 

Mr. Gilligan? 

Mr. GILLIGAN. Comment, sir? 

Mr. MILLER. Yes. 

Mr. GILLIGAN. Yes. So I would say at Capella we share your passion for improving completion and improving affordability, and that 

is why we are so excited about the potential for competency-based 

learning and direct assessment. 

And maybe an example might be helpful, because the question 

of what is the standard? How do we ensure that the competencies 

meet an acceptable standard? 

So let’s say we are talking about a nurse and this nurse might 

be responsible for using data and analytics to monitor patient care 

and improve patient outcomes. And let’s say this nurse has 10 

years of work experience doing that, and proficiency and mastery 

around that competency. 

In a direct assessment program—let’s say that nurse decides to 

go get her master’s degree. If that is a requirement of that program, and that requirement would be set by our faculty, then she 

would have the ability to demonstrate quickly her competency and 

move through that part of the— 

Mr. MILLER. If the receiving institution is prepared to do that. 

Capella is set up to do that. Not every other institution is. 

Ms. Boughman? 

Ms. BOUGHMAN. That is true that traditionally they may not be, 

but I would assure you that in this day and age our universities 

are working much more toward gathering of data, assessment of 

outcomes, and assessment of capabilities rather than just the seat 

credit hours. 

One of the things that we do in Maryland is focus on the faculty 

getting together and actually talking about these things, and the 

professional programs are one of the drivers in this, that allow our 

faculty to understand and recognize the idea of competencies, such 

that moving from one program to another or one institution to another I think is going to become clearer and smoother as more data 

become available. 

We remind our folks that for years the traditional academy has 

been accepting A.P. credit from high school. In fact, to work on 

competency-based outcomes from other institutions and other 

mechanisms is not at all unlike that; it is a matter of sitting down 

and determining what those competencies must be and then incorporating them into the curriculum and documenting the achievement of those. 

Mr. MILLER. Thank you. 

Chairman KLINE. Thank you. 

Dr. Foxx? 

Ms. FOXX. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate all of our 

panel members for being here today, and I think this is a very exciting panel that we are having to bring up issues we have talked 

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about in several other hearings that we have had, and so I think 

this culmination, almost, of several other panels. 

Having served as an assistant dean at Appalachian State University many years ago, I had the experience of helping students get 

competency-based credit, get credit for transfer courses. I began an 

articulation program with our community colleges. 

So it is true that these things have been done for a long, long 

time on an individual basis, on individual campuses, by individual 

deans, by individual chairmen. So this is not a new concept. However, it is important that we spread this concept more widely to 

benefit students. 

And I want to commend the chairman for using the term ‘‘contemporary student,’’ too. I love it that we have picked up on that 

term because I think it is really important that we do that. 

Dr. Pruitt, in your testimony you mention the destructive and intrusive regulatory culture of the current administration, and we 

have heard that from a lot of witnesses again at our hearings. 

Would you give us a couple of examples of how these program integrity regulations or the rating systems would negatively affect 

your students? We heard very eloquently from your introducer that 

Edison is doing a great job, but would you like to say a couple of 

things about how this would affect you? 

Mr. PRUITT. Yes. I would like to give two examples. 

The most egregious one and the biggest problem that I think we 

face is the state authorization rules. If you had a student from a 

university in your state come and to be an intern with you for the 

summer, and one student lived in Maryland, one student lived in 

the District, one student lived in Virginia, the institution that 

those students were taking courses in would have to be licensed by 

Maryland, the District, and Virginia. 

If you had a student that was at the University of Cincinnati but 

had an apartment across the river in Covington, Kentucky, and 

had to—was driving back to campus every day, commuting, but decided to take an online course, the University of Cincinnati would 

have to be licensed by the state of Kentucky. Western Governors 

University, I believe—and I think I am right—told me that for 

them to get licensed in all of the states that they were required to, 

it cost them over $1 million. That is $1 million in tuition that is 

going to go up, and I challenge anyone to tell me what the value 

is from having a college or university that has a student sitting in 

a living room taking a course for that institution to be licensed by 

that state. 

I believe that states ought to have a close look at what goes on 

within their borders. That is certainly important to protect the 

public interest. But to define that—we had a recent court case 

where there was a university in Georgia that had a billboard on 

the highway in Tennessee going into Georgia and the state of Tennessee was suggesting that they had to be licensed because they 

had a billboard. They settled that, but just think about the cost of 

trying to get regulated in—all the colleges and universities trying 

to get licensed in all 50 states. 

The credit-hour rule that ties things to seat time. I went to the 

University of Illinois and I took a 5-hour analytical course. I was 

in class for 15 hours, or two 5-hour labs and three lecture halls. 

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According to that logic, the University of Illinois owes me eight 

credits. Well, of course they don’t. It is the measure of stuff that 

is credit hour. 

The strategy comes to deploy how you satisfy the stuff so the 

seat time follows the stuff. This rule inverts that. You could have 

a good argument that the federal government should not be supplanting the judgment of faculties about how much a credit hour 

should work, but even if you lose that argument, the one they came 

up with was about the worst one that they could—you could find. 

So I could go on for others, but I know that time is precious. 

Ms. FOXX. Thank you. I appreciate that. 

Mr. Moldoff, I just want to make a comment about your GPS 

analogy. As a geographically challenged person, I really appreciate 

that. And I also think your comment about transfer tax is extremely important. 

End my question with Dr. Keel. Can you tell us if your placement rate—employment rate of your graduates has increased and 

are you getting very positive results from the employers? 

Mr. KEEL. Yes, we are. And as you might imagine, collecting 

hard data on that is a very difficult task for all sorts of reasons 

that I am sure my colleagues could speak to, as well. 

I spoke with my engineering dean before I came here, as an example, and he has indicated to me he is not aware of any of his 

students at this point in time that have graduated that currently 

do not have a job or who are not in graduate school or we had just 

lost contact with. And it is, I think, because of this work-readiness 

approach that we are taking, especially in the engineering program 

that is the case. But that sort of approach is—we carry over to all 

the other disciplines, as well. 

And again, coming back to the question that the chairman asked, 

tying how you graduate these individuals to what industry is 

truly—industry and business is truly looking for I think is going 

to be a real key to making sure that these young people are employed once they graduate. 

Ms. FOXX. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman KLINE. Gentlelady’s time is expired. 

Ms. Fudge? 

Ms. FUDGE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you all for being here. 

Ms. Boughman, have you had the opportunity to track data regarding students who start in your system but then transfer to private or public schools outside of your system? 

Ms. BOUGHMAN. Those tracks are very difficult to obtain. Our articulation system within the state does include our private institutions, as well, and we do know about those students that come 

from out of state into our institutions. But to follow up on students 

who leave our institutions to other states is extremely difficult to 

track, just as the employment rates for our graduates are difficult. 

Ms. FUDGE. Okay, thank you. Further, let me just ask you, we 

find it very common, especially in my part of the country in Ohio— 

and I am sure it happens every place—that students are graduating with both their high school diploma and, at the same time, 

an associate’s degree from a community college, generally. How has 

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lates to programs such as your 2+2 transfer scholarship and enrollment in traditional 4-year institutions? 

Ms. BOUGHMAN. The 2+2 program, once you have an associate’s 

degree you have an associate’s degree and then are eligible for any 

of the programs that would come into our 4-year institutions. And 

the combined high school and college work that you are talking 

about, either early college—we have several of these schools within 

our state. All of those are very active and all of those credits accumulate, just as any other credits would. 

It is one of the really important points about our state being so 

focused on the P–20 pipeline and not just higher education alone. 

We are working very closely with the K–12 institutions to, in fact, 

streamline across the gap of high school to any higher education. 

Ms. FUDGE. Thank you. 

Dr. Pruitt, you indicate that most of your students come or transfer into your institution with approximately 57 credits. Can you tell 

me what percentage of the total credits they have the 57 makes 

up? 

Mr. PRUITT. To graduate for a baccalaureate degree at Thomas 

Edison is 120 credits, so if they come in with 57 they are pretty 

much half— 

Ms. FUDGE. No, I am saying if they—let’s say, for instance, I am 

transferring and you are saying you take 57. I might have 100. Do 

you take all 100 or is 57 a percentage of the total credits I have? 

Mr. PRUITT. If they are college level, college relevant, and are relevant to the degree requirements of the institution, we accept all 

of them. There is no limit. 

We have, in fact, had graduates that have come in, transferred 

the entire thing, and gotten a degree in 30 days after we have evaluated their record. 

Ms. FUDGE. Thank you. 

Dr. Keel, how does your university balance the need for workforce training and collegiate education to ensure that students can 

use the skills across different careers? 

Mr. KEEL. I am sorry, across different— 

Ms. FUDGE. Careers. 

Mr. KEEL.—careers. Yes. Again, it is sort of the culture at our 

university to try to help these students not only receive a quality 

education but to be able to apply that education across the board. 

I mentioned engineering; that is the most obvious example. 

But we get the same input from business and other of our disciplines, as well. Arts, humanities, and the languages is another 

huge area for us that we feel fits into this sort of workforce-grant 

culture equally as well, for a variety of reasons. It helps these students obtain creative problem-solving skills, to think critically, and 

have this innovative and creative spirit. 

But there are a lot of disciplines that our young people are going 

to be prepared for that come from the arts and humanities. As an 

example, the digital media, film, and video game industry, which 

is a huge area of growth in the state of Georgia, is a great example 

of how a person might have a career opportunity to go into that 

industry but have their degree in the arts and humanities field. 

That individual is equally as employable, we think, as someone 

who comes from engineering. 

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So I think this workforce-ready approach not only can be, but 

should be, applied to all disciplines. 

Ms. FUDGE. Thank you. 

Yes, go ahead— 

Ms. BOUGHMAN. Could I add something? Thank you very much. 

Every degree program at our 12 institutions is reviewed every six 

years in the University System of Maryland, and one of the things 

we look at for every new program that is being proposed and at 

every review is the—putting in place of an advisory board that includes people from the private sector, recognizing that this connection is ever more important in preparing students for the workforce. 

Ms. FUDGE. Thank you. 

My time is running out. I just want to say that at some point 

I hope that we can find some way to really assess these kinds of 

programs. I know that you don’t like collecting data and I know 

you don’t like any of that, but at some point we have to assess 

these programs without using the traditional metrics that we have 

always used. 

So thank you, and I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman KLINE. I thank the gentlelady. 

Mr. Salmon? 

Mr. SALMON. Thank you very much. 

I am just curious if all of those of you on the panel are familiar 

with the gainful employment rule that is being proposed by the Department of Education. It has kind of gone through several different iterations, but I would like your thoughts on something I am 

about to say. 

We had a field hearing in Arizona, and all three of our state’s 

institutions—higher learning institutions—Arizona State University, University of Arizona, and NAU—were present, and the question that was posed to them was if they were familiar with that 

rule, and if so, did they support the gainful employment rule being 

used for not-for-profit universities and public universities, as well. 

And across the board they said basically what is fit for the goose 

is fit for the gander. Students at all higher learning institutions 

have the same—they are all equally important and we should care 

for them equally so. 

And I am very interested in your thoughts. Would you support— 

if we adopt the gainful employment rule for for-profit universities, 

don’t you think it would be fair to make it across the board for all 

universities and all higher learning institutions? 

I will start with you, Dr. Pruitt. 

Mr. PRUITT. The only response I would have, Congressman, is 

that I want you to be cautioned. There are certain institutions that 

exist to train people for jobs, and then there are many that don’t. 

And I would caution about vocationalizing higher education. 

Twenty-seven percent of the people that have degrees are working in areas that relate to their undergraduate major; 73 percent 

of us don’t. It is true that high-capacity people outperform low-capacity people and higher education generates capacity. 

I worry about making an 18-year-old decide what he or she is 

going to do for the rest of their life. There are certain areas where 

it is appropriate, and if I am an institution that says, ‘‘Come here, 

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because if you come here you will get a job and you will get a job 

in these areas,’’ it is valid and reasonable to know what the track 

record is and to provide that data back to the person who wants 

to come there. 

But when you start taking that concept and generalizing it to 

traditional higher education, or even proprietary higher education, 

I get a little worried about what it says to higher—says about what 

higher education is for. 

Mr. SALMON. Dr. Pruitt, I completely agree with you. I think it 

is a very, very slippery slope. 

I guess my point was not, ‘‘Is it a good idea to enforce the rule,’’ 

because I am not sure it is. I think it is one of those rules that may 

be a penny wise and a pound foolish. But if it is going to be instituted for for-profit universities then it—I think it is fair to say that 

it ought to be installed across the board and there ought to be 

transparency for public universities, as well. 

Mr. Keel, again, what are your thoughts? 

Mr. KEEL. Yes, sir. So I agree with your contention. I think if we 

are going to have those measures, all institutions should be held 

accountable and should be transparent. And because gainful employment only speaks to the proprietary sector, it will take Congress acting in order to change that, so I would like to see this 

issue discussed as part of the reauthorization. 

Mr. SALMON. I am going to move on. I would love your other 

thoughts. Maybe you can submit them in writing. 

But the other question I have is that I have introduced a piece 

of legislation—it is a bipartisan piece of legislation called the Advancing Competency-Based Education Demonstration Project Act of 

2013. I introduced that last September. 

I thank the chairman for his support of this legislation and his 

leadership on the Higher Education Reauthorization Act. 

My bill simply makes it simply easier for schools implementing 

a competency-based program to craft an education experience that 

would cater to the individual learning needs of the student. Let’s 

break outside the box. 

Not enough kids are going on and getting their baccalaureate degrees, and the cost of education has gotten so out of touch with a 

lot of people, so shouldn’t we be making it easier and not harder? 

And doesn’t it make sense that using somebody’s world experiences, life experiences, whether it is in the military, or nursing, or 

wherever that may be, isn’t the end goal to make sure that they 

actually have a product that actually—you know, that means something in their life going forward? 

Would this kind of a policy be useful, Mr. Gilligan, to, you know, 

your institution? And would it ease the statutory regulatory friction 

around offering direct assessment programs? 

Mr. GILLIGAN. Yes, sir. So I am familiar with the bill and we 

support it. I think it would not only be good for Capella, but I think 

it would be good for any institution of higher education looking to 

develop competency-based direct assessment programs. 

There are still a lot of questions and issues to be figured out and 

there are statutory and regulatory barriers to be overcome, and 

we—at a demonstration project, we would create an environment 

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where I think that institutions could be safely experimenting out 

of the box, at the same time safeguarding student interests. 

The other importance of a demonstration project is I think the 

data that would come out of that could help inform future policy, 

in particular with regard to the reauthorization. So we support 

your— 

Chairman KLINE. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Ms. Bonamici? 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am very 

glad we are having this hearing today. I have some personal experience in that I started my college education at a community college and then back before the days of online portals was still able 

to transfer as many credits as I needed to be able to complete a 

4-year degree in 4 years. 

So this is a really important discussion that we are having. I 

think my experience helps me understand what students are going 

through. 

I was also proud to be in our state legislature when in Oregon 

we passed the Transfer Student Bill of Rights and Responsibilities. 

So I want to ask a series of questions. 

Mr. Jones, I am going to start with you. There was a suggestion 

here that we actually talk with colleges about these issues, and we 

have done that. 

And I wanted to address the Ability-to-Benefit program. I appreciate that the President’s budget would take some steps to restore 

Pell Grant eligibility for some students without high school diplomas. 

Can you talk about whether enough is being done to help contemporary students returning from the workforce without high 

school diplomas across career pathways and postsecondary education? 

Mr. JONES. Well, if you look at the graduation rates for adults— 

returning adults—and most of these students are coming back as 

part-time students, the graduation rates are very, very low—about 

15 percent, community college or 4-year college. And students that 

go part time all the time, which are a lot of these adults, they are 

less than 10 percent. 

And so for these returning adults, they really need to go into different kinds of programs that meet their needs—more certificate 

programs that have shorter-term objectives, more structured programs, and maybe programs that are more directed at the workforce. But if they come back to traditional universities and colleges, 

they won’t be successful because the programs aren’t designed for— 

Ms. BONAMICI. So do you think we should reinstate the Abilityto-Benefit program? 

Mr. JONES. I am not knowledgeable about—enough about that. 

I will tell you that those students, or even the students that have 

the ability to benefit, most all of those students are put into remedial programs that are highly unsuccessful. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Right. 

Mr. JONES. And so there, too, if you were to expand or go back 

and let people without a high school diploma, you still need to 

change the system or— 

Ms. BONAMICI. Understood. Thank you. 

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Dr. Keel, thank you so much for your discussion about internships. I have seen a lot of benefits to students from internships. 

Of course, many nonprofit organizations or government organizations have unpaid internships that create an equity issue for students. I actually have an Opportunities for Success Act to help 

level the playing field for Pell Grant-eligible students. 

So have you found that internship opportunities tend to go to 

more fortunate students? And if so, does that create a barrier that 

should be overcome? 

Mr. KEEL. No, that certainly is a great question, and I think 

your—you actually hit it right on the head. I don’t think it is without any doubt that many of the internship programs that are offered not only at our institution but at other institutions tend to 

favor those students that have the financial wherewithal to be able 

to afford to do an internship, most especially if they are located 

away from their own home campus environment. I think the same 

can be said for co-ops, although co-ops typically tend to be with industry or the businesses that actually pay these students. 

I think that most businesses and industries today are beginning 

to realize that if the purpose is to provide a student with an experience that is going to be directly related to that individual becoming 

employed, then industry is going to be more willing to provide support for internships and co-ops. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Exactly. Thank you very much. 

And I want to stay with you but also bring in Dr. Boughman and 

perhaps some others and follow up on the conversation about contemporary students—there was a discussion about avoiding noncredit classes and non-degree-related courses. 

Dr. Pruitt just made a great point about do not vocationalize 

higher education, and I have to agree that perhaps not every student enters college knowing what he or she wants to do, and I 

think about, you know, all the stories we hear about somebody who 

thinks they want to be an accountant but then they take an astronomy class and then they discover a passion for science. I have actually cofounded a STEAM caucus to make sure that the arts are integrated into the STEM disciplines. 

And, Dr. Keel, thank you for your comment about the importance 

for innovation. 

So can you talk a little bit about what happens with those students who don’t know what they want to do when they enter? What 

services are provided to help guide them to get a well-rounded education and find their passion? 

Dr. Boughman, we will start with you. 

Ms. BOUGHMAN. Thank you very much for that question. One of 

the things that has happened in Maryland with the development 

of these pathways and the emphasis on pathways and degree plans 

is that it has bolstered our advising system at the university. We 

look at advising in a very different way. We engage with the student in a very different way than we did five years ago. 

And it addresses exactly your point that a student can be put on 

a pathway toward a degree or an area of interest, but along the 

way they may be able to veer in another direction without losing 

certainly the general education credits and hopefully not credits 

that would, in fact, go toward their degree. 

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Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you. And unfortunately, my time is expired. 

I yield back. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman KLINE. Indeed. The gentlelady’s time has expired. 

Mrs. Brooks? 

Mrs. BROOKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you all so very much for being here. This is a terrific 

panel and terrific discussion. 

I would like to talk a little bit and want to welcome a colleague 

from Indiana, Mr. Jones, to focus a little bit on remediation and 

ask you if you could explain a bit about Indiana’s model. I am a 

Hoosier and actually served at Ivy Tech Community College, but 

I don’t think we talk enough about remediation issues in all of our 

colleges and all of the programs, and I think it is a huge impediment, particularly for the contemporary student. 

In what was called the Indianapolis Economic Club, the president of Ivy Tech had everyone in the audience take the math test 

for college entry, and all business leaders who were present—and 

there were several hundred people—had an abysmal pass rate answering the pass rates—or answering the math questions that are 

on the exams. And now we are asking adults to come back, who 

maybe did poorly in math—probably did do poorly in math in high 

school or grade school—and to try to get into college-level math or 

college-level English. 

And I am curious first, if you could share what Indiana has done 

specifically in a fairly short period of time to increase remediation 

pass rates, but I am curious what your other institutions—because 

this is not an Indiana problem; this is a national problem that I 

don’t think we focus on enough. 

Mr. Jones? 

Mr. JONES. So yes, all the tests—there have been studies that 

one-third to one-half of students are misplaced because of the testing, and so that is why large numbers—actually, tests keep them 

in remediation. They don’t allow them into college campuses— 

classes. 

What Indiana has done, Ivy Tech has done—statewide scaling— 

they are one of seven states that are putting this new model, corequisite, where students are taking the courses with support rather 

than taking remedial courses before, and they are showing these 

huge success rates: math going from 10 percent to 50 percent, 

English from 25 to 50 percent. 

The math issue that you raised, what Indiana has already—also 

done and others are doing is that college algebra has been the de 

facto standard across the country. The only purpose for college algebra is calculus. 

If you are in tourism, if you are in psychology, you don’t take calculus. And yet, all those students were being made to take college 

algebra. So a lot of colleges are rethinking this and putting students in statistics and quantitative reasoning that better match the 

programs that are in context. 

And then the last thing that Ivy Tech is doing statewide are 

these very prescriptive guided pathways so there is a clear path to 

graduation for many of these students. 

Mrs. BROOKS. Thank you very much. 

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I am curious to hear from some other institutions what you are 

doing with respect to remediation, because I think this is a national problem. 

Mr. Gilligan, how does Capella deal with it, and— 

Mr. GILLIGAN. Yes, thank you. So I will start by reminding you 

that Capella serves working adults. Our average-age student is 40 

years old and most of our students come in at the graduate level. 

But we do have this challenge at the undergraduate level, and 

a typical undergraduate applicant is similar age, some college credits but never finished. And oftentimes they are a little bit rusty in 

terms of their academic skills. 

So we require those applicants to go through an assessment process to identify their risk factors. Sometimes the risk factors are 

academic readiness; sometimes there are other risk factors we identify. 

And what we are doing is using that data to create personalized 

on-boarding process for them, because our experience has been if 

learners are successful the first few quarters they will complete 

over time. Our greatest attrition is in the first four quarters, and 

we have seen some progress moving the needle through the use of 

those assessments and analytics in our course room. 

Mrs. BROOKS. Dr. Keel, just curious what you are doing? 

Mr. KEEL. Yes. Thank you. And I hope you won’t be asking us 

to take that math test today. 

Georgia Southern is not—we do not offer remedial education. In 

fact, in our system we are not, basically not allowed to. That is the 

job, primarily, of the 2-year universities. 

But what we have done is to offer a program that we call the 

Eagle Incentive Program. Our minimum criteria for admission is 

an SAT of 1010. We have a number of students that have SATs in 

the 950 to 1010 range that apply for us. 

We offer them the opportunity to attend a semester in the summer at this Eagle Incentive Program. They take 8 credit hours during that summer term. Two are bona fide, full-blown, actual 

courses—4-credit courses. One is usually in a math area, one is 

usually in a English or literature or writing area, and a 2-credit 

seminar course that teaches them skills for studying, time management, and a variety of those things. 

They are very small classes. We hand-pick faculty who are very 

good at helping those young people not only get them up to speed, 

but help their maturity level in terms of being successful on a 

major college campus. 

What we have found is that—and if those students obtain a 2.0— 

overall in those they are fully admitted in the fall as full-blown students and go ahead. What we have found is that 90 percent of the 

students that complete that summer program and maintain that 

2.0 are going to be successful and will actually graduate. It is a 

very, very good program. 

Now, the problem is—scaling that up is, of course, the problem. 

But it has been very, very successful in allowing us to help young 

people that need a little bit of help without stigmatizing them by 

putting them in a remedial program. 

Mrs. BROOKS. Thank you. 

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My time is up, and I certainly hope that we deal with remediation as we talk about higher ed reauthorization. And I yield back. 

Chairman KLINE. I thank the gentlelady. 

Mr. Scott? 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. Keel, you are president of a 4-year on-campus university. 

Just generally, what is the value now of a 4-year, on-campus education? 

Mr. KEEL. Well I think that—it depends on how you would consider value. Of course, I would think the value of a 4-year education is every bit as important now as it ever has been, and perhaps more so. 

What we are finding in many cases, especially if you look at industries—and manufacturing is a good example for that—what we 

are being told by many of the manufacturing concerns is that they 

are looking now for 4-year-educated individuals because of the skill 

set that they are finding these—that they needed for their employees goes well beyond what just a 2-year program can offer. The opportunity to be able to have a deeper knowledge of the discipline, 

to be able to convert not only the study but put that into practice 

really requires that 4-year degree, so I think it is critically important. 

Now how we make that 4-year degree available to all types of individuals I think is really the key. 

Mr. SCOTT. Well, I was at a meeting earlier today where they 

talked about college costs going up and mentioned that University 

of Missouri in inflation-adjusted dollars in 1983 was less than 

$2,600; now it is over $9,000. University of New Hampshire, less 

than $5,000; now it is over $16,000. University of Virginia, less 

than $4,000; now over $12,000. 

If the 4-year, on-campus education is getting out of the range of 

what low-and moderate-income people can do, what does that do to 

society and what does that do to education generally? 

Mr. KEEL. No, that is certainly an outstanding question, Congressman, and one that we are all grappling with, no question. We 

could debate about why the cost of education has increased over 

those years, not the least of which is a decrease in state subsidy, 

which has placed a greater burden on families. 

But also, I think that what many college students are themselves 

saying, we want in a full on-campus college experience—things 

that some people call the ‘‘amenities.’’ I disagree with that term, 

but it gets at the entire experience. 

I could make the education at Georgia Southern very, very reasonable from a cost point of view, but my enrollment would plummet because the students wouldn’t want to come to that sort of environment. 

I think as a system—and the system at Georgia does, I think, a 

very good job of providing different types of on-campus opportunities for students, some of which are much less expensive, that don’t 

have those types of amenities that a 4-year university like Georgia 

Southern would have. That coupled with a robust online program, 

which is not only available and used by nontraditional students, 

but in many cases what we are finding is that the traditional students tend to appreciate the online courses. If nothing else, it gives 

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them a chance to carry full-time jobs and be able to take the 

courses at a time when they are not having to work. 

Mr. SCOTT. The budget that we are going to consider this week 

has significant cuts in Pell Grants. Can you say a word about what 

cutting Pell Grants would do to your student body? 

Mr. KEEL. It will have a devastating effect. Currently about onethird of our students are on Pell, and many, many more are on 

other types of loans and grants, and I think especially the population that are the most strapped from a financial point of view are 

going to be decimated by this. 

Mr. SCOTT. What do you think about the idea of making more of 

a profit off of student loans, making the student loans more expensive, and what would that do to your student body? 

Mr. KEEL. Because so many of our students are on student loans 

I think it is also going to have a significant effect on their ability 

to be able to have a higher—a 4-year education. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Dr. Pruitt, you answered the question on gainful employment. 

One of the problems I have with that calculation is it doesn’t give 

any consideration to the admissions. If you had a second-chance 

program, if half of them got a job that would be a miracle. If you 

had a—for people convicted of felonies. If you have an Ivy League 

college, if all of them don’t get jobs after four years whether they 

went to class or not, they ought to be ashamed of themselves. 

Can you say a word about what gainful employment—how gainful employment calculations are affected by the admissions rather 

than the quality of the education? 

Mr. PRUITT. Congressman, I am going to defer on that because 

the nature of my institution is so different it hasn’t been a factor 

for us. Again, the average age of our student body is around 40; 

pretty much all of our students are fully employed when they come 

to us; they are, in fact, mid-career people. They are really not coming to us because they are coming here to get employment, and so 

I personally haven’t been invested in that, as some of my colleagues have, so that is why I would rather defer to someone that 

is more in line about it. 

Chairman KLINE. Gentleman’s time has expired. 

Dr. Bucshon? 

Mr. BUCSHON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Ms. Boughman, you made a comment during one of the questions 

that one of the members had and you said that the—and I am 

paraphrasing—that the employment record of your graduates is 

difficult to track. Can you tell us why? 

Ms. BOUGHMAN. Once the students leave our institutions, to follow them post-institution—we have 28,000-plus. We are increasing 

our graduation, 28,000 degrees a year. And to follow our 155,000 

students post-graduation is—there are no databases that really 

transfer that information. 

So we can do surveys, and we do do surveys, but we also know 

that those have the same biases that many other kinds of surveys 

do on who responds to those. 

Mr. BUCSHON. Do you think that would be different, for example, 

for a small, for-profit university? Do you think that they have any 

better chance of tracking their graduates than you might? 

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Ms. BOUGHMAN. I am sure that some institutions might be better 

than others. Even within our system I know that our institutions 

are better at tracking their students beyond graduations. Some of 

our smaller institutions that have some of the internship-type programs that have been mentioned here, and the jobs actually flow 

out of those contacts and the internships, maintain information 

about those, and so their alumni databases are enriched by that 

contact and— 

Mr. BUCSHON. So that is a yes or a no. Do you think they are 

going to have any better chance of tracking— 

Ms. BOUGHMAN. I think they might have a better chance, yes. 

Mr. BUCSHON. Because with the gainful employment—and I have 

said this to my public universities in Indiana when they have come 

to me—be careful what you wish for, because as the comments of 

Congressman Salmon said, this will be looked through the lens of 

all universities at some point. It is a slippery slope. 

Have you made any—has anyone made any comments to the Department of Education or to the administration about the current 

proposed rule? The comment period is still open till May. Have any 

of you sent in comments about the proposed regulation? 

Ms. BOUGHMAN. Some of our individual institutions have made 

comments and our chancellor, Brit Kirwan, has been involved in 

several committees that are advising on several aspects of the 

Higher Education Reauthorization Act. 

Mr. BUCSHON. Because I would implore public universities for 

sure to comment on the difficulty in tracking your graduates, because this is something I am very concerned about. Look, I want 

everyone to get a job when they get out of school, and I want people’s eyes to be open when they go into a university or a—whether 

it is a nonprofit or a for-profit, about what their chances are to become employed if they get a certain type of education. 

But to a certain extent, and some of your comments today everybody has made, you know, there is some degree of personal responsibility on the individual that comes along with that, and all of you 

are working very hard to make sure your students all are employed 

and graduate. But personal responsibility, starting really in grade 

school and high school, as getting students to understand that they 

have to take the bull by the horns, so to speak, themselves, and 

no matter what you all do you may not be able to straighten that 

out. 

But on the gainful employment side, I would just implore everybody to look at—through the lens of this may very well be applicable to every type of higher education in our country at some point, 

and that, you know, the current tack of applying this only to forprofit universities because some people in town here don’t like forprofit universities is something that is a very slippery slope. 

And from what everyone has—from what you have said, acquiring data on graduation rates is very difficult not—I mean, on employment rates—is extremely difficult, and to put something in 

place that may require people to comply with a regulation where 

the data isn’t there to assess their ability to apply is dangerous. 

So with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Chairman KLINE. I thank the gentleman. 

Mr. Polis? 

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Mr. POLIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am thrilled that the committee has called this important hearing to highlight commonsense policies and trends in higher education that have the opportunity to increase access and decrease costs at a time when a college education is more important than ever for young people to 

have the tools to compete in an increasingly global economy. 

I was proud to join Ranking Member Miller’s Transferring Credits for College Completion Act as an original cosponsor, which helps 

standardize articulation agreements and general education policies 

and that will help ensure that students can transfer between 

lower-cost 2-year and higher-cost 4-year institutions and ensure 

that their credits will go with them. 

I have been proud of my own home state of Colorado in this regard. Through Colorado’s Guaranteed Transfer Pathways program 

all of our public institutions agree to offer and honor a 31-credit 

hour general education curriculum, and I often encourage families 

and high school juniors and seniors to look at community college, 

both through dual enrollment as well as for the first couple years 

as a way of reducing costs, and in many cases even improving quality with the increased personalization that community colleges can 

often provide. 

I want to talk a little bit about online education, and specifically 

competency-based education, which I feel also holds great opportunity to increase access and affordability. I represent the district 

that is the base of Colorado State University’s global campus, 

which is really demonstrating that even state public universities 

are able to successfully offer online programs in the marketplace. 

It is a competency-based program which has also contributed to 

the environment for the students who are on campus. But it is currently hamstrung because universities like CSU Global, they do adhere to existing higher education structure, which limits the schedules in which students can enroll and when students receive financial aid simply because it is the way we have always done it. Never 

heard a good argument as to why it should be done that way other 

than it is the way that it should always be done. 

I was very proud to introduce a competency-based education 

demonstration project, along with Representative Brooks and Representative Salmon, which allows institutions to waiver regulations 

in a controlled way and allow Congress and the general public to 

learn more about these opportunities. 

I wanted to ask Mr. Gilligan how the ability to offer direct assessment allows students more flexibility and how a competencybased demonstration program that systematically allows institutions like yours to waive certain regulations, such as credit-hour 

definitions, helps reduce costs and also helps other institutions replicate your success. 

Mr. GILLIGAN. Yes, sir. So I would say the credit-hour system basically fixes time but learning is variable, where a competencybased direct assessment model fixes learning and time is variable. 

So for those adults who we serve that bring real-world experience 

and competencies into the course room, it is more flexible because, 

one, they can go faster, which speeds time to completion, and in 

our case our FlexPath program is a subscription model, so that allows adults to consume as much higher education under that subCEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

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scription model in a quarter as possible, and we have, in our first 

few quarters, many examples where adults have moved much faster through their courses than they would in a— 

Mr. POLIS. And does that help reduce cost to them? 

Mr. GILLIGAN. Significantly. Exactly. Reduces cost in some cases 

as much as 50 percent. 

Mr. POLIS. What barriers—policy barriers—do the rest of the 

panel see with regard to allowing both our public and private institutions to experiment with competency-based education to improve 

quality and reduce costs? 

Yes, Dr. Pruitt? And then we will go to Dr. Keel. 

Mr. PRUITT. Congressman, the problem we currently have is with 

the demonstration project the student has to take 100 percent of 

their work into the program, and that knocked us out of it because 

our students pick and choose, and very few students do 100 percent 

of anything. So if we were allowed for the students to choose that 

part of their work they wanted to do for a competency-based mode 

we would participate and a lot of other colleges and universities 

would, as well. 

Mr. POLIS. Thank you. 

Dr. Keel? 

Mr. KEEL. I think, to be honest, that one of our biggest challenges is it is not the way we have always done things, you know, 

and the traditional aspects of a 4-year university such as ours and 

the way that our faculty view progression. However, I must tell you 

that our system is beginning to take a very serious look at this and 

we already are seeing how we can put those sort of things in place. 

I think the MOOCs—the massively open online courses—and the 

students will bring to you and say, ‘‘I have taken this course, now 

let me prove to you that I have mastered these skills,’’ is basically 

saying the same sort of thing. So I think those sort of new, innovative ways of providing education to students who want to help 

break down some of these traditional barriers. 

Mr. POLIS. With that, Mr. Jones, final comment? 

Mr. JONES. Western Governors University was designed as competency-based, and that is really the point. Whole programs have 

to be competency-based to be effective, but it is really hard to mix 

the two. 

The other example I will give you that is highly successful is Indiana Wesleyan is now in three states, 18 sites, serving adults. I 

asked them how long their seat time was. It is half as much as 

those in public. And I asked them why, they said competency— 

Mr. POLIS. And I think we are running out of time, but I would 

argue that they should be rewarded rather than penalized if they 

are able to get twice the learning in half the seat time. 

And I yield back. 

Chairman KLINE. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Dr. DesJarlais? 

Mr. DESJARLAIS. I would like to thank the chairman for holding 

this important hearing on keeping college within reach, and certainly would like to thank our witnesses for sharing your testimony 

with us today. 

With the traditional student quickly being supplanted by older 

workers pursuing better skills to help provide for their families, the 

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one-size-fits-all approach to higher education seems to be more outof-date than ever. And all around the country, including in my district, colleges are pursuing innovative strategies that partner with 

local industry to match student skills and employer needs. One example in Tennessee’s 4th district is Motlow College, teaming with 

companies like Bridgestone and Nissan to provide a mechatronics 

program, which is allowing students at the high school level to get 

into programs and have good-paying jobs, and they are having almost 100 percent placement rate. 

Dr. Keel, I wanted to visit with you a little bit today. First I 

wanted to let you know that I am the beneficiary of one of your 

alumni in my office. Robert Jameson is our communications director and has been for three years, so we thank you for that. 

In your testimony you referenced Georgia Southern University’s 

Worker-Readiness Education Loan program. Can you explain the 

university’s involvement with local businesses in the creation of 

this program and the benefits you see offering this to the students? 

Mr. KEEL. Yes. Thank you. We have just begun to have conversations with business and industry about how this sort of program 

might benefit not only our students but certainly business. 

And the concept here is to get an industry or business to become 

engaged with the student at their very first year during their college experience. And as the student progresses through, not only 

does the interaction between the student and the business become 

more intense, but the investment that industry makes in that student becomes more intense so that by the time the student becomes 

a junior they get a full-ride scholarship—a loan, if you will, provided by that industry, coupled with the very active co-op program 

so that the student spends a significant amount of time at that 

particular job site. 

This serves a lot of purposes. One, it really helps the student 

know what it is going to be like to work in that particular job site 

and that particular industry and that particular community, give 

them a chance to know what it is really going to be like to live 

there. 

By investing in these students in the early stage and by that investment ramping up, it will give them a chance to better train 

that student in what the culture is going to be like once the student graduates. That student will graduate and then complete a 1- 

to 3-year commitment with that particular industry, that would— 

loan or that scholarship would be forgiven. It would truly become 

a scholarship at that point. 

We all know industry spends hundreds of thousands of dollars 

during the first year of hiring a new individual only to have that 

individual quit and move to some other location not only because 

they didn’t particularly like working in that industry, they just 

didn’t like living in that community. And so by having this sort of 

loan program coupled with very active co-ops, it will give students 

a chance to know what it is like to live in the community, work 

in the industry, and if they stay with that industry, have an opportunity to have their—basically their tuition and their fees paid for. 

Mr. DESJARLAIS. All right. That sounds like a great program. 

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Another issue facing the higher education community is the relationship between 2-year and technical colleges and 4-year institutions. 

Dr. Keel, what role does Georgia Southern University play in the 

transfer of credits from 2-year and technical colleges? 

Mr. KEEL. No, I appreciate that question very much. We in the 

state of Georgia, I think, have a distinct advantage over some other 

states, perhaps, in that all of the 2-year and 4-year universities are 

within the same system. So we have a very definite program in 

place that mandates that a 4-year institution accept a student coming from a 2-year institution with 30 hours if they have maintained 

a 2.0 GPA, so we already have that program in place and it works 

very, very well. 

We also have the chance for reverse transfer opportunities for a 

student that may come to Georgia Southern initially as a freshman 

but, for a variety of reasons, discover that they don’t need a 4-year 

degree. We can now send them to a 2-year university so they can 

get their associate degree at that point in time and have a real credential they can take with them to prove—and give them something for the amount of time that they spent. 

But in addition to that, the technical college system in Georgia 

is truly a different system, and our two system leaders, our chancellor and the commissioner for the technical college system, have 

come together for this whole Complete College Georgia process that 

I mentioned, and we have very active articulation agreements with 

the technical colleges. Georgia Southern, for example, now has an 

articulation agreement with Savannah Technical College in logistics, where those students can get their associate degree at Savannah Tech and transfer all of those credits directly to Georgia 

Southern and seamlessly go right into either a B.S. Degree in Logistics all the way to the Ph.D. if they so desire. We have got other 

articulation agreements with other technical colleges, as well. 

So it works very, very well. You just have to have institutions 

and leadership willing to make that happen. 

Mr. DESJARLAIS. Well, thank you. 

Yes? 

Ms. BOUGHMAN. Yes. I would simply say that to have these 

broad-based articulation systems in place like we do in Maryland 

not only allows for the transfer of credit from the more traditional 

institutions, but as we move forward with these new, innovative 

kinds of competency-based educations, it will provide the initial 

framework for which the faculty from the institutions can converse 

and, in fact, determine ways that those competency-based credits 

can transfer, as well. 

Chairman KLINE. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Ms. Hinojosa? 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Chairman Kline and Ranking Member Miller, 

thank you. Thank you for holding this interesting hearing to discuss ways in which this committee can best meet the needs of contemporary students. 

I believe that our federal policy must be responsive to our nation’s changing demographics, including better support for a college 

education for veterans, students of color, first-generation college 

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students, online-learners, and adults who are retraining for new careers, as we have been listening this morning. 

My first question is for Mr. Gilligan. 

In your written testimony you said purchasing specific books and 

materials is not required for most courses, but that there are recommended textbooks. Does Capella Education Company make an 

effort to seek out and to catalogue open education resources, such 

as free open source textbooks being written by professors and students at Rice University in Texas? 

Mr. GILLIGAN. So I can’t speak specifically to Rice University. I 

can tell you that in our direct assessment model we are agnostic 

as to the source of learning and we encourage our learners to access content wherever it is appropriate and aligned with the curriculum, and then our faculty are engaged in assessing the demonstration of competencies that our learners submit. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. You might take a look at what I asked you on the 

work being done at Rice University because they came here and we 

had a hearing and they piqued my interest so I went to visit them, 

and it is amazing at how that is moving. 

So let me move to Dr. Boughman. 

I want to say that I like your university. I have staff members 

who have graduated from there and I am an original cosponsor of 

H.R. 4348, the Transferring Credits for College Completion Act of 

2014. And I am interested in learning from you how your articulation system works. 

Ms. BOUGHMAN. Well, I could spend another few minutes on 

that, but I would like to comment first on the open source— 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Yes, please do. 

Ms. BOUGHMAN. Yes. We have two initiatives in our system—one 

that is directly driven by the students, as a matter of fact. We have 

a test bed going on right now. We believe that this semester we 

will save $166,000 for students in just 11 courses. And our University of Maryland University College, by the year 2016, will have totally open-source materials for their students so there will be no 

textbook costs. 

On the ARTSYS, the articulation system, it provides a wide variety. You can do a course by course articulation. You can go in and 

find if any course—there are over 200,000 courses—you can find 

out from which colleges they would transfer from and to and what 

kind of credit would be available. It also allows for students to investigate pathways and the best way to go from a 2-year to a 4- 

year or from one 4-year to another 4-year institution without losing 

credit. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Does your articulation specify how the course 

equivalencies are determined and how is the system kept current? 

Ms. BOUGHMAN. The course equivalencies are determined by the 

faculty on the campuses, and this is a key factor in the University 

of Maryland System articulation system and our work with the 

other institutions. Our faculty are consistently and constantly involved in evaluating and reevaluating courses as they come forward, which is one of the primary reasons that this works. The faculty drive and are in control of the content and accepting of those 

courses. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Thank you. 

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Ms. BOUGHMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Mr. Jones, I strongly believe that our nation cannot meet its college completion goals without graduating greater 

numbers of Latinos, students of color, and low-income college students. Can you share your views on what states and institutions 

can do to help these student populations succeed and graduate 

from college? And can you also speak specifically to the issues of 

articulation and transfer agreements that I asked Dr. Boughman? 

Mr. JONES. [Off mike.] 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Can you see if your microphone is turned on? 

Mr. JONES. Sir, yes. You are absolutely right about the changing 

demographics. And as I said in my opening, we are doing a better 

job of attracting Hispanics and African Americans to go to college, 

but we are losing them in remedial classes and along the way, and 

their graduation rates are much lower than they are for white students. 

There are a few colleges—for example, Georgia State University 

in Atlanta—their Hispanic, African American, and white rate is exactly the same; same is true with Florida State University, and 

they have done that with pretty clear pathways, academic maps semester by semester, fixing a remedial problem and having what 

they call intrusive advising. 

Chairman KLINE. Gentleman’s time has expired. 

Mrs. Davis? 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thanks to all of you for being here. 

I wanted to shift for a second to our veterans who are attending 

schools at great numbers across the country. Do all of you have experience with that? 

Yes? 

Ms. BOUGHMAN. Yes, ma’am. In Maryland we have a veterans 

center at every one of our institutions— 

Mrs. DAVIS. Yes. Okay. 

Ms. BOUGHMAN.—and University College is especially wellknown for its— 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you. And I think we have a number of centers 

around the country and I am—had a chance to visit some and they 

are doing a good job. I mean, they are helping to integrate—my 

question is more about the way that we can take—the American 

Council on Education has basically come up with a military guide 

so that those skills and competencies that our enlisted people have 

that they are learning through their enlistment can be credited. 

How would you incorporate that into the reauthorization of the 

Higher Ed Act? 

Ms. BOUGHMAN. Currently in the— 

Mrs. DAVIS. Do you think there is a role for that? 

Ms. BOUGHMAN. Currently in the state of Maryland we have 

work groups that are focused directly on defining pathways and defining cores of competencies that our veterans do come home with. 

And in fact, we will be able to smooth those and insert those into 

our articulation system. 

But once again, it is the engagement and face-to-face conversations about the realities of the competencies that are brought 

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home, not just a few sentences describing the experience of the veteran. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Right. I guess what I am asking is if we can perfect 

that, do you see a sort of universality to that? Because, you know, 

our kids are basically developing those competencies, they are 

using them everywhere, and there shouldn’t be a great difference, 

I think, between schools and how they accept those competencies. 

Ms. BOUGHMAN. I would suggest that we do a fairly good job— 

we could always do better—about sharing best practices among our 

institutions. And I would actually like to turn to Mr. Jones and 

Complete College America and its umbrella focus on these kinds of 

things and its emphasis on bringing best practices to bear nationwide. 

Mr. JONES. Yes. If I can speak very quickly, that is what we do. 

We identify best practices in states, like what you just did, and 

then we—with the 33 states that we work with, we share those 

best practices. So I would be happy to follow up with you to learn 

more about that. 

But I also want to point out that veteran graduation rates is also 

something that IPEDS doesn’t count, and so we don’t know whether these students graduate. And I would humbly suggest to Chairman Kline that I agree with his point about not adding additional 

requirements, but there could be some tradeoffs—what do we need 

to collect in 2014 as compared to what we needed to collect before? 

And we need to know if veterans graduate. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Do you think, is there—and I see Dr. Pruitt is ready 

to jump in—should there—these are recommendations. I think 

what I am looking for, should there be some kind of a requirement, 

something, particularly because these kids are on their—the G.I. 

bill particularly, we know there have been some issues around 

whether or not they are actually getting, you know, the bang for 

the buck. 

Should there be some role here as we develop the reauthorization 

that either—will hold schools accountable? And it is difficult in 

terms of what they do afterwards. I agree. I know that that is difficult. 

However, you know, we ought to be able to find some way so that 

employment matters after kids leave school. 

Dr. Pruitt? 

Mr. PRUITT. Congresswoman, I would say two things: One, as a 

general rule, I would ask that you not compel us to do something 

that we are committed to doing anyway. We believe in this. There 

isn’t a college or university president I have ever met that wasn’t 

committed to our veterans. 

We are the most veteran-friendly school in New Jersey. We enroll more veterans than the rest of public higher education combined. 

But I want to take this opportunity to talk to you about an important disincentive. If you are a veteran and you go to a community college, if you go to a residential college, your housing allowance is counted as an expense and cost of doing government—I 

mean, cost of expense of going to—getting an education. If you 

come to my institution, housing is disallowed as a cost. 

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So the most veteran-friendly college in New Jersey that is the 

lowest cost and most efficient, if you are a veteran if you come to 

my institution, you get penalized for coming to us, where if you go 

to a community college you get rewarded by having your housing 

cost allowed. I question the logic and the reasonability of that. 

It gets back to the theme about our regulatory environment and 

what it is incentivizing, what is it punishing. We get regularly punished because we are good at what we do in serving the people that 

you want us to serve. 

So yes, I do think that things like that we really do need to fix 

and clean up. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Yes. 

Mr. PRUITT. Our veterans come to us in spite of the fact that 

they get punished because of the quality of the experience they get. 

Mrs. DAVIS. I appreciate that. And I think that what we want 

to be certain is that students aren’t necessarily sent back to community colleges if, in fact, with assistance and with kind of the concurrent remediation that may in fact be needed, they can do that. 

And my time is up. I wanted to go on, but thank you all for being 

here. 

Chairman KLINE. I thank the gentlelady. Indeed, her time has 

expired. 

Mr. Messer? 

Mr. MESSER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for this important hearing. I am sorry I have had to be in and out; I am also 

in the Budget Committee markup today, as well. 

I wanted to talk a little bit—follow up on the chairman’s earlier 

comments when I was here about data and the importance of data 

in driving reform. It is important for consumers to know what they 

are getting into, but it is also important as policymakers to help 

us understand where we can best make changes. 

You know, I saw in Indiana, probably of all the reforms we made 

at the high school level in graduation rates were the reforms that 

accurately calculated graduation rates. You know, prior to that 

change over the last 6 or 8 years all across America we thought we 

were graduating 80 or 90 percent of our kids; turns out we weren’t, 

and once we started to count accurately, reform followed that. 

And so I wondered if anybody on the panel would like to comment a little bit about the importance of accurate data in helping 

drive the right kinds of outcomes. 

Sure. 

Mr. JONES. So yes, and we collect data from 30 states, primarily 

because IPEDS doesn’t collect some of this data. Like IPEDS does 

not collect remediation data, it doesn’t collect how many credits it 

takes to graduate. For example, students that should be getting 60 

credits for an associate degree, they get 85. It takes about 140 credits rather than 120. 

And so all these pieces are missing, and I think you are right, 

it is consumer-friendly information. It is also what policymakers 

need. And I would point out that maybe there can be some tradeoffs, some things we are currently collecting that are relics— 

Mr. MESSER. Could you give any examples of that? Because I do 

think the one sense on our committee is that, you know, we don’t 

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tions over a period of many, many years people have been, you 

know, adding more and more, adding more and more. 

I think the real answer is, get the right kind of data and try to 

get rid of some of the reporting that is not making a difference. 

Yes, sir? 

Mr. MOLDOFF. I guess I am really the only data guy up here from 

the standpoint of information, I think is what you are really asking 

about. 

Mr. MESSER. Yes. 

Mr. MOLDOFF. I mean, the data itself across the 6,000 public institutions and higher education institutions, when you add it and 

you bring it all together, if you had the opportunity to do that, 

would all look like a big mess, because every single data system is 

unique to itself, representing the different types of institutions that 

are here. 

So it is very difficult to take that and put it all into one big system and say, ‘‘Let’s spit out some valuable information.’’ So I think 

the challenge we have is agreeing on what is most important to 

measure, which goes back to when you look at competencies, 

whether it is CLEP, A.P. courses, any of it, it is what do you really 

want to measure. 

And part of the problem we have is we build these systems from 

the get-go without knowing what you want to measure. 

Mr. MESSER. Isn’t another part of the problem that we build it 

on a set of assumptions about what higher education is that aren’t 

true anymore? It is not four homecomings and a backpack, and 

that is where most of our data systems build on. 

Mr. MOLDOFF. Right. So the data itself is causing part of the 

problem. We are now fixed to that data and the systems that we 

have in place are antiquated. 

Mr. MESSER. Dr. Pruitt, you wanted to— 

Mr. PRUITT. Yes. The assumptions underlying it are important. 

We assume that you go to school for four years, graduate, that 

is retention, that is right graduation, that is good. But if you look 

at adult students, the last time I looked at this—it has been a long 

time—the average time to completion for an adult student that was 

fairly vigilant about it was about 9 years. 

What happens in the current data sets—and that is why I 

haven’t talked about the rating system, but, you know, I mean, 

they haven’t come out with the final metrics, but the reason I am 

so concerned about it is that we have the ability to mislead by the 

data if we don’t have the right assumptions under it. 

One of the proposals that I heard was that we ought to measure 

the income of a student five years out of college. Well, that means 

we would only end up educating investment bankers; we would ignore teachers and nurses and all of—and everyone else. 

But if you did that in New Jersey, the school that would have 

the highest income five years out of college would be Thomas Edison. Why? Because my students are 40 and 50 years old. They are 

at the height of their earning. 

So if you graduated from Princeton or NJIT or Stevens, five 

years out they are not going to come close to the earning of my students right now. To suggest that somehow we are a better school 

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than those institutions because we would have better employment 

data would be ludicrous. 

You will never get the right answer to the wrong question, and 

we still have a mindset that wants to be homogenous and apply a 

template for 18-to 22-year-old to these very diverse student—very 

diverse populations. And that is my big concern about them. We 

have horrible metrics now. We don’t have information to document 

this stuff, and then we often make conclusions about it that aren’t 

conforming to what the realities are on the ground. 

Mr. GILLIGAN. Just a quick comment—I see time is running 

out—you know, maybe we need to change the conversation. Rather 

than collecting data for comparative purposes, maybe we should 

collect data to improve outcomes. 

Mr. MESSER. Yes, I— 

Mr. GILLIGAN. And I think that would help change decision-making. 

Mr. MESSER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know my time is expired. 

I think the last point is a very good one, which is just that we 

have had a system based on access. By that measure we have been 

wildly successful over the last several decades. We need to move 

towards a system driven by outcomes. 

Thank you. 

Chairman KLINE. Gentleman’s time is expired. 

Mr. Tierney? 

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Keel, I want to just start with a comment that you hit a 

point, I think, is very important in terms of people being able to 

afford college. We are trying to strengthen the middle class, we are 

trying to give families opportunity, then states just have to step up 

to the plate. 

And we put a maintenance of effort provision into the last Higher 

Education Opportunity Act for that very reason. You know, states, 

understandably under serious pressure budgetarily, have been 

ratcheting back higher education investments in the public education system. And when the budgets get good they put a little 

back in but they never seem quite to get where they were so over 

time it just keeps going down. 

One of the answers about affordability and access certainly is to 

have the states get back in the game and do that, and I know— 

I believe we should keep that maintenance of effort provision in 

and perhaps toughen it up a little bit so that that happens, and 

I think that is critical. So thank you for bringing up that issue. 

Competency-based education is kind of an interesting, exciting 

concept to look at and how we implement it. I am curious to know 

how that affects transfers. If somebody goes to an institution that 

gives a lot of credits for competency-based matters and then the 

student wants to transfer to a school that doesn’t have that program, or vice-versa, what are we finding on that? 

I see, Mr. Moldoff, you are nodding your head. You have some 

experience with that? 

Mr. MOLDOFF. That is a very, very good question. And I think 

part of the problem we have is trust, and whether it is a community college doing the assessment and then being received by a 4- 

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year senior school, there has to be trust between the institutions 

who is doing the work. And that fabric of trust is—we have to 

know each other, and so it comes back to collaboration on—whether 

it is state-based, it is initiated in the collaboration. I think the 

stimulation that we have seen over the last decade is that there 

has been a lot of built-up new trust that is being built as a result 

of state systems getting together, working together, doing the hard 

legwork that is necessary. 

Moving from the competency-based is still a transformation that 

takes some competency and they convert it back into course. So 

that process is eventually going to evaporate, but it is going to take 

time for us to remove that from the systems that are currently in 

place. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Well, I guess it always comes down to who sets the 

standards and who makes the assessments, right? 

So, Dr.—is it Boughman or Boughman? 

Ms. BOUGHMAN. I think Mr. Moldoff has hit the point. We are 

in a period of transition. But in fact, the receiving institution is 

going to have to make the decision about receipt and approval of 

that credit. 

But sitting down and working together across institutions is the 

way that we are doing this, and in our system University of Maryland University College is leading the way on competency-based 

education but we are working closely together in developing the 

systems that will eventually allow such a transition within a computer-based system. But we really are on the front edge of this. 

The conversations are serious. 

Mr. TIERNEY. I am sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt you. 

But it seems easier to do within a system, like a state higher 

education system, than it is when you start mixing that with private for-profits, not-for-profits, and how do people go back and forth 

or one state to another. So what groups or entities would be working on that problem for those kinds of transfers? 

Ms. BOUGHMAN. Well, in the state of Maryland we actually have 

the Segmental Advisory Council, which is the community colleges, 

the private career schools, the public system, the two public institutions not involved in USM and the independent colleges and universities, as well. And we all meet on a monthly basis to, in fact, 

initiate some of these questions and then determine work groups 

that can work together. 

But our Maryland Higher Education Commission does aggregate 

those people and have serious conversations about that. 

Mr. MILLER. Will the gentleman yield? 

Mr. TIERNEY. Yes, I will yield. 

Mr. MILLER.—On the competency issue, how do they do when 

they enter the more traditional system— 

Mr. GILLIGAN. Yes, sir. I was going to comment on that. 

So at Capella we have articulation agreements with over 200 

community colleges for our credit-hour programs. We have invested, in addition to that, in creating equivalencies between our 

competencies and credit hours, so students transferring in with 

competencies we can translate, students transferring out we can 

translate, and that has to meet exactly the same standard as our 

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credit-hour transfer policies. I will say, it requires a significant 

amount of investment. 

And by the way, one of the reasons we did this, besides serving 

students, is that federal financial aid is tied to the credit hour, so 

in order for direct assessment programs to be eligible for federal financial aid, we have to create these equivalencies, which create 

cost and administrative burden. So one of the things we hope can 

result from today’s session, today’s hearing, in our demonstration 

project is how can we think about decoupling or creating a separate 

financial aid system to support direct assessment programs? 

Mr. TIERNEY. Or one that would do both but support it, as well. 

If I have enough time, my other question here was going to be, 

it is disturbing—one of my colleagues brought it up earlier—for the 

remedial situation. See students going in, taking remedial courses, 

using their Pell Grants to do that, and then sort of before they even 

get out with credit, having dissipated a lot of that money on that 

basis—should we be looking at our policy of when and how an institution gets reimbursed for those courses in order to drive them 

towards some of the more best—or the better best practices that 

make sure this doesn’t happen? 

Mr. Jones? 

Mr. JONES. Yes, if I could, I think we—I think most states are 

starting to do that, put higher standards of progress in their state 

financial aid systems. But the real key is that, as Representative 

Miller said, these students run out of money before they graduate, 

some of them run out of money before they transfer, and so if you 

want to talk about affordability, a more timely progression toward 

graduation is key and when you get to HEA I think there are a 

number of incentives or directives that you might be able to put in 

HEA for more timely graduation. 

Mr. TIERNEY. If I may, Mr. Chairman—so do you have those recommendations somewhere in writing that you could direct us toward, or is it something we should just get back to you on? 

Mr. JONES. What we have are state policies, but happy to share 

those with you. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. 

Thank you. 

Chairman KLINE. I thank the gentleman. That was an excellent 

follow-up question. 

All members have had an opportunity to address the panel, so 

we are about to wrap up. 

Before we do, I want to recognize Mr. Miller for any closing comments he may have. 

Mr. MILLER. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. I think 

this has been very helpful panel to us as we think about the reauthorization. 

Mr. Jones, I still can’t reconcile everything I heard this morning 

and your third paragraph in your testimony. You said if you look 

at the numbers shows how serious the challenge is for our country: 

Only 4 percent of full-time students complete an associate’s degree 

on time, and that is 2 academic years. And at non-flagship, 4-year 

institutions only 19 percent complete their degree on time. 

And I understand that every student isn’t coming there to run 

the traps over a 4-year period and it is neat and it is compact and 

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that is the way it is. That is not true. These are still really kind 

of alarming figures, or am I not digging—are you digging too deep 

or we are not digging deep enough? Where is the mismatch here 

between a lot of the testimony today and these figures? 

Mr. JONES. Clearly not everybody is going to graduate in four, 

not everybody is going to graduate in two. We understand that. 

Mr. MILLER. I understand that. 

Mr. JONES. These are full-time student numbers, and yes, they 

are alarmingly low, and yes—and that is why, as you pointed out, 

these students run out of money before they graduate. And so yes, 

I think it is something that—again, I hate to go back there, you 

know, data drives policy, and with a better data system at the 

state level, at the federal level, we could be more informed about 

these kinds of issues. 

Mr. MILLER. I went and visited one of my state colleges and they 

used the—I think it is the circuits course from MIT. If you want 

to become an—if you want any engineering, whatever type, you 

have got to pass that course. And 70 percent of the students were 

failing it, and then 70 of the students that failed borrowed money, 

came back, and took it a second time because they wanted to be 

engineers. 

They introduced the MOOC from MIT and 70 percent passed. 

And one of the things they discovered, which I think a lot of professors discover, is that after in a 75-minute lecture course after about 

7–1/2 minutes you had more energy dreaming asleep than you 

would do in listening to the course. And so this was maybe a better 

way to do this. 

But these are the kinds of things we have to think about. I am 

not saying that would work for everybody or everybody wants to 

embrace that. 

I would like to follow up with what Mr. Tierney said. I think that 

as we get to the HEA that we think about the incentives to start 

to change this, but I can’t give up on this data because if nothing 

else, it may force some students to think as they set out on their 

plan, and, you know, we are reminded all the time in this committee from various witnesses that 80 percent of our students who 

are going to college are going there to get a job. We can think of 

all the other romantic reasons why they are going, but the recession had a big impact on families and students, okay, so that is 

where they are no matter what school they are going to, how elite 

or how close to home. 

And I think we have to keep that in mind and we can’t live with 

these figures. We can’t live with it as taxpayers because we are not 

getting a return on that money that we are putting out. 

Mr. JONES. Well, I would just—and as we talked about remediation, as we talked—why we have students that could take 15 take 

12, they are already on the 5-year plan, and so there are a number 

of these policies that in HEA you could put direction in, and we 

have had some states—Hawaii, for example, Utah, for example— 

adopt—I think we have 15 states working on 15 to finish, and so 

some of it is changing the culture of thinking about completing and 

not just thinking about getting them in the door. Most states have 

a 10-day count; they count you after the 10th day. 

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Mr. MILLER. I don’t know if I am right or not, but I think a pretty definitive report on remediation sort of scorched this program 

about five or six years ago, which clearly said this is a major impediment to any notion of completion. 

Mr. JONES. We put one out called, ‘‘Remediation: Bridge to Nowhere.’’ The Community College Research Center continually documents the failure of remediation. 

Mr. MILLER. Thank you. 

Thank you very much for all of your contributions this morning. 

Chairman KLINE. I, too, want to thank the witnesses. It has been 

a fantastic panel. 

A lot of innovation going on out there that is driven by competition in some cases, by need to survive in others, just by great, great 

minds putting great ideas together. We want to see that continue. 

I mentioned in my opening comments this is the 14th in a series 

of hearings, some subcommittee hearings chaired by Mrs. Foxx, 

some full committee. But we are trying to do the best we can to 

understand this. 

And my own idea, my own goal as we go and reauthorize the 

Higher Education Act is that we make sure we are not putting federal policy in the way of the advancements that you are making, 

and if it makes sense for us to put language in there that helps 

this kind of advancement. 

And it is a tricky business here because we write a law based 

on a snapshot in time, and in these days a week later it has 

changed and we have already put it in law. So we just want to be 

really careful here. 

I really appreciate the engagement of all my colleagues today as 

we have gone through this, and I want to thank all of you, coming 

from diverse institutions but with some terrific ideas and some terrific track records. 

So again, thank you to the witnesses for being here today. 

That completing all our business, the committee is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:18 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

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