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86–370 PDF 2015

KEEPING COLLEGE WITHIN REACH: 

SHARING BEST PRACTICES FOR 

SERVICING LOW–INCOME AND FIRST 

GENERATION STUDENTS 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHER EDUCATION 

AND WORKFORCE TRAINING 

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION 

AND THE WORKFORCE 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, JANUARY 28, 2014 

Serial No. 113–42 

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 

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(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 

Martha Roby, Alabama 

Joseph J. Heck, Nevada 

Richard Hudson, North Carolina 

Luke Messer, Indiana 

George Miller, California, 

Senior Democratic Member 

Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey 

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 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHER EDUCATION AND WORKFORCE TRAINING 

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina, Chairwoman 

Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin 

Howard P. ‘‘Buck’’ McKeon, California 

Glenn Thompson, Pennsylvania 

Tim Walberg, Michigan 

Matt Salmon, Arizona 

Brett Guthrie, Kentucky 

Lou Barletta, Pennsylvania 

Joseph J. Heck, Nevada 

Susan W. Brooks, Indiana 

Richard Hudson, North Carolina 

Luke Messer, Indiana 

Rube ́n Hinojosa, Texas 

Ranking Minority Member 

John F. Tierney, Massachusetts 

Timothy H. Bishop, New York 

Suzanne Bonamici, Oregon 

Carolyn McCarthy, New York 

Rush Holt, New Jersey 

Susan A. Davis, California 

David Loebsack, Iowa 

Frederica S. Wilson, Florida 

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C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on January 28, 2014 ......................................................................... 1 

Statement of Members: 

Foxx, Hon. Virginia, Chairwoman, Subcommittee on Higher Education 

and Workforce Training ............................................................................... 1 

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

Hinojosa, Hon. Rube ́n, Ranking Minority Member, Subcommittee on 

Higher Education and Workforce Training ................................................ 9 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 25 

Statement of Witnesses: 

Anderson, James, A., Dr., Chancellor, Fayetteville State University, 

North Carolina .............................................................................................. 27 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 29 

Del Balzo, Mary, B., Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Operating 

Officer, The College of Westchester, White Plains, New York .................. 41 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 43 

Garrido, Josse, A., graduate student, University of Texas-Pan American, 

Edinburg, Texas ............................................................................................ 50 

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

Holtschneider, Dennis H., Rev., President, Depaul University, Chicago, 

Illinois ............................................................................................................ 54 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 56 

Additional Submissions: 

Chairwoman Foxx: 

5000 Role Models is 20 years old, still stepping ..................................... 5 

Prepared statement of Ron Haskins ........................................................ 80 

Mr. Hinojosa: 

The National HEP CAMP Association .................................................... 11 

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund 

MALDEF ................................................................................................ 17 

Hon Jared Polis, a Representative in Congress from the State of from 

the state of Colorado: 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 91 

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(1) 

KEEPING COLLEGE WITHIN REACH: 

SHARING BEST PRACTICES FOR SERVING 

LOW–INCOME 

AND FIRST GENERATION STUDENTS 

Tuesday, January 28, 2014 

House of Representatives, 

Subcommittee on Higher Education and 

Workforce Training, 

Committee on Education and the Workforce, 

Washington, D.C. 

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

2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Virginia Foxx [chairwoman of the subcommittee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Foxx, Petri, Thompson, Walberg, Salmon, Brooks, Messer, Hinojosa, Tierney, Bishop, Bonamici, Davis, 

and Wilson. 

Also present: Representatives Kline and Miller. 

Staff present: Janelle Belland, Coalitions and Member Services 

Coordinator; James Bergeron, Director of Education and Human 

Services Policy; Amy Raaf Jones, Deputy Director of Education and 

Human Services Policy; Nancy Locke, Chief Clerk; Brian Melnyk, 

Professional Staff Member; Daniel Murner, Press Assistant; 

Krisann Pearce, General Counsel; Nicole Sizemore, Deputy Press 

Secretary; Emily Slack, Professional Staff Member; Alissa 

Strawcutter, Deputy Clerk; Tylease Alli, Minority Clerk/Intern and 

Fellow Coordinator; Jody Calemine, Minority Staff Director; 

Eamonn Collins, Minority Fellow, Education; Eunice Ikene, Minority Staff Assistant; Brian Levin, Minority Deputy Press Secretary/ 

New Media Coordinator; Megan O’Reilly, Minority General Counsel; Rich Williams, Minority Education Policy Advisor; and Michael 

Zola, Minority Deputy Staff Director. 

Chairwoman Foxx. Good morning. A quorum being present, the 

subcommittee will come to order. Tim Bishop asked if I am responsible for the cold in here, and I am really not. In the country we 

would say, ‘‘This is cold enough to hang meat,’’ so I don’t know— 

that means it is cold. 

Welcome. I thank our witnesses for joining us today to discuss 

ways postsecondary institutions are working better to serve low-income and first-generation students. This is the 12th hearing the 

committee has held examining a wide range of issues facing the 

higher education community. 

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2 

From simplifying federal student aid programs to increasing 

transparency, each hearing has provided a forum to discuss ways 

we can strengthen the nation’s postsecondary education system to 

meet the evolving needs of students and the workforce. 

One of the committee’s top priorities for the upcoming reauthorization of the Higher Education Act is improving postsecondary access and affordability. To achieve that goal, we must take steps to 

close the education achievement gap and to increase postsecondary 

opportunity for low-income and first-generation students. 

Children from disadvantaged families often struggle to access important mentoring, tutoring, and other hands-on services designed 

to help encourage high school completion and the pursuit of postsecondary education. 

Sadly, these students are often unprepared for college academics 

and require remedial courses that add to the challenges of completing a program. 

Too many disadvantaged students simply give up on even applying to college because they are confused by the application process, 

overwhelmed by the cost, or unaware of the available financial aid 

options despite our best efforts to ensure the information is available and understandable. 

Recognizing these challenges, the federal government has created 

several programs to help disadvantaged students access the support necessary to realize the dream of a college degree. 

For example, college preparation and retention programs such as 

TRIO, Upward Bound, Talent Search, and Student Support Services provide a pipeline of support services that encourage low-income students to graduate high school and earn a postsecondary 

degree. 

Additionally, the GEAR UP program helps the middle and high 

schools with high numbers of at-risk students offer academic support, mentoring, career counseling, college visits, and other services 

designed to better prepare students for success in postsecondary 

education. 

Taxpayers dedicate nearly 1 billion each year to support the 

TRIO and GEAR UP programs, but despite the expenditures of significant federal resources in these important initiatives, more must 

be done at the state and institutional level to prepare disadvantaged students effectively for college and the workforce. 

Additionally, it is important that we examine the current programs to ensure they are working as intended and meeting the 

goal of helping students make the best choices. 

Fortunately postsecondary institutions are already rising to the 

challenge. In my home state of North Carolina, for example, Fayetteville State University is pursuing strategies to assess students’ 

skill levels before they begin attending classes and use academic 

analytics to track students’ progress throughout their curriculum. 

In New York, the College of Westchester provides students with 

a variety of support services such as success coaches to mentor 

freshmen and predictive tool kits that allow students to prepare for 

academic shortfalls and track their progress. 

Chicago’s DePaul University has taken steps to coordinate with 

local high schools to ensure students are on the right track for college while also offering remedial education services. 

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We have with us today representatives from each of these institutions who can share more information about the ways they are 

working to help disadvantaged students realize the dream of a college degree, and we look forward to their testimony. 

We want all Americans to have the opportunity to earn a postsecondary credential if they choose to do so. At this hearing today, 

we will discuss additional steps which can be taken at the institutional, state, and federal levels to improve college access and completion for all seeking postsecondary education. 

A number of this subcommittee’s members have hands-on experience in higher education and mentoring programs. Recently I met 

with Representative Frederica Wilson about the 5,000 Role Models 

of Excellence Projects she started during her tenure as a high 

school principal in Miami. 

I was pleased to learn about this program that pairs disadvantaged high school students with mentors to encourage them to 

graduate and pursue further education. Members have received a 

short synopsis of this program in their folders, and I encourage all 

to speak to Representative Wilson about her efforts. 

I ask unanimous consent to submit this summary to the official 

hearing record. 

[The statement of Chairwoman Foxx follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Hon. Virginia Foxx, Chairwoman, Subcommittee on 

Higher Education and Workforce Training 

Good morning and welcome. I thank our witnesses for joining us today to discuss 

ways postsecondary institutions are working better to serve low-income and first 

generation students. 

This is the 12th hearing the committee has held examining a wide range of issues 

facing the higher education community. From simplifying federal student aid programs to increasing transparency, each hearing has provided a forum to discuss 

ways we can strengthen the nation’s postsecondary education system to meet the 

evolving needs of students and the workforce. 

One of this committee’s top priorities for the upcoming reauthorization of the 

Higher Education Act is improving postsecondary access and affordability. To 

achieve that goal, we must take steps to close the education achievement gap and 

increase postsecondary opportunity for low-income and first generation students. 

Children from disadvantaged families often struggle to access important mentoring, tutoring, and other hands-on services designed to help encourage high school 

completion and the pursuit of postsecondary education. Sadly, these students are 

often unprepared for college academics, and require remedial courses that add to the 

challenges of completing a program. Too many disadvantaged students simply give 

up on even applying to college because they are confused by the application process, 

overwhelmed by the costs, or unaware of the available financial aid options, despite 

our best efforts to ensure the information is available and understandable. 

Recognizing these challenges, the federal government has created several programs to help disadvantaged students access the support necessary to realize the 

dream of a college degree. For example, college preparation and retention programs 

such as TRIO’s Upward Bound, Talent Search, and Student Support Services provide a pipeline of support services that encourage low-income students to graduate 

high school and earn a postsecondary degree. 

Additionally, the GEAR UP program helps middle and high schools with high 

numbers of at-risk students offer academic support, mentoring, career counseling, 

college visits, and other services designed to better prepare students for success in 

postsecondary education. 

Taxpayers dedicate nearly 1 billion each year to support the TRIO and GEAR UP 

programs. But despite the expenditure of significant federal resources in these important initiatives, more must be done at the state and institutional level to prepare 

disadvantaged students effectively for college and the workforce. Additionally, it is 

important that we examine the current programs to ensure they are working as intended and meeting the goal of helping students make the best choices. 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

4 

Fortunately, postsecondary institutions are already rising to the challenge. In my 

home state of North Carolina, for example, Fayetteville State University is pursuing 

strategies to assess students’ skill levels before they begin attending classes and use 

academic analytics to track students’ progress throughout their curriculum. 

In New York, the College of Westchester provides students with a variety of support services, such as success coaches to mentor freshman and predictive toolkits 

that allow students to prepare for academic shortfalls and track their progress. Chicago’s DePaul University has taken steps to coordinate with local high schools to 

ensure students are on the right track for college, while also offering remedial education services. We have with us today representatives from each of these institutions who can share more information about the ways they are working to help disadvantaged students realize the dream of a college degree, and we look forward to 

their testimony. 

We want all Americans to have the opportunity to earn a postsecondary credential, if they choose to do so. At this hearing today we’ll discuss additional steps 

which can be taken at the institutional, state, and federal levels to improve college 

access and completion for all seeking postsecondary education. A number of this 

subcommittee’s members have hands-on experience in higher education and mentoring programs. Recently, I met with Rep. Frederica Wilson about the 5000 Role 

Models of Excellence Project she started during her tenure as a high school principal in Miami. I was pleased to learn about this program that pairs disadvantaged 

high school students with mentors to encourage them to graduate and pursue further education. Members have received a short synopsis of this program in their 

folders and I encourage them to speak to Rep. Wilson about her efforts. 

I ask unanimous consent to submit this summary to the official hearing record. 

I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle 

as we begin work on the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. With that, 

I yield to my colleague, Mr. Rube ́n Hinojosa, the senior Democrat member of the 

subcommittee, for his opening remarks. 

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Chairwoman Foxx. I look forward to continued work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle as we begin work on the reauthorization of the Higher Ed Act. 

With that, I yield to my colleague, Mr. Rube ́n Hinojosa, the senior democrat member of the subcommittee, for his opening remarks. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Thank you, Chairwoman Foxx. 

Today’s hearing will focus on how our nation can best eliminate 

barriers to college access for low-income and first-generation college 

students; students who strive to achieve the American dream, contribute to the nation’s prosperity, and work to improve lives of others. 

In just a few minutes you will hear from Alex Garrido, an exceptional young man from my congressional district who is a low-income, first-generation student earning a Master’s degree in information technology at the University of Texas, Pan-American, a Hispanic-serving institution in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. 

Importantly, Alex is also an immigrant who was able to afford 

the cost of a college degree due to the passage of the Texas Dream 

Act in 2001. To be sure, without the Texas Dream Act, college 

would have been clearly out of reach for this exemplary individual. 

Each year approximately 65,000 undocumented students graduate from high school but cannot go to college. Unfortunately, only 

5 to 10 percent of undocumented high school graduates go to college because most are not eligible for in-state tuition. 

As a native Texan, I am especially pleased that more than a decade ago Texas became the first state in the nation to pass an instate tuition law which made college more affordable for immigrant 

students. 

Today, 16 states have tuition equity laws allowing undocumented 

students to pay in-state tuition at public colleges and universities 

and some boards and regions have adopted policies that allow undocumented students to access in-state tuition. 

Furthermore, a handful of states allow undocumented students 

to access state financial aid. While I applaud these states for taking bold steps to support immigrant students, Congress must act 

now and provide much-needed relief to our nation’s dreamers 

through the passage of commonsense immigration reform. 

In fact, a 2010 UCLA study estimated that the total earnings of 

Dream Act beneficiaries would be between $1.4 trillion and $3.6 

trillion, and almost 1.8 million individuals in the United States 

would benefit from the Federal Dream Act. 

Preparing all students for good family-sustaining jobs and careers and a bright future must be a guiding principle for HEA reauthorization, which is badly needed here in Congress. 

A highly skilled at 21—or rather, a highly skilled 21st century 

workforce is key to strengthening our nation’s economy and reducing income inequality and poverty particularly among our most vulnerable student populations. 

More to the point, the Georgetown center on Washington—rather, the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce found 

that 63 percent of all jobs will require workers with at least some 

postsecondary education by the year 2018. 

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10 

Along the same lines, a study by the College Board revealed that 

over the course of their working lives the average college graduate 

earns in excess of 60 percent more than a high school graduate. 

Finally, federal investments and Pell grants, GEAR UP, HEP 

CAMP, TRIO programs, historically black colleges and universities, 

tribal colleges and universities, and minority-serving institutions 

are transforming the lives of millions of disadvantaged students by 

making college more affordable and by providing students with the 

academic support and services they need to succeed in school. 

More than ever, Congress, states, and institutions must build on 

the successes of these Federal programs and do more to encourage 

greater numbers of low-income, first-generation college students to 

pursue a college degree. 

For these reasons, I ask my colleagues from both sides of the 

aisle to work together to make a college education accessible and 

affordable to our nation’s dreamers and to greater numbers of lowincome, first-generation college students in this reauthorization of 

Higher Education Act. 

At this time, I ask for unanimous consent to enter the letters 

from the national HEP CAMP association as well as from the Mexican-American Legal Defense and the Educational Fund into the 

hearing record. 

[The information follows:] 

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Chairwoman Foxx. Without objection. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. With that, I yield back. 

Prepared Statement of Hon. Rube ́n Hinojosa, Ranking Miniority Member, 

Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training 

Thank you, Chairwoman Foxx. 

Today’s hearing will focus on how our nation can best eliminate barriers to college 

access for low-income and first generation college students—students who strive to 

achieve the American Dream, contribute to the nation’s prosperity, and work to improve the lives of others. 

In just a few minutes, you will hear from Alex Garrido, an exceptional young man 

from my congressional district who is a low- income, first generation student, earning a master’s degree in information technology at the University of Texas-Pan 

American (UTPA), a Hispanic Serving Institution in the Rio Grande Valley of South 

Texas. 

Importantly, Alex is also an immigrant who was able to afford the cost of a college 

degree due to the passage of the Texas DREAM Act in 2001. To be sure, without 

the Texas DREAM Act, college would have been clearly out of reach for this exemplary individual. 

Each year approximately 65,000 undocumented students graduate from high 

school but cannot go to college. Unfortunately, only 5 to 10 percent of undocumented 

high school graduates go to college because most are not eligible for in-state tuition. 

As a Native Texan, I am especially pleased that more than a decade ago, Texas 

became the first state in the nation to pass an in-state tuition law, which made college more affordable for immigrant students. 

Today, 16 states have tuition equity laws allowing undocumented students to pay 

in-state tuition at public colleges and universities, and some boards of regents have 

adopted policies that allow undocumented students to access in-state tuition. 

In addition, a handful of states allow undocumented students to access state financial aid. 

While I applaud these states for taking bold steps to support immigrant students, 

Congress must act now and provide much needed relief to our nation’s dreamers 

through the passage of common-sense immigration reform. In fact, a 2010 UCLA 

study estimated that the total earnings of DREAM Act beneficiaries would be between $1.4 and $3.6 trillion, and almost 1.8 million individuals in the United States 

would benefit from the federal DREAM Act. 

Preparing all students for good family sustaining jobs and careers and a bright 

future must be a guiding principle for HEA reauthorization. 

A highly skilled 21st century workforce is key to strengthening our nation’s economy and to reducing income inequality and poverty, particulary among our most 

vulnerable student populations. 

More to the point, the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce found 

that 63 percent of all jobs will require workers with at least some postsecondary 

education by 2018. 

Along the same lines, a study by the College Board revealed that over the course 

of their working lives, the average college graduate earns in excess of 60 percent 

more than a high school graduate. 

Finally, federal investments in Pell Grants, GEAR–UP, HEP–CAMP, TRIO programs, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities and Minority Serving Institutions are transforming the lives of millions of disadvantaged students by making college more affordable and by providing students 

with the academic support and services they need to succeed in school. 

More than ever, Congress, states and institutions must build on the successes of 

these federal programs and do more to encourage greater numbers of low-income, 

first generation college students to pursue a college degree. 

For these reasons, I ask my colleagues from both sides of the aisle to work together to make a college education accessible and affordable to our nation’s dreamers and to greater numbers of low income, first generation college students, in this 

reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. 

At this time, I ask for unanimous consent to enter letters from the National HEP– 

CAMP Association and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund 

into the hearing record. 

With that, I yield back. 

Chairwoman FOXX. Thank you, Mr. Hinojosa. 

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26 

Pursuant to Committee Rule 7–C, all subcommittee members 

will be permitted to submit written statements to be included in 

the permanent hearing record. 

Without objection, the hearing record will remain open for 14 

days to allow statements, questions for the record, and other extraneous material referenced during the hearing to be submitted in 

the official hearing record. 

It is now my pleasure to introduce our distinguished panel of witnesses. 

Dr. James Anderson serves as chancellor and professor of psychology at Fayetteville State University, North Carolina’s second 

oldest public institution. 

Mrs. Mary Beth Del Balzo serves as the senior executive vice 

president and chief operating officer at the College of Westchester. 

I believe Mr. Hinojosa would like to introduce Mr. Garrido. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Thank you, Chairwoman. 

Alex Garrido is an impressive young man with a long list of accomplishments. Like many low-income, first-generation students, 

Alex is hard-working, entrepreneurial, and determined to succeed 

and, most importantly, to contribute to this nation. 

Alex graduated with honors from his high school and the University of Texas, Pan-American with a bachelor of science in psychology, and today he is pursuing a Master’s degree in information 

technology at UTPA. 

Alex is also an entrepreneur. After earning his degree and working for one of the best Web site design firms in Houston, Alex started his own web design firm and now has over 90 clients. 

Due to his unique talents, he was recruited away by UTPA to assist with their online and international marketing efforts. Alex is 

also working on an application involving Google Glass. 

Alex knows America as his home and is a proud beneficiary of 

President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals known 

as DACA. 

I would like to note that without the leadership of Governor 

Perry and the passage of the Texas Dream Act, Alex would not 

have been able to afford the cost of a college education. 

As ranking member of this committee, it is a pleasure for me to 

extend a warm welcome to this outstanding young man. 

Chairwoman FOXX.. Thank you, Mr. Hinojosa. 

Father Dennis Holtschneider serves as president of DePaul University, the nation’s largest Catholic university and the largest private university in the Midwest. 

Before I recognize you to provide your testimony, let me briefly 

explain our lighting system. 

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

begin, the light in front of you will turn green. When one minute 

is left, the light will turn yellow. When your time has expired, the 

light will turn red. At that point, I ask that you wrap up your remarks as best as you are able. 

After you have testified, members will each have five minutes to 

ask questions of the panel members. 

I now recognize Dr. James Anderson for five minutes. 

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27 

STATEMENT OF DR. JAMES ANDERSON, CHANCELLOR, FAYETTEVILLE STATE UNIVERSITY, FAYETTEVILLE, NORTH 

CAROLINA 

Mr. ANDERSON. Madam Chair, Ranking Member Hinojosa, and 

distinguished members of the panel, on behalf of the students, 

staff, and faculty at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina, thank you for this opportunity. 

We are a constituent institution of the University of North Carolina system. We are approximately 66 percent African-American, 

27 percent white, 5 percent Hispanic, 75 percent Pell eligible, 20 

percent military affiliated, which is the highest in the system. 

Half of our students are adult learners and 95 percent of our students are in-state, mostly from rural regions, so we are one of the 

most diverse historically black institutions. 

I came on board in 2008, and at that point we needed to make 

the leadership and financial commitment to creating the kinds of 

support programs and faculty development programs that would 

move our students forward successfully. 

I would like to mention two of our support programs for underrepresented students, especially since they won an award in December at the Press Club for high-impact practices. 

The first of those programs is called the CHEER program, and 

CHEER stands for Creating Higher Expectations for Educational 

Readiness. 

Many of our applicants, because of their standardized test scores, 

are not eligible to enroll in Fayetteville State University, and so 

the CHEER program represents a summer bridge program during 

which students take two courses of math and an English course, 

both of which are the traditional courses you would take in your 

freshman year. 

They are not remedial courses. They also receive counseling, advising, et cetera in the summer. If they pass those two courses, 

than the students are allowed to enroll in Fayetteville State University. 

Tracking CHEER students over the last several years shows that 

they are retained at a higher rate than the general student population that was already admitted and they have 11 percent higher 

graduation rate. 

The second program for which we won that award in—by the 

way only four schools received the HIP, High Impact Practice 

awards. 

The second program focuses on underrepresented males. Nationally underrepresented males, especially minority males, have some 

of the poorest success rates. We wanted to make sure that did not 

happen to students who enter in that category and so one of the 

programs that we created really focused on bringing those students 

in, operating in a learning community, receiving strong mentoring 

and peer advising. 

One program was created for freshman, and there is a second 

program that carries them from sophomore through senior year. 

The students in those programs are highly successful. If we compare them to other males who entered who did not go through 

these programs, our students are retained at an 84 percent rate 

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28 

versus students who were not in that program who are retained at 

a 66 percent rate. 

The students—when you hear their testimonies—are probably as 

powerful as Alex’s because they came in, they know they are 

under-skilled, they performed poorly in their first year, and then 

ultimately they recognized that they have to do much better. 

We also have made a major investment in financial aid counseling. Financial aid counseling should begin as early as possible, 

so our First Steps program begins in the spring and the summer 

before students enroll. Students and their parents come to the university and, besides doing the placement testing and the advisement and registration, the rigorous financial aid counseling has 

been very successful. 

For example, Fayetteville State University was one of the few 

HBCUs that was not affected by the Parent Plus Loan program, as 

many other institutions were in North Carolina who saw a drop in 

enrollment when the criteria were changed. We were not because 

we actually counsel our students and parents not to—especially the 

parents—not to take on the debt burden when their students are 

taking on a debt burden also. We try to find other means to support students rather than do that. 

We have, as you know, a strong military population because of 

the presence of Fort Bragg and the military children of those veterans and active military are very important to our enrollment. 

We have two early college high schools or traditional early college and an international early college high school, and increasingly we are seeing more of the children of the military enter these 

early college high schools. 

Our top graduates now come from early college high schools. It 

is a major investment financially; however, it is probably the best 

group of students that we bring from a high school pipeline into the 

university and ultimately who graduate. 

By the way, our early college high schools and all of them in 

North Carolina focus on minority and underrepresented students, 

so roughly 80 percent of our students come from those categories, 

and I strongly recommend that. 

Well—wow, that is fast. 

Let me close by saying in terms of Title III, I think we really 

need to look at the areas of Title III that can strengthen HBCUs 

and many of the other underrepresented institutions. 

[The statement of Dr. Anderson follows:] 

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Chairwoman FOXX.. Thank you very much, Dr. Anderson. 

Ms. Del Balzo? 

STATEMENT OF MRS. MARY BETH DEL BALZO, SENIOR EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, 

THE COLLEGE OF WESTCHESTER, WHITE PLAINS, NEW 

YORK 

Mrs. DEL BALZO. Chairwoman Foxx, Ranking Member Hinojosa, 

and distinguished members of the committee, I would like to thank 

you for the opportunity to speak with you today about the College 

of Westchester. 

I am honored to represent CW because I am particularly proud 

of how we serve our students and our community. CW celebrates 

its 100th anniversary in 2015. We are a privately-owned, singlecampus college in White Plains, New York with a steady enrollment of about 1,000 students. 

Curriculum includes campus-based and fully-online courses in 

business, allied health, digital media, and technology—associate 

and baccalaureate degrees. 

We maintain vibrant relationships with the local and regional 

corporate community. A professional network of over 300 businesses regularly hire our grads. 

We sit on boards of local businesses, community, and education 

associations. The New York State Board of Regents and the Middle 

States Commission on Higher Education oversee our excellence. 

The College of Westchester is a proprietary college. We pay local 

property taxes and corporate income taxes in the state of New York 

and federally. Our graduates secure good jobs and become contributing taxpayers. 

CW serves both traditional students who just graduated from 

high school and nontraditional students, adults who may be coming 

back to college. Most come from families with need; many first-generation. Seventy-five percent of our students are Pell eligible and 

the vast majority receive assistance from New York State’s Tuition 

Assistance Program known as TAP. 

As you know, Pell and TAP are awarded to students, not institutions, and we are honored that they select CW. Our students come 

from our community and continue to reside at their homes. CW 

does not offer dormitories. 

Our traditional students work an average of 10 to 30 hours per 

week, and our nontraditional students work at least full-time. 

CW does not have an open enrollment policy. We personally 

interview each prospective student, review their transcripts, and 

accept only qualified students who we feel can succeed. 

Here are some methods we employ to help low-income students 

graduate. All incoming students who test into noncredit basics of 

math may participate in a cost-free CW Summer Bridge program 

to help them improve their math skills and retest into higher-level 

credit bearing math classes. 

Out of 122 students, 117 were able to successfully do so this past 

summer. Another version of this program is called a CW Boot 

Camp, offered at intervals convenient to working people. 

CW’s success coaching program assigns each student to a success 

coach who tracks the student’s strengths and stressors through 

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CW’s campus toolkit. This comprehensive evaluation identifies students who will benefit from academic, financial, or employment 

counseling necessary for continued resilience. 

CW faculty and staff constantly evaluate students to identify 

those at risk through classwork, student interaction, attendance, 

resilience, and persistence, and refer appropriately. 

Adult students may have completed course work or obtained experience that should be considered as credits earned. CW’s prior 

learning assessment program allows students to enter CW with 

credits from other colleges through standardized exams, high 

school and VOC E articulations for holding technology certifications, for military experience through our portfolio evaluation of 

life and career experiences. 

CW students do not study abroad; however, we recently began 

partnering with SUNY’s collaborative online international learning 

initiative. Our recent program utilized class videoconferencing with 

students in Panama, and soon we will have a future group from 

Coventry, England. 

CW is working with the NewsActivist, a writing-based partnership that provides classes and students with opportunities for textbased international collaborations. 

In 2012, CW was selected to partner with Carnegie Mellon University and a small group of other colleges across the country in 

Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative to improve the success 

of college students in certain gateway courses. Five faculty and 

over 100 students participated. 

For 2 years, CW students have been accepted into the prestigious 

University of Pittsburgh’s i3 Scholars Program. CW has become 

proactive in reducing textbook costs. Twenty-two courses replaced 

commercial textbooks in 2013. 

In my written comments, I offer several areas I would respectfully like the committee to consider during deliberations of the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, specifically year-round 

PELL and accurate data reporting and analysis through IPEDs reporting. 

We believe strongly that Congress and the Department of Education should judge institutions on the basis of how well they serve 

students and not on other considerations such as their tax status. 

As you know, the Department of Education is dictating a new 

regulation called Gainful Employment, which will result in the closure of programs that don’t meet an arbitrary metric that measures student debt versus income. 

If enacted as proposed, the Gainful Employment regulation 

would introduce a complicated regulatory formula that is hard to 

understand and does not accomplish its goals. 

There is a lot of work to be done. Thank you so much for this 

opportunity to testify before you this morning, and I welcome any 

questions you may have. 

[The statement of Mrs. Del Balzo follows:] 

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Chairwoman FOXX.. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Garrido, you are recognized for five minutes. 

STATEMENT OF MR. JOSSE ALEX GARRIDO, GRADUATE STUDENT, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS–PAN AMERICAN, EDINBURG, 

TEXAS 

Mr. GARRIDO. Chairwoman Foxx, ranking member Hinojosa, and 

members of the subcommittee, I want to thank you very much for 

being here. This is a very exciting moment for me. This is the first 

time I am testifying before you, and I am very nervous, but I am 

very happy. 

My parents brought me here to the United States hoping for a 

better life. Unfortunately, they were basically cheated away by a 

bad immigration attorney and the whole law firm disappeared just 

a few weeks after they gave this immigration attorney all the 

things they had. 

I attended high school here in the United States, and thanks to 

my counselor, my high school counselor, I was able to take advantage of several afterschool programs and several education tracks. 

I was able to basically take several advanced placement classes, 

and I was able to enroll in a community college just to take some 

basic credits. 

It was very sad when I realized that I wasn’t going to be able 

to go to college. Thanks to my counselor—she told me about the 

Texas law, which thanks to Rick Perry allows students without status to basically attend the university paying in-state tuition. 

Working part-time, working several small odd jobs I was able to 

graduate with honors without a debt, of course. I didn’t have a Social Security back then, so I was not able to get any loans or any 

kinds of scholarships. 

I started my non-profit back when I was in my undergrad. I was 

very active in the effort to pass the Dream Act back in 2010. Unfortunately back then it didn’t pass. Actually, the day it failed in the 

Senate was the very day of my graduation. It failed in the Senate 

on Monday—it failed in the Senate on December 18 and it was in 

the morning. In the afternoon it was my graduation. 

Thanks to the Morton memos and an extraordinary immigration 

attorney, I was able to move to Houston, finish a certification in 

web design, and learn on my own HTML5, CSS3, Ruby, Javascript, 

PHP, and WordPress application development. 

Thanks to that, I started working for one of the best web design 

firms in Houston. After that I started my own company with the 

help of my best friend. Today, my web design firm, 

alexwebmaster.com, has two employees and a manager and a portfolio of over 90 clients in plastic surgery, real estate, e-commerce, 

psychology, and many other markets. 

We provide strategic social media marketing and search engine 

optimization along with innovative web design and mobile-friendly 

design. My background caught the attention of the UTPA director 

of continuing education, and she invited me to teach digital marketing and web design classes at the University of Texas-Pan 

American. 

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Today, I could not be happier. I live with an extraordinary 

woman in a beautiful 5-room house, I proudly pay my taxes, and 

I love my country. 

I am currently working on my masters in information technology. 

I do not manage my own company right now because I essentially 

got recruited away from it because right now I am helping the Office of Graduate Studies at the University of Texas Pan American 

with their online and international marketing efforts. 

Along with some friends in the MSIT program and the computer 

science program, I am working on an application to document your 

life using Google Glass. Hopefully we can submit it to Google and 

get it approved. I was one of the first people to be selected by 

Google to have this kind of technology. 

I am very fortunate to live in Texas because of the help of all 

the college preparation programs that I was able to take. Because 

of all of the help of my counselor and family members and friends 

and the Texas Dream Act and the leadership from our President, 

and the benefits of attending one of the most affordable universities in the United States, I am who I am today. 

I think that there is a lot of hidden talent in minority and lowincome students; all it takes for many of them to shine is an opportunity. 

So today I am asking you to please provide us an opportunity, 

increase funding. It is really hard when you are a first-generation 

student to attend college. 

For example, my parents didn’t see the value of going to college, 

so I guess—I just want to thank you so much. This is a wonderful 

opportunity, and I guess I yield my time. 

[The statement of Mr. Garrido follows:] 

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Chairwoman FOXX.. Thank you very much. 

I now recognize father Dennis Holtschneider for five minutes. 

STATEMENT OF REV. DENNIS H. HOLTSCHNEIDER, 

PRESIDENT, DEPAUL UNIVERSITY, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 

Rev HOLTSCHNEIDER. Thank you. 

Chairwoman Foxx, Ranking Member Hinojosa, and distinguished 

members of this subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to appear 

today. 

In respect for our limited time, you will find more detail and additional suggestions for reauthorization of the Higher Education 

Act in my written testimony. 

With 25,000 students, DePaul University is the largest private 

university in the Midwest. We serve a broad swath of society, but 

we direct all of our financial aid towards undergraduates who are 

from first-generation families, low-income qualifying for the Pell 

Grant, or students of color for underrepresented groups. 

They are 53 percent of this year’s freshman class, and they graduate in impressive numbers. To serve them well we keep our class 

sizes small. We are constantly trying new approaches. 

We recently shifted all of our remedial coursework to the summer before college and made it free of charge if the students shifted 

with it, but we charged them if they waited until the fall in order 

to keep them on track with their colleagues so they moved toward 

graduation. That has worked beautifully. 

We implemented a mentoring program for men of color, which 

now has a higher graduation rate than the student body at large. 

We completely redesigned gateway courses. Those are the 

courses like organic chemistry and calculus where students take 

the course, fail, and they drop out of college. We literally redesigned those courses based on what the students told us. 

We added supplemental instruction. We substantially upgraded 

advising, changing how it works. We have now become the top private transfer institution in the United States to enable students to 

spend two years before they come to DePaul and to be able to have 

a less expensive education. 

We are also among the top 10 providers in the United States for 

professional internships. All in service of helping them succeed not 

only in college but helping them succeed in life. 

Our focus on educational opportunity also finds expression in our 

TRIO programs. We host two TRIO programs at DePaul, Student 

Support Services and McNair Scholars, and we supplement them 

extensively with our own funds. 

These programs work. Our latest graduation rate for Student 

Support Services students was over 80 percent, 10 percentage 

points above the institutional average, 80 percent of our McNair 

students are going to graduate school within 3 years to some of the 

finest graduate schools in America. 

TRIO programs in our experience have an outsize effect, and we 

know firsthand their value. That said, my colleagues and I also believe that TRIO could be improved in the next reauthorization 

cycle. 

First, we ask that TRIO eligibility regulations be simplified. 

Rather than making every university in the country independently 

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review the net taxable income for each TRIO student or their families of origin, TRIO eligibility should simply follow Pell eligibility. 

If a student has already been certified as sufficiently poor to be 

eligible for Pell funding, it would greatly simplify the administration of these programs if that designation also made them eligible 

for TRIO programs. 

That would allow us to apply the TRIO funds to student support 

rather than cause us to assign lengthy staff hours toward needless 

administrative work. 

Second, while TRIO program regulations technically permit collaboration between TRIO programs and other educational opportunity programs inside our institutions, it is our experience at least 

with respect to student support services that the regulation prohibiting comingling of funds discourages institutions from any significant collaboration internally. 

Moreover, extensive reporting requirements deter institutions 

from creating programs that would serve larger numbers of students. There is simply so much paperwork in the reporting requirements that universities have created standalone programs that 

serve small, discrete numbers of students and they can be more 

easily reported according to the requirements. 

Third, there appears to be little incentive for TRIO programs to 

collaborate their activities across institutions. There are 50 or so 

TRIO programs in the Chicago region alone, community agencies, 

colleges, schools . . . I have no doubt they are doing good work individually, but working together, Chicago universities could partner 

more easily with high school Upward Bound and Talent Search 

programs offering students real pathway programs that ease their 

transition to college. 

Just as importantly, we could create ways to assess the collective 

impact of TRIO. For now, however, we work independently. That 

is a shame. All that said, TRIO works beautifully at DePaul. I pray 

it remains at the heart of our national commitments to every student, and I thank you for your time. 

[The statement of Rev. Holtschneider follows:] 

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Chairwoman FOXX. Thank you very much. 

I would now like to recognize our members for five minutes of 

questioning. 

Mrs. Brooks, I recognize you as our first member. 

Mrs. BROOKS. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Hello to the panel. Thank you so very much for being here. I actually, before coming to Congress, was a part of our state’s community college system and Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana. 

Just last week when we were home, I convened a higher ed listening session of a huge number of institutions within our state. 

We had quite a discussion about higher ed reauthorization. 

An overarching theme that I heard from the administrators, including college presidents who attended, was that we need to have 

much more focus on the success of the students once they enroll. 

It was their belief that there has been a huge amount of progress 

in access, but yet once they get to the doors of the institution there 

are all of these impediments, and we have not had a very high success rate in this country on graduation and on completion. 

And so I just thank you all particularly for highlighting the programs that have been so effective in your institutions. 

Actually, Dr. Anderson, you brought up something that came up 

in my discussion last week and if you could talk a little bit more 

about the problem in this country, because we now have about 57 

percent of all people going to college are females, which is a fabulous thing, but we are not focusing enough on the male students. 

Could you just talk a little bit more about the issue of males continuing on in college and their success? 

I would like to also ask you a bit about TRIO, Reverend 

Holtschneider, in a moment. 

If you could talk about your program, Dr. Anderson, with respect 

to the focus, the under-representation of males on our college campuses. 

Mr. ANDERSON. Sure. In identifying that group as a targeted population, we recognized that there had to be a significant commitment to both access and success for that group. 

All of the data nationally indicates that, and there are many 

good programs. As you heard, DePaul has one, and we have one 

also. 

The students have to learn to understand the culture of college 

when they first get there. Many are under-skilled, and so you have 

to put them into courses where faculty understand the level of 

readiness that they have and often that means that you have to 

train faculty and have a faculty development component to deal 

with these students. 

You must make sure that your best tutors, your best advisors, 

your best mentors are associated with the program, and by the 

way, they don’t have to be males. Some of the most significant advisors and mentors on our campus are females; staff, faculty, and 

upper-class students. 

The students themselves have to be held to very high standards, 

and so the progression standards that we have created as a university as students move from semester to semester apply to them because if you don’t hold them to high academic standards, they 

won’t aspire to those standards. 

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You must have a good assessment component to make sure that 

you can track how well these students are doing and where you 

draw the students from. I mentioned early college high schools, for 

example. Some of our students come from early college high 

schools. 

Some students come from the CHEER program. So they enter 

the university already having come from a pipeline that is very 

strong, and if you can have that strong pipeline—we have a very 

strong GEAR UP program, for example. 

Our GEAR UP program is one of the most successful in the country and sending students to the university as under-represented 

males but coming from a strong pipeline strengthens their chance 

of successes as opposed to just coming in as entering freshmen and 

having to start anew. 

Mrs. BROOKS. Have you found that all of the different funding 

streams that are available cause the incredible amount of compliance work that we have heard about, and can you address that 

with respect to this population of students? 

Mr. ANDERSON. Sure. One of the hindrances has been the fact 

that when the reauthorization occurred in 2008, the institutions 

that got the designation of being PBI, Predominantly Black Institutions and who were not historically black institutions, they have 

been afforded the chance to use Title III funds for certain things 

that we can’t, and many of the things that we would like to use 

Title III funds for would benefit this population. 

So one of our requests representing all HBCUs is that we go 

back and look at that 2008 reauthorization. You have, for example, 

PBIs that used to be historically black institutions, now are predominately white but may have a significant number of AfricanAmerican or Hispanic students. 

They are allowed to utilize Title III in ways that historically 

black institutions can’t, so we can do more with our minority males 

in our under-represented male program if we were allowed, for example, to utilize some of those funds. 

Mrs. BROOKS. Thank you. 

And I have a very short period of time, but Reverend 

Holtschneider—yes, I am sorry. My time is up. 

I yield back. 

Mr. ANDERSON. I am sorry. 

Chairwoman FOXX.. You can always speak to Father 

Holtschneider and get something from him after the hearing. 

Mrs. BROOKS. Thank you. 

Chairwoman FOXX.. Thank you. 

Mr. Hinojosa, I recognize you for five minutes. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Thank you. 

It is wonderful to have such great panelists here on this subject 

that is so important to us here in Congress and help us prepare 

for reauthorization of Higher Education Act. 

I will start my first question for Alex Garrido. 

Briefly, could you describe your experience as a first-generation 

college student within your family and in college? 

Mr. GARRIDO. Well, basically it was very hard, very hard because 

my parents didn’t recognize the value of attending college, and I 

couldn’t have done it without the help of my school counselor, and 

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she guided me through all of these programs through the GEAR 

UP program, through personal coaching, through personal guidance. I think it was essential that I got that help from her. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. What did GEAR UP teach you that made you college ready? 

Mr. GARRIDO. It inspired me to go to college. It opened a window 

of opportunity. It just made me dream of a better life. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Thank you. Briefly how did Texas Dream Act 

make it possible for you to attend college? 

Mr. GARRIDO. I couldn’t have gone to college without the Texas 

Dream Act. Back then I didn’t have status, and for undocumented 

students, usually they have to pay as international students, which 

the tuition rate is usually as you may know sometimes twice or 

three times higher than regular tuition. So the Texas Dream Act 

allowed me to pay in-state tuition, and Rick Perry is my hero for 

passing the Texas Dream Act. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Could you talk about your job perspectives coming 

out of graduate school and the financial impact that the Dream Act 

has had on your life? 

Mr. GARRIDO. Basically because I have such a large portfolio, and 

I work for so many different companies, I get job offers I think at 

least twice per week. Vice presidents from companies, IT companies in Houston, in Dallas, they are constantly calling me and they 

are constantly trying to recruit me, but my main goal is to finish 

my Masters in Information Technology and hopefully work for a 

large corporation such as Google or Microsoft. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. A 2010 UCLA study that we saw estimated that 

the total earnings of all Dream Act beneficiaries would be between 

$1.4 trillion and $3.6 trillion. Do you agree with that, and how 

many students are there at your university who would fall into this 

group? 

Mr. GARRIDO. Back in 2010, we had 603 students. I don’t know 

the specific number right now at my university, but yes. We are 

used to dealing with hardships. We are used to dealing with difficult circumstances. We are used to having to overcome a lot of obstacles. 

We know we are not entitled to anything, and we risk it. We go 

and take chances because we already have nothing, so anything 

that we can get, anything that we can do, we do it. Dreamers usually have an entrepreneurial spirit. I started my own non-profit 

even back when I didn’t have a status, so I think that shows what 

we can do in terms of contributing to this country. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Thank you. 

Dr. Anderson, I agree with my colleague from Indiana, Susan 

Brooks, in the need to address the falling percentage of males going 

to the University. I think that today 60 percent of all of the students attending universities are female. 

How did GEAR UP and TRIO help you move those numbers up 

and graduation rate as was pointed out? 

Mr. ANDERSON. Well, one of the things that we, when we talk to 

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comes. We wanted to be able to say that the impact of GEAR UP 

is X or Y or Z. 

So as we talked to the leaders of the GEAR UP program, we 

made sure that they aligned their outcomes with the university’s 

outcomes and expectations. Therefore, it was a seamless transition 

for the students because they were in a program where all of the 

activities were built around things that were measurable, good 

metrics. 

In fact, the assessment plan for our GEAR UP program is often 

held up to other GEAR UP programs when they apply, and they 

are told to look at our assessment model. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Did you include the importance of financial literacy at the GEAR UP programs so that they could make good 

choices and good decisions as to how they were going to get financing? 

Mr. ANDERSON. Absolutely. And not just in GEAR UP but all of 

the TRIO programs you will find that one of the significant weaknesses is the students and the parents understanding of what the 

debt to go to college really entails, so financial literacy training and 

all related training is important, is critical. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Thank you. 

I yield back. 

Chairwoman FOXX.. Thank you, Mr. Hinojosa. 

Mr. Walberg, you are recognized for five minutes. 

Mr. WALBERG. I thank the chairwoman. 

I thank the panel for being here today. 

Ms. Del Balzo, I know from my background, having been in my 

field of endeavor for a number of years and then going back to 

Wheaton College Graduate School, the experience that I had was 

taken into consideration by Wheaton at the time and allowed me 

as a husband and a father of two at that time to have some efficiency built into my graduate school studies and be given credit for 

experience. 

At Westchester, how do you account for the experience of a person who comes not necessarily in a graduate study but coming to 

a bachelor’s degree program from a field of endeavor for some time, 

experience in what they are doing, and now coming back for some 

training to allow them to progress further? 

What does the College of Westchester do? 

Mrs. DEL BALZO. We do a number of things as most colleges do, 

I think. Our prior learning assessment encompasses a lot of different areas. One of them is obviously through credits earned possibly at another college. We assess those if they are pertinent to 

their degree at the College of Westchester through standardized 

exams such as CLEP, UExcel, ECE, international baccalaureate 

exams, sometimes early college high school credits, and VOC E articulations. 

Those are students who study career-specific coursework in their 

high schools, for holding technology certifications such as A+, 

CCNA, Adobe, Microsoft office specialists that would correspond to 

courses that we offer at the college. Also— 

Mr. WALBERG. If I could just jump in there— 

Mrs. DEL BALZO. Sure. 

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Mr. WALBERG.—With that list, extensive list, how do you communicate that to students, potential students, how do you communicate that this is a school that will take into consideration life experience, past courses, you name it? 

Mrs. DEL BALZO. It starts in the admissions counseling prior to 

a student making a decision about whether they should attend, especially an adult because their time is so limited. I was an adult 

student as well, and I understand that. We explain all of those 

things. 

We have materials that we can review with them in the personal 

interview that we do with each student, and make it super clear. 

And then we also guide them through the process of taking those 

standardized exams or reviewing their life experience credits or 

their military experience through our listing. 

Mr. WALBERG. I understand as well that you give no-cost remedial courses for students who come to the College of Westchester. 

How many new students participate in some of these courses, and 

how does it affect their financial aid? 

Mrs. DEL BALZO. Yes. It affects their financial aid significantly 

because—well, this past summer we identified 122 students in the 

incoming freshman class, and 117 of them didn’t have to take the 

basics of math course. They were able to test into the higher level. 

If they had taken the basics, they would have had to pay out-ofpocket for that because it is not covered through their financial aid. 

We do that with adult students as well. I don’t have the statistics 

on it, but we offer, to them, to adult students at times that are convenient for them to take what is called ‘‘Boot Camp’’ for adults. 

Mr. WALBERG. Thank you. 

Reverend Holtschneider, can you tell me about the remedial 

courses that DePaul offers to new students prior to the start of 

their academic career? 

Rev HOLTSCHNEIDER. We took our lead from the research done 

by Cliff Adelman here at the Department of Education and realized 

that if we could keep students tracked with their freshman classmates they had a better chance of succeeding going through. 

So we basically took all of the remedial classes, put them the 

summer before, and made them free if they took them the summer 

before. That is actually financially a wise move as well because 

they will stay with you longer as students and you will make it up 

later, frankly, as a business model. 

But frankly, it creates a higher graduation rate as a humane 

model and helps students stay on track. So we try to push them 

into the summer where we put the courses for free, but if they wait 

until the fall we charge them. And that is the incentive so that 

they get on track and then they stay on track going forward. It is 

working beautifully. Their graduation rates are much higher than 

they used to be. 

Mr. WALBERG. I suppose it also shows their drive of wanting to 

compete on a college campus like yours. 

Thank you so much. I know my time is about up. 

Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Chairwoman FOXX.. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Bishop, you are recognized for five minutes. 

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63 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and thank you 

for holding this hearing. 

To the panel, thank you for the work that you are engaged in. 

It is very impressive. 

Mr. Garrido, your story is an inspiration. I thank you very much 

for being here with us today. 

I guess my first question is an idea that is gaining a fair amount 

of currency around here is the idea of simplifying the student financial aid program such that we would have one grant and one 

loan program. 

The grant presumably would be the Pell grant, the loan presumably would be the direct loan program and by implication that 

would eliminate the campus-based programs that are operated 

under Title IV for a great many years. 

My question is what impact, if any, would a simplification of the 

student financial aid program such that we were down to one grant 

and one loan have on your ability to both attract and retain lowincome students? 

Dr. Anderson, may I start with you? 

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes. First of all, it would streamline the process. 

So at the university level we would be able to respond faster. We 

would probably have more applicants to the institution and for financial aid. 

I am going to say that sometimes financial aid application fatigue occurs among certain parents and student groups simply because it is such a complicated process to them. I constantly am responding to letters and phone calls about people who have difficulty with that process. 

So streamlining the process, increasing the number of applicants, 

and encouraging in an incentive-based way parents and students to 

understand it is easier to get into the educational pipeline than 

they had thought all would be very critical. 

Mr. BISHOP. At the risk of being argumentative, there is not now 

a separate application for SEOG. There is not now a separate application for college work-study or for Perkins. The student files the 

FAFSA, and that is it. 

I thank you for your assessment. 

Father Holtschneider, could you comment on this? 

Rev HOLTSCHNEIDER. The same question? 

Mr. BISHOP. What impact would this have on your students? 

Rev HOLTSCHNEIDER. Well, the simplification of course is always 

attractive in its own right. Many of my students rely on Work 

Study greatly. A number of my students rely on SEOG. A number 

of my students rely on Perkins. 

I didn’t come prepared today to give you an exact analysis about 

it— 

Mr. BISHOP. I am not asking for one. 

Rev HOLTSCHNEIDER.—but I can tell you I certainly have a number of students that have relied and that has been a reason for 

their success along the way. These have been programs that have 

been very helpful. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you. If I could just stay with DePaul for a 

second, what is your institutional discount rate? 

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Rev HOLTSCHNEIDER. The institution discount rate would be 

somewhere—it depends of course if you are—what you put in that, 

so different schools report that differently, but we would be in the 

mid-20s, somewhere along there. 

Mr. BISHOP. And I hear you correctly that all of your institutional aid is granted on the basis of demonstrated need? That you 

don’t engage in merit-based student financial aid? Is that correct? 

Rev HOLTSCHNEIDER. That is correct although we do have talent 

aid for our school of music for students studying opera, et cetera 

and our school theater. There would be talent aid in those cases, 

but generally, for the institution, we put our aid towards need. 

Mr. BISHOP. Just one more question. 

Mrs. Del Balzo, you made a comment about gainful employment, 

and we all understand how very contentious and controversial 

gainful employment is. 

I guess my question is the federal government spends about $145 

billion a year on student financial aid programs. And what gainful 

employment is, imperfect to be sure, is an effort on the part of the 

federal government to make some assessment of whether that 

money is being properly allocated and whether there is a return on 

investment, if you will. 

So I guess my question to you is if gainful employment isn’t it, 

and by the way, perfectly reasonable position if gainful employment 

isn’t it, what metrics would be best used to determine whether the 

federal government is in fact getting a return on its investments? 

Mrs. DEL BALZO. Yes, thank you, Mr. Bishop. 

There is a metric already in place—the student default measurement that has been in place for many years—and we found this 

one to be a good measurement of student success. 

We also internally measure our student job placement in the 

field, so that is the other metric that we use, but from a federal 

perspective, I think the default rate measurement is a sound one. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you very much. 

Mrs. DEL BALZO. Thank you. 

Chairwoman FOXX.. Thank you, Mr. Bishop. 

Ms. Bonamici, I recognize you for five minutes. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman. 

Thank you to our panel. I want to join Congresswoman Brooks 

and the statement about the importance of retention as well as getting students into the school. 

Later this week or soon I plan to introduce the Pay It Forward 

College Affordability Act. This is a new college financing model. It 

sets up a framework to cover students’ college tuition and mandatory fees upfront and then students, once they graduate, will pay 

back to the fund a percentage of their income for a set period of 

time. 

So current students will draw from the program fund while they 

are in school and then of course contribute into or pay forward once 

they graduate. My home state of Oregon is studying this model. We 

will be hearing from the stakeholders as they examine the proposal 

to address the rising costs of higher education. 

So I want to ask Dr. Anderson and Father Holtschneider, do you 

see potential in this sort of a departure from the traditional way 

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of thinking? And also, can these ideas be explored without some 

state and federal funding to get them going? 

Dr. Anderson? And I do want to save time for another question. 

Mr. ANDERSON. Absolutely, and I would support it. However, I 

would say we would have to make sure that we have very select 

and stringent criteria. For example, we want to make sure that 

time-to-degree—that students and parents understand that if you 

are getting the support upfront—that we expect that time-to-degree 

will be cut off at a certain point. 

We also expect that progression standards be applied, that students have to meet the progression standards implemented by the 

institution to move from semester to semester and that these be 

held to higher expectations. 

Again, that is an incentive-based model. It is an entrepreneurial 

model. And I think it has validity especially at a time in North 

Carolina where we have declining state support and we expect to 

see it—we have had it for four years, we expect to see it for another two years perhaps. So it would be critical to have another option like that. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you. 

Father Holtschneider? 

Rev HOLTSCHNEIDER. I would welcome it as a model to be tested 

because I watch—as I am sure you have seen—students choose career paths based on whether they can pay back the loans that they 

have taken on, and so I have watched students choose not to go 

into teaching. I have watched them choose more highly remunerated law careers than perhaps public service law careers. 

You watch those choices being made all the time and if they 

could do something that created a way to pay back that with respect to that, it might have a nice effect. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you. I appreciate that. That is one of the 

benefits. Thank you very much. 

Recently, the administration identified four key areas to address 

if we are really to increase college opportunities for low-income students. And one of those key areas is to reduce inequalities in college advising and test preparation, which is a welcome change. 

I want to mention a couple of models. Oregon Institute of Technology, Oregon Tech, is partnering with local high schools to provide mentoring and advising and they actually are using a personalized text messaging system to encourage students especially to 

get them involved in STEM. They got a little shout-out at the 

White House recently for that program. 

And also the Oregon Student Access Commission runs a program 

called ASPIRE, which is Access to Student Assistance Programs in 

Reach of Everyone. So they go into school sites, they have about 

145 sites now and about 1,500 trained volunteers. 

It is available to all students and it is a mentoring program that 

works one-on-one with the students to provide them with college 

and career options, admission and financial aid information. 

That is a great program but sustainability and scaling up is really important, so can you discuss the importance of this type of 

mentoring and the potential there to provide students with—and if 

you have any other ideas-to provide them with that one-on-one 

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counseling that they need, especially as K–12 budgets have been 

cut and high school counselors are really overworked. 

I would like to hear maybe from Mrs. Del Balzo and Mr. Garrido 

first and then the others if there is time. 

Mrs. DEL BALZO. Thank you, Ms. Bonamici. 

At the College of Westchester we don’t have a formal program 

besides the Success Coaching in place and that is really because 

each student does have an academic advisor. That is their first 

point, and from there they are referred out to appropriate places 

whether it is financial aid counseling, mental health counseling. 

In addition to that, the success coaching program that is in their 

first semester is there to really help students get through those 

gateway courses that we have all been mentioning this morning 

that are the most critical. 

Ms. BONAMICI. And can you address—we need to get to the students while they are in high school to make sure that they are getting information they need to apply. 

Mrs. DEL BALZO. We have—I am sorry— 

Ms. BONAMICI. I just want to hear from Mr. Garrido. 

Do you have ideas about how to reach students while they are 

in high school to get them all of the information they need? 

Mr. GARRIDO. Peer mentoring could be very, very beneficial. My 

counselor actually connected me to a student who was already in 

a program that I wanted to be in, so that was very beneficial. 

Ms. BONAMICI. I see my time has expired. I would like to hear 

from the others perhaps in writing after. 

Thank you. 

I yield back. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Chairwoman FOXX.. I would now like to recognize Ms. Wilson for 

five minutes. 

Ms. WILSON. Thank you, Madam Chair, for this opportunity. 

I founded a program in Miami-Dade County, the fourth largest 

school district in the nation, 20 years ago, and the purpose of the 

project was to make sure that African-American boys got the opportunity to go to college because too many of them grow up believing 

that they do not deserve the rewards of life. 

For others, they feel beaten down by low expectations and an onslaught of degrading stereotypes. They learn to see themselves as 

society sees them, not as real men, but as caricatures of men whose 

only chance for success lies in violence and crime. 

Many of us will say, ‘‘Well, that is the responsibility of the parents.’’ I agree that parents should be responsible for their children, 

but what happens to the children who have no parents or who have 

not even a grandpa or an uncle to show them the way? 

So the 5,000 Role Models of Excellence Project is a group of men 

from the community, thousands of them, who are trained in how 

to raise and train young boys how to become men. 

Our main goal is to send them to college, so they are on a college 

track from elementary school through middle school through high 

school. It is a huge bonding where all of them wear the same uniform. People know who they are. 

We have a strong partnership with our community college. They 

are trained. They visit the college campuses. They are in school 

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every summer leading up to college, so they understand what college is all about. 

They receive scholarships from our HBCUs, Florida Memorial, 

Bathune-Cookman. We train them and teach them how to apply for 

the Bill Gates Scholarships, STEM scholarships, so all of them are 

ready. 

We work with our state attorney, our public defender, every hospital, every police department, colleges and universities, our jails, 

our prisons, our school counselors, our judges. We even work with 

inmates to help them and parole officers and parole boards. 

We work with all of our philanthropists and the business community, and our community believes when you lift up these boys you 

lift everyone up. As so we engage them in all kinds of activities. 

They have been to Washington, D.C. They go to Tallahassee every 

year, which is our state capital. We expose them to museums and 

to art and to ballet. We take them everywhere. 

Remember, there are 8,000 of them. They start in elementary 

school and they are in the program as a result of either a parent 

or a principal or a counselor recommends them for the program. 

We have a waiting list of course. We have different counties who 

want this program. We have another one in Pinellas County. 

These children are trained through a specific curriculum. We 

teach them how to solve a conflict without resorting to violence. We 

teach them etiquette and leadership training. 

We teach them how to react to the police. There is a common 

thread that there is this tension between African-American boys 

and the police. We teach them how they are to respond if stopped 

by the police. The police officers are all involved in it. 

I want you to see the list. This is a copy of the last class that 

received their scholarships on Martin Luther King’s birthday. They 

will be going to college. This is not all of them. These are the ones 

that our foundation will be sending. 

Many of them will be going by way of the Bill Gates Scholarships, STEM Scholarships, Florida A&M, Bathune-Cookman, and 

of course our community colleges are waiting for them. 

Everyone is begging. How do we get more African-American boys, 

men into teaching? How do we get them into the classrooms? How 

do we get them so that they can help these little boys who are 

going astray stay on the right track? 

I believe my time is up, and I don’t want to— 

Chairwoman FOXX.. Thank you, Ms. Wilson, for talking about 

that extraordinary program. We appreciate it. 

I am now going to use my time to ask some questions of the 

panel members. 

Mrs. Del Balzo, tell us a little bit about how the College of Westchester uses its partnerships with local businesses to improve 

course and program offerings for your students. 

Mrs. DEL BALZO. Thank you, Dr. Foxx. 

We do that in a number of ways. We have been around for such 

a long time in the local community that we have many, many partnerships with companies. They hire our graduates upon graduation. 

We have a very robust internship program with a number of our 

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dents. They come in and they review classwork in particular 

courses that are appropriate, so those are the major ways. 

Chairwoman FOXX.. Thank you. 

Father Holtschneider, can you talk a little bit about the career 

counseling services that DePaul offers to its students? How do you 

coordinate with local businesses to address their workforce needs? 

Rev HOLTSCHNEIDER. Well, a couple of ways. Number one, we are 

surrounded by Chicago. We are in the middle of Chicago. We also, 

as you just heard a moment ago, have been there well over 100 

years. 

We partner very closely. We also turn to our alumni in all of 

those businesses to give students a shot in internships. 

You heard a few moments ago that we are top 10 in the nation 

now for internships. At any given moment, we have 4,000 students 

in an internship, and we use Chicago to do that. 

And that is a powerful way to get them employed. You don’t 

want them to wait until after they graduate to start building the 

Rolodex or to be looking out there when people, they could already 

be building those early. That is first and foremost. 

Secondly, we have all of the traditional counselors to help people 

and assist them as they pull together resumes, practice their skills 

in interviewing, all of the things that no one has actually taught 

them and that they can learn in those things. So there is a great 

deal of mentoring that goes on with the various groups and the 

university at large. 

That is also somewhat college-specific. We create offices that are 

very specialized for some of the colleges to help them in their 

search as well. 

Chairwoman FOXX.. Thank you very much. 

I want to do a quick follow up. What was the impetus for DePaul 

supplementing the TRIO programs with initiatives of your own? 

What brought you— 

Rev HOLTSCHNEIDER. The name St. Vincent de Paul over our 

door. Our brand is poverty. That is what he gave his life to, and 

as an institution we wouldn’t be honoring that name, frankly, if we 

weren’t caring about students who need these opportunities. Frankly, being true to the name over the door. 

But also, frankly, the need of the students who present themselves to us. We have far more students that can be accommodated 

with the allotment we have through the TRIO programs and so we 

try to put our own money towards them. 

Sometimes it is because the TRIO programs are somewhat narrowly construed and we want to be a little bit broader. So, with regard to McNair, McNair is designed so that we can get students 

of color, under-represented students into the classroom as professors, to move them all the way to their Ph.D. 

But it doesn’t enable students from those backgrounds to go into 

medicine or into law, so we created wraparound programs that 

would work beyond the structures of McNair so that we can serve 

a broader number of students. 

Chairwoman FOXX.. Dr. Anderson, I was very appreciative of 

your emphasis on the need for measurable outcomes in these programs. I have known about Fayetteville State’s Upward Bound 

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Special Services Programs since I was an Upward Bound Special 

Services director at Appalachian State. 

Would you talk a little bit about the extensive data analysis initiative that you have and how you use that data to increase student achievement? 

Mr. ANDERSON. Sure. I am an assessment, evidence-based driven 

person, and one of the things that I instituted when I came to the 

institution was that anyone who submits a request for funding at 

the institution must have an accompanying assessment plan, or we 

won’t even read your application. 

So it is pretty understood that if you create the mindset at the 

institution that assessment is important, that measurable outcomes and especially learning outcomes if you are talking about 

learning, are what is critical, people will understand that and in 

and of itself it becomes an incentive-driven model. 

So we have tried to make that university-wide. So in the case of 

support programs, one of the things I like to really mention is that 

it behooves the leadership at HBCUs to identify external revenue 

streams to fund these support programs to underrepresented 

groups when they don’t have state-or grant-related funding, and 

both are declining. 

So we have to go out and find more support for these programs, 

but to get that support, we must say to the programs and to the 

program directors, ‘‘You must demonstrate to us that you really understand how to measure impact and that you must show an assessment plan.’’ 

Chairwoman FOXX.. Thank you very much. Again, I hope your 

message gets through to a lot of other programs. 

Mr. Miller? 

Mr. MILLER. Mrs. Davis? 

Chairwoman FOXX.. Mrs. Davis? 

Mrs. Davis, you are recognized for five minutes. I am sorry. I got 

a different message. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Mr. Miller has graciously— 

Mr. MILLER. [Off mike.] 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Miller. 

Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Mr. Garrido, I want to thank you for being here and for the role 

that you play really in showing everybody what the possibilities 

are. That is very important. 

One of the things that we know though is in California where we 

have the Dream Act as well as Texas is that many students either 

don’t learn about it or even if they do they don’t apply and therefore we have scholarships really going wanting or opportunities 

going wanting I think for students. 

How do you react to that? Did you have a lot of outreach? You 

obviously were a self-starter and you were able to reach out and 

get some of that information, but what do you see is the issue and 

the problem with trying to really connect young people who are eligible with the program? 

Mr. GARRIDO. Unfortunately, we dreamers usually have to live in 

fear, and it is that fear, that fear is the barrier that stops many 

dreamers from actually reaching out to counselors and opening up 

to counselors. 

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I think one of the reasons why I was able to go to college and 

find out about the Texas Dream Act was because I was very open 

with my counselor. She already knew my situation, but she was 

very quiet. She was waiting for me to approach her and explain my 

circumstances back then. 

So I think dissipating myths will be something very important to 

do, something that we really need to focus on if we want more 

dreamers to become success stories. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Are you suggesting that perhaps the education for 

counselors, for teachers, for individuals significant to the students 

somehow suggest to them to be careful about identifying students— 

they obviously need to be able to play a role here. 

Tell us a little bit more about what you think—as a student, perhaps—you were comfortable being approached, but a lot of students 

are not and some of those lines that people worry about crossing. 

Mr. GARRIDO. Perhaps providing additional training for school 

counselors on how to deal with these kinds of circumstances and 

these situations. 

In my honest opinion, lowering down the anger, rhetoric, and 

hateful comments at the national level will help a great deal. It 

will help us feel a little bit more comfortable approaching other 

people about our circumstances because it is something—we didn’t 

choose to violate laws. We got caught up in the situation. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Do you think a new immigration reform bill that addressed some of these concerns would be helpful? Would that make 

a difference in terms of students, and how do you think that would 

make a difference? 

Mr. GARRIDO. Of course. That is the ultimate goal. That is the 

ultimate dream of everybody. Comprehensive immigration reform 

will definitely solve all of these issues and will kick start, in my 

opinion, the economy. 

As the congressional budget office reported back in 2010, if comprehensive immigration reform is passed, especially in the section 

for dreamers, we can contribute significantly to the U.S. economy. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Yes. Thank you very much. 

One of the programs that we are aware of certainly in the San 

Diego area and I think in California is GEAR UP and the opportunity for students to be connected early in the middle school 

years. We have seen a pretty dramatic gain in terms of Latino 

graduation particularly from 31 percent to 58 percent. 

I don’t know if you all want to comment. I think one of the things 

we are aware of is that programs work when people in that community are committed to that program. There may be all kinds of 

gradations of how they do it, but the commitment is what is critical. 

There was a program actually I think it was on 60 Minutes this 

weekend, about students working within companies early—well, 

the preparation for that was strong and then they could move in 

and they could see the relevance. 

Are there other programs? Is GEAR UP one? Are there other programs where you think trying to help young people see that relevance of the work that they are doing and really how tremendously capable they are even if they have gotten a different message? 

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Father? 

Rev HOLTSCHNEIDER. The great insight of course with the TRIO 

programs that grew from their initial three to now eight was that 

money wasn’t enough, that money was key for many students, that 

the Pell was absolutely key, but it wasn’t enough and that there 

had to be interventions along the way. 

That is why it became an across-the-aisle set of agreements over 

the years when it first started to think about what are the interventions that are key in these young people’s lives. 

There are certainly far more students that take advantage of it. 

Certainly there are best practices along the way. There are programs that you can always point to that are perhaps not living 

their potential. 

I think that the initial inspiration is still valid, that throwing 

money at the problem is not enough for many of these young people 

because they are first-generation, because they don’t have the resources around them to succeed, that there needs to be some targeted interventions at moments that make all the difference. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you. My time is up. 

Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Chairwoman FOXX.. Thank you. 

I recognize the chairman of the committee, Mr. Kline, for five 

minutes. 

Mr. KLINE. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

I want to thank the witnesses for being here, for your testimony. 

I apologize. You have noticed, we come and go here, and I am sure 

that sometimes that is upsetting as we have other hearings or perhaps we are on the floor making impassioned speeches and so 

forth. Thank you for being here, for your testimony. 

Father Holtschneider, I want to talk a little bit more about TRIO 

if I could. You have made suggestion that the TRIO regulations be 

simplified as I understand it. How would that improve the student 

support services on campus if we were to do that? 

Rev HOLTSCHNEIDER. I have talked about it very specifically in 

terms of eligibility, to begin. Right now I have staff that are just 

dedicated to determining the eligibility first on family and individual tax status for that program. 

It is in my opinion a duplication of work that could easily already 

be covered by the work that was done, whether they were Pell-eligible in the first place. 

So why couldn’t we be taking the funds that are just being used 

to determine eligibility at each university across the nation for 

each student individually and put that to better use either in the 

support services that are provided to themselves rather than I 

think needless administration? 

Mr. KLINE. We are very much in favor, at least some of us, of 

simplification of rules and regulations and trying to get actual outcomes and not just be caught up in paperwork. We have addressed 

that issue a number of times in different pieces of legislation here, 

so I am interested in trying to make that work better. 

The TRIO program is one of those that has had pretty good bipartisan support. It reaches a student body that needs the help, 

and it has been pretty well-recognized, but as in anything it can 

get sort of complicated. 

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What are the specific services that your TRIO staff is connecting 

students with? What does that mean to you? What are these services? 

Rev HOLTSCHNEIDER. The challenge of course is there are eight 

TRIO programs, one of which is just a training program, so it is 

really seven, and they would have individual answers to your question. 

The ones that are true at my university are the Student Support 

Services program and then McNair. 

McNair, I spoke about a moment ago, is for training people to go 

into and become professors and Ph.D.-level qualified. Student Support Services is much larger. 

That is everything from getting people mentoring because they 

really need someone around them to show them how this all works 

and to encourage them along some of the initial challenges. 

These are programs for selective tutoring when a student is finding something that is a challenge. These are programs that introduce people to college itself and how it works and how you succeed 

and build those kind of short-term training pieces into it. 

There are a number of pieces to help people who might be defeated by the complexity of the college system or some of the challenges for which they weren’t prepared in their schooling to actually succeed when they suddenly have to rise to this level. It is a 

large panoply of different programs. 

Mr. KLINE. You can see the excitement when you go and you 

visit a campus—I haven’t visited yours, but in my district when 

you talk with people who work in the TRIO program and you talk 

to students. We would like to see it succeed. We are going to continue to pursue this idea of making it simpler. 

Madam Chair, I yield back. Thank you. 

Chairwoman FOXX.. Thank you very much. 

I now recognize the ranking member of the committee, Mr. Miller. 

Mr. MILLER. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. Thank 

you for holding this hearing, and for the witnesses, for your time 

and your expertise. 

Reverend Holtschneider, let me thank you very much. Every 

time I meet with people from DePaul it sort of lightens the day up, 

your commitment to students from low-income families is just remarkable and how you have managed to patch together this system 

so that they can complete their education and the support that you 

provide them. I deeply appreciate it. 

Rev HOLTSCHNEIDER. Thank you. 

Mr. MILLER. I want to ask a question, and it may not apply to 

the private university but if you have thoughts on it—I want to 

begin first of all with Alex Garrido. 

Alex, you started at the University of Texas and finished at the 

University of Texas, or did you transfer? 

Mr. GARRIDO. No. I started and finished. 

Mr. MILLER. You started and finished there, but let me ask you, 

one of my concerns has been through this process as we keep 

thinking about the cost of education and how we move students 

through this in the proper sense of time is this question of articulation agreements with in-state systems. 

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I don’t know if it flows over to the private university or not, but 

Fayette is part of the public system, correct? 

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes. 

Mr. MILLER. And so this question, and maybe, Mr. Garrido, you 

know your friends that take classes in community college and then 

find out those classes aren’t transferable, they have got to repeat 

the classes, they have got to borrow more money to repeat the 

classes—I just wondered if you might talk about that experience a 

little bit, but this really applies more—it is easier to do within the 

state system from community college, state college, the university 

system to do this. 

A lot of states don’t do this. Some states have done it very well, 

but it is a real drag on the efficiency—on the efficiency of the use 

of money that families and students are borrowing to go to college. 

Mr. GARRIDO. In my region, the South Texas College, which is 

the community college where I got some credits from, they actually 

go to the high school and they teach the classes in the high school 

in high school classrooms. 

That credit is—they understand then you are not going to South 

Texas College, so they know in advance that those classes are 

going to be transferred to the University of Texas-Pan American, 

which is the only big University in that particular region. 

I guess that partnership really helps, but I definitely see an issue 

if that partnership is broken or it is not that solid. Of course that 

will be a huge issue with transferring credit hours and all that. 

Mr. MILLER. Dr. Anderson? 

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes. North Carolina has a significant number of 

articulation agreements. The UNC system with the community college system, and for us it has been an absolute blessing. It has 

helped increase our enrollment obviously, but of the two highest 

categories of graduating students are early college high students 

and students who have transferred from community colleges with 

associate degrees. Those who transfer without associates don’t 

get— 

Mr. MILLER. They have completed their units for an A.A. degree. 

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes, so they must have associate degrees. But 

what has happened as a result of the articulation agreement is faculty from both groups, from community colleges and from our institution, talk about what is being taught at the community college 

so that the students will then be prepared when they come to us. 

We have recently gotten funding from a community foundation 

to support scholarships for students who are in the articulation 

agreement to come so that their education will be relatively debtfree when they get to us. 

So it has allowed us as an institution to think very broadly about 

the transfer of population, their success rate, their high persistence, et cetera, and if you really want to look for a true example 

of a return on investment, look at North Carolina’s articulation 

agreements. 

Mr. MILLER. Thank you. 

Reverend Holtschneider? 

Rev HOLTSCHNEIDER. This actually is possible for the privates, as 

well. Our transfer population is the same size as our freshman 

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class each year. That is not by accident, we have well north of 100 

of those agreements with different community colleges. 

We have also learned that we can create partnerships with community colleges that if they agree to abide by our standards for 

their courses we will accept them the same day, so the students are 

double enrolled in both institutions and we give them advisors so 

that they can be advised on what courses will transfer from the 

very, very beginning. 

This is also getting easier with technology. Illinois has a spectacular website that they put together several years ago where a student can simply type in what they have taken at the local community college, where they want to transfer, what degree they want, 

and instantly the computer will tell you what you have left to take. 

And private universities like ours and others can be part of that 

if we choose. 

It is a wonderful tool that is making this much easier for students. 

Mr. MILLER. Thank you. 

Thank you also for mentioning the McNair program. I have had 

the opportunity to visit with residents in my district who come 

from the most difficult, dangerous neighborhoods in the state who 

graduated and brought their Ph.Ds back to work in our veterans 

hospitals, to work in our high schools. It is really a very exciting 

program for the young people. 

Thank you. 

Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Chairwoman FOXX.. Thank you very much, Mr. Miller. 

Mr. Messer, you are recognized for five minutes. 

Mr. MESSER. Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. 

Thank you for your testimony on this very important topic. Our 

nation’s Declaration of Independence declared that we are all endowed by our Creator with, among inalienable rights, the right to 

pursue our happiness. 

In modern life, a quality education is the key to having the opportunity to do that. I think it is important to point out in a hearing such as this that our modern federal financial aid system is one 

of the great success stories of the modern federal government, that 

it was a system based on providing access to students and providing access to higher education in a way that wasn’t available before, and by that measure, it has been wildly successful. 

Of course, in modern life, or in today’s world even different than 

the world just a few decades ago, you need more than just a little 

bit of college to do better economically. It used to be several decades ago if you went to college even for half a year or a year you 

were actuarially better off. In today’s world, unless you graduate 

with a degree and a marketable skill that works in a modern economy, you are not better off. 

Of course, that is even more complicated by the fact—with the 

rising cost of school, students may leave school without a degree 

and with tens of thousands of dollars of debt and therefore be even 

worse off. 

So while these programs are important and we all want to share 

the goal of living in an America where anyone who wants to pursue 

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75 

an education, a quality education, has that opportunity, the results 

matter, too. 

And I would like to start with Dr. Anderson and invite others on 

the panel to share with me. The question I have is this: understanding that it matters that we get kids to completion, do you 

have any thoughts or ideas for holding schools more accountable for 

the federal dollars they receive to educate low-income and first-generation students? 

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes. I would like to see the introduction perhaps 

of some new metrics that could be used both in the selection criteria and in terms of whether or not students—schools would be eligible. 

For example, if we look at the cost per degree—we have been 

able to reduce the cost per degree. In the North Carolina system— 

it is about $69,000—our peers it is $62,000—for us it is about 

$59,000. 

So showing that you can implement an efficiency such as that, 

the number of FTEs per 100 students, which is an efficiency metric. How are students doing relative to that? 

If we select a few criteria that I think are good examples of moving students through the pipeline, that your programs are working, 

et cetera and we add those, I think we would be much better off 

in terms. 

Mr. MESSER. Yes, I appreciate that. I probably ought to add I am 

a product of Perkins loans and Pell loans and student loans—I 

mean Perkins grants, and Pell Grants and student loans. I 

wouldn’t have been able to go to college without them, so I recognize how important these programs are. 

I think the key is we need to make sure that this money is well 

spent and we are actually providing better opportunities. 

Would anybody else comment on that topic? No? 

The second thing that I would ask, and Mrs. Del Balzo—I want 

to make sure that I pronounce it correctly, pardon me—I am intrigued by your success coaching program. Could you explain in 

more detail the role a coach plays, how he or she helps flag students who may be struggling, connects those students with support 

services? 

Mrs. DEL BALZO. Thank you, Mr. Messer. Yes, it is an interesting 

program. Part of it is ours, and part of it is some software and particular coursework that you follow through. 

Students are able to log on to their student account that is sensitive just to them, password-protected, and weekly they take their 

own temperature—emotionally, resilience-based questions, and 

their coach has access to those answers. So the coach tracks them 

weekly through their whole first semester and they are able to 

speak with the student to refer them appropriately to academic 

counselors or to a mental health counselor or financial aid counselor or for tutoring at the learning center, and really helps them 

get through that first semester, which is so critical to student success. 

Mr. MESSER. Well, thank you all again. Thanks for your hard 

work. Obviously a critical issue for our country. I think you have 

both addressed one of the most—one of the biggest challenges we 

face, which is in a world of scarce resources we have got to find 

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answers that aren’t always just more money but how can we spend 

that money better. 

So thank you all very much. 

I yield back. 

Chairwoman FOXX.. Thank you. 

Mr. Tierney, you are recognized for five minutes. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I yield my time 

to the ranking member, Mr. Hinojosa. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Thank you, Congressman Tierney. 

I think that this has been very informative and I want to ask a 

question. I saw in California in the University of California system 

and I also saw in Arizona State University a parental involvement 

training program— 

Rev HOLTSCHNEIDER. I am sorry? 

Mr. HINOJOSA. A parental involvement training program which 

invited—these were by universities now—they invited the parents 

to go drop off the children at school and then come over to their 

campus. And two hours a week they would receive training that 

gave them so much information on how to follow their children’s 

education program through elementary school, junior high, and get 

them to take courses that would make them college ready. 

It leads to an actual graduation ceremony with cap and gown so 

that the children can see their parents graduating from college. It 

is very innovative. But the reason that I am interested in this program if any one of Anderson, Del Balzo, or Holtschneider, if you 

all have these programs or thinking of starting them the importance because we see that where ever there is parental involvement 

with their children in elementary school and through high school 

that those are the students that are for sure going to enroll in a 

university and graduate. So I am interested in hearing if any of 

you have such a program. 

I will start with you, Doctor—Father. 

Rev HOLTSCHNEIDER. This is the first I am hearing of that exact 

model and I am going to look at it when we finish today. However, 

what we do have is, as part of our orientation, we have combined 

and separate orientations for students and their parents where we 

bring many of those topics to the fore. And we have also learned 

to create an online community of all of our parents that we monitor 

daily that parents can ask questions, parents can be fed ways that 

they can support their students. 

They can be fed ways that they can ask key questions to find out 

how their children are doing, and that online community has 

served us pretty well the past several years. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Thank you. 

Dr. Anderson? 

Mr. ANDERSON. Sure. One of the best models of what you just described is at South Mountain Community College in Arizona and 

that is a program where young Hispanic females began the program, got their mothers involved, and just as you said, the mothers 

in turn graduated. It is one that I hold up as a high-impact program. 

One of the difficulties for us in terms of doing that—I mentioned 

earlier that we go to great lengths to get parents involved in financial aid counseling, but one of the great difficulties is that the parCEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

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ents’ work schedules often prohibits them from participating in 

such a program. Many have two jobs, in other words. 

So for us to do that, to draw them in, it would probably be best 

to do it online and have a very strong parental online program, but 

we don’t have the dollars to finance that because, as I mentioned 

earlier, some of the money that could be used for distance education that is given to the predominantly black institutions, to 

PBIs, was taken out of the 2008 reauthorization Act, and HBCUs 

don’t get it. 

If I had that money, I would start the program next week. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. You may want to take a look at Arizona State 

University where the program was started 6 years ago by former 

ambassador, Raul Yzaguirre, who at one time was the administrator, the CEO of National Council of La Raza. 

When he stepped down from that position he started that program, and in the first 6 years they graduated 16,000 parents. You 

may want to look at that. 

Mrs. Del Balzo? 

Mrs. DEL BALZO. I am taking notes because it is so inspirational 

to hear 16,000 parents in the first year. 

What we do currently, we visit a lot of Parents Nights at high 

schools. We invite parents to come in. We really do want parents 

to be very, very involved with their children’s decision-making process and make them very aware of what is available out in their 

high schools where we partner. 

As far as parents themselves, we have a lot of parents who are 

graduates and they bring back their kids to come to the College of 

Westchester. We also have parent orientation. We always have parents involved with any financial aid counseling, especially with the 

younger students. 

We also encourage younger students to sign a release form so 

they can have their parents get regular information if it is necessary, and we are in development with an ESL program right now 

for the local community because many, many of our local community are Latino. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Madam Chair, I would like to ask Mr. Garrido, 

and I don’t think it will take a more than a minute—can you give 

me another moment? 

Chairwoman FOXX.. Go ahead. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Thank you. 

Mr. Garrido, you spoke about parents not thinking that it was 

important that you go to college. Do you think that a parental program like the one that we are discussing now would be helpful in 

our region of South Texas? 

Mr. GARRIDO. Of course. Of course we need to educate the parents about the importance of their offspring attending college. It is 

essential that they understand that it is important and to get involved actively getting a degree and actively trying to improve 

their lives. I think then they will set an example and it could 

strengthen the community. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Thank you. 

Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Chairwoman FOXX.. You are welcome. 

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I want to thank our distinguished panel of witnesses for taking 

the time to testify before the subcommittee today. I think you could 

tell by the questions there is a great deal of interest in the programs that you all are operating and in the dedication that you 

have to serving the students that you serve, and so we appreciate 

it very much. 

Mr. Hinojosa, do you have closing remarks? 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Yes, thank you. 

I echo the remarks of the chairwoman. And I would like to also 

thank you, each one of you, as distinguished panelists to be witnesses and for joining us today and for sharing your expertise on 

these important issues. 

I especially want to thank Alex because you are one of the youngest panelists we have ever had here before our panel, before our 

committee, and we thank you for your courage and for sharing your 

personal story with this education committee. 

As ranking member, I strongly believe that our nation has a 

moral obligation to educate and prepare all students for good family-sustaining jobs and careers. 

As Congress considers the reauthorization of Higher Ed, I look 

forward to working with my colleagues on this committee to eliminate barriers for low-income, first-generation students, and for the 

nation’s dreamers. 

Thank you. I yield back. 

Chairwoman FOXX.. Thank you, Mr. Hinojosa. 

I appreciate very much again the emphasis that has been placed 

here on metrics and measurable outcomes. I think again that there 

have been lots of good intentions with TRIO programs, and a lot 

of other government programs that are out there that simply don’t 

meet the good intentions that are set out for them because we don’t 

do a sufficient job of designing metrics and pointing to what works 

and what doesn’t work. And in that way, we shortchange the people we are attempting to help. 

I think that is a real tragedy. I think the tragedy is going to be 

worse and worse in the future as funds become more and more 

scarce, so I think that it is up to us, as Mr. Bishop said, to make 

sure that the hard-working taxpayers of this country get a good return on their investment. 

Our country has always been a country that wants to give people 

a hand up and that is what I have always thought of the TRIO programs as doing. I am a former TRIO director myself. I was very 

committed to the programs when I worked in the programs and 

still committed to them, but I do think we need to show results. 

So I very much appreciate the emphasis that has been put on that 

today. 

Again, another comment that was made, and I can’t remember 

who said it, money is not enough. I think we have also always seen 

that. You have to have the commitment from the people running 

these programs to see that there is some success, and you have to 

believe in the students and make sure that they can see a vision 

for where they can go. 

Before I adjourn the hearing, I want to note that in addition to 

excellent institutional initiatives to better support low-income or 

first-generation students, the higher education community has also 

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been exploring proposals to strengthen federal efforts to help disadvantaged students access and complete a postsecondary education. 

At a Senate hearing just last week, Ron Haskins, a senior fellow 

and co-director of the Center on Children and Families and Budgeting for National Priorities Project, discussed opportunities to 

strengthen TRIO program evaluations and improve program efficiency. 

I am submitting Mr. Haskins’ remarks and his recent report for 

the record and hope we can discuss his ideas further as we move 

forward with crafting legislation to reauthorize of the Higher Education Act. 

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[Additional Submission by Mr. Polis follow:] 

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Chairwoman FOXX.. There being no further business, this subcommittee stands adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:47 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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