Miller-Meeks Questions Witnesses at Hearing on Student Loans and Higher Education
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Today, April 28th, 2021, Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-02) questioned witnesses at a House Education and Labor Committee hearing titled “Building Back Better: Investing in Improving Schools, Creating Jobs, and Strengthening Families and our Economy”.
Click here to watch Miller-Meeks’ questions
Witnesses at yesterday’s hearing were:
- Mr. Rasheed Malik, M.P.P., Senior Policy Analyst, Early Childhood Policy Center for American Progress
- Mr. Bob Lanter, Executive Director, California Workforce Association
- Mr. Neal McCluskey, Ph.D., Director, Center for Education, Freedom Cato Institute
- Mr. Brian Riedl, Senior Fellow in Budget, Tax, and Economics at the Manhattan Institute.
- Mr. Mark Mitsui, President, Portland Community College
- Ms. Mary W. Filardo, Founder and Executive Director, 21st Century School Fund
Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks: Thank you so much, Chairman Scott, Ranking Member Foxx, and to all of our witnesses. I think it is vastly interesting listening to this topic of conversation. I am from a family of eight children, neither of my parents were college-educated. And so, I find it interesting that listening to this discussion, my parents and siblings would not be trained teachers and would not have been able to somehow produce a child that's the first-generation college graduate and the only one in their family to ever go to go to medical school and graduate.
So, I think we should be cautious on what we consider to be trained and adequate childcare, because there are millions of parents out there with no college education and no training, who raise phenomenal children, children who have done amazing things to put men on the moon, develop airplanes, develop educational systems, and help start businesses that are Fortune 500 companies, all from very little resources. And because of that, that is the genesis of my question.
There has been so much I think, especially in K through 12. And in our society that really is funneling students towards a bachelor arts degree programs, and that for many, it is their sole focus. But there are others of us who advocate for a variety of post-secondary options for students. Mr. McCluskey, in your written testimony you write in 1960, only 7.7% of Americans 25 years and older had a bachelor's degree or higher. In 2019, the number was 36%. The important question is whether this was a net gain for society. And if you can very briefly elaborate on what you mean by whether this is a net gain for society?
Mr. Neal McCluskey:Sure, so we often talk about education, and the shorthand for are we getting more education is do we have more degrees? Do we have more attainment, but what we really want to know is people getting more skills and knowledge that are of value to them and in the economy? And that is why, unfortunately, in higher ed, we don't have a lot of standardized tests. But we do have to we had, again, the National Assessment of Adult Literacy in 1992, to 2003. And then more recently, we have the PIAAC.
Both of them had two administrations. And you could see that the literacy levels, this is prose literacy, you know, can you read a newspaper article? There was document literacy, can you read a tax form and understand it, and there was also sort of whether you were literate in math, you know, whether you were numerous. And what we saw was prose and document literacy have been dropping consistently as we've increased credentials.
The sort of good news is we have just stayed sort of flat when it comes to numeracy. But what this strongly suggests is that we are not actually creating more knowledge, more skills, we're creating more pieces of paper called diplomas. And that is not what we should be aiming for. And we're doing it for a lot more money for each one of those deployments.
MMM:Thank you so much. And Mr. Riedl, I believe incentives matter. And as a State Senator, we often address this when we were looking at health care professions. And when I would meet with colleges, we've talked to them, you know, we can do other loan programs, we can do scholarships, but what are you doing to lower prices?
So, Congress, I think, well-intended, has wanted to make college accessible and affordable. That was the point of government-backed student loans, and now direct federal student loans. While this is an admirable policy goal, colleges and universities were able to increase their prices, because students had easy access to credit and, in essence, a guaranteed payment program. So, we would cover that higher balance. So, this, in turn, created more risk of going to college, more risk of indebtedness. And I think if you could just address that in the brief time I have left to me, I would appreciate it. Thank you.
Mr. Brian Riedl:That's a great question. I mean, it makes sense theoretically. Colleges will charge as much as their target students are willing to pay. And as their financial resources rise with student aid, colleges will capture that aid. We see the same thing happened in healthcare. Since 1978. The price of college tuition and fees has increased 1335 cents to CPI inflation of 293%. So, it's grown four times faster than inflation. And there is a link.
The New York Federal Reserve confirmed a few years ago that each dollar in subsidized student loans brings a 60-cent rise in sticker price tuition, which even goes to the people who don't get the loans. So, you give loans to one group and another group gets higher tuition as well. Even Pell Grants raise tuition by 37 cents on the dollar. And so, we have to be careful we mean well when we do increase student aid, but if the colleges are just going to raise tuition to capture it, we're not really helping with affordability.
MMM:Thank you so much. I yield back my time, Chair.
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