"Runaway College Spending Meets the Working Families Tax Cuts"

[Gavel sounds.] The Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development will come to order. I note that a quorum is present and without objection, the chair is authorized to call recess at any time. Today we acknowledge a simple fact: college has gotten too expensive. Since 1970, college tuition has increased fivefold, far outpacing the rate of inflation. Meanwhile, colleges have increased their administrative costs, spending more on non-instructional personnel, athletics, and non-academic programs that are not at the core of the institution's educational mission. Recent college enrollment surveys and federal data show that a long-run trend is continuing. Colleges are on track to spend more per student on administrative costs than on teaching. It is no surprise then that Americans have begun to question the value of postsecondary education. Congressional Republicans heard this concern and responded by passing the Working Families Tax Cut, which includes reforms to lower the cost of college. The Working Families Tax Cut simplifies student loan repayment plans from over 50 options down to just two: a fixed mortgage-style plan and a repayment assistance plan that provides targeted relief for borrowers in need. The law will also hold schools accountable for student outcomes with a do-no-harm measure of postgraduate earnings, ensuring that degree programs improve students' financial prospects if they are to continue to receive taxpayer funding. It also places reasonable caps on federal loans for graduate and professional students, ending the days of unlimited borrowing that allowed college tuition to skyrocket. Unfortunately, graduate student loan debt has become a significant driver in the overall student debt. I am proud this committee has taken meaningful action to address the college affordability crisis, but there is more to do. There is still an opportunity for accreditation reform in line with the Department of Education's recent announcement to negotiate rulemaking on this topic. States also have a role to play. Today we will hear about efforts in Utah and Florida to reduce administrative costs, implement performance-based funding systems, reform faculty tenure and workforce policies, and refocus accreditation on student outcomes. I am confident that restoring market incentives to higher education will result in a better price for students. Every student should feel empowered to pursue an education that fits their goal and know that the degree they choose is going to be worth the cost. With that, I yield to the ranking member.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to our witnesses for being here today. At this committee's first Higher Education and Workforce hearing of the year, I am glad we are starting by focusing on what is top of mind for Americans across this country: rising costs. And let me start with the facts. A college degree remains the surest path to the American dream. It is still the most reliable engine of economic mobility we have. College graduates earn more, experience lower unemployment rates, and are better positioned to support their families and contribute to their communities. The basic truth has not changed. What has changed dramatically, though, is the lack of state and federal investment in higher education. And that lack of investment has shifted the cost onto students and their families. From 1995 to 2025, the average published tuition and fees at colleges and universities have risen sharply, far outpacing wages, inflation, and household income. This is not a perception problem. It is a real problem for Americans in search of a better life. Families are being asked to pay more each year for the same credential, even as they are already stretched thin trying to survive. We all agree there is a college affordability crisis in this country. Where we disagree is on the solution. And we also need to be honest about what is and is not driving rising college costs. My Republican colleagues will say that this is about administrative bloat, but the facts do not support that claim. Federal data show that students still far outnumber staff at colleges and universities, including at highly selective institutions. Faculty make up a significant share of employees, and many schools appear staff-heavy only because they operate hospitals, research centers, and public service enterprises that serve communities far beyond their enrolled students. When those roles are properly accounted for, the idea that colleges are overrun by administrators simply does not hold up. Rising college costs are not driven by too many advisors, financial aid counselors, or student support staff. They are driven by decades of public disinvestment that have shifted costs onto students while basic expenses like housing and food and transportation continue to rise. Cutting staff does not make college more affordable. It makes it harder for students to stay enrolled and finish their degrees. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle increasingly argue that higher education is a luxury, that students, particularly low-income and first-generation students, simply should not pursue if they cannot afford it. Instead, they are told to go learn a trade or to attend lower-quality institutions with poor student outcomes, including for-profit schools with troubling track records. So let me be clear: the solution to the college affordability crisis cannot be that quality higher education is reserved only for the wealthy. We cannot accept a system where opportunity depends on zip code, family income, or whether your parents went to college. Telling students to lower their aspirations is not a serious policy response. It is a failure of leadership. And the affordability crisis does not exist in a vacuum. Americans are struggling to afford basic necessities, including groceries and housing, childcare, utilities, and healthcare. These pressures directly affect students' ability to enroll, persist, and graduate. Even when students arrive on campus, a recent survey found three in five experience food or housing insecurity. So when we factor in access to transportation, childcare, technology, and mental and physical healthcare, the number of students facing basic needs insecurity jumps to three in four. Yet instead of addressing these realities, recent policy choices have made them worse. Republicans continue to make cuts to food assistance, slash Medicaid, contribute to rising utility costs, and freeze childcare funding, which all undermine economic security and, by extension, college access. And we also need to be honest about what is driving rising college costs. Republicans today will argue that colleges should lower costs by simply not investing in high-quality faculty and administrators like career counselors and academic advisors who help students reach the finish line. The spending is not the root cause of high tuition. In addition to stagnated state and federal investments, unchecked privatization and for-profit colleges have targeted low-income students, often leaving them with high debt and low-value credentials. Students from the lowest income are twice as likely to enroll in for-profit colleges, and too often they pay the highest prices. And finally, we cannot ignore the elephant in the room: the Republicans' big ugly law, which makes this crisis worse. Changes to Pell Grants, new borrowing limits, and a restructured repayment system narrow the pathways to higher education, particularly for underserved communities. These reforms risk turning college into an expensive privilege rather than a public good. This hearing is about one simple question: do we believe college should be accessible to everyone willing to work for it, or only to those who can afford it? Mr. Chairman, I look forward to our discussion today. Thank you, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Thank you. Pursuant to committee rule 8(c), all members who wish to insert written statements into the record may do so by submitting them to the committee clerk electronically in Microsoft Word format by 5:00 PM, 14 days after this hearing. And without objection, the hearing record will remain open 14 days to allow such statements and other material noted during this hearing to be submitted for the official hearing record. I will now turn to introduce our four distinguished witnesses. Our first witness is Dr. Beth Akers, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute from Washington, DC. Second witness is a fellow Utahn, Mr. Geoffrey Landward, the Commissioner of the Utah System of Higher Education from Salt Lake City, Utah. My third witness is Dr. Julie Margetta Morgan, president of The Century Foundation from New York City. Thank you. And the fourth witness is Mr. Raymond Rodrigues, the Chancellor of the State University System of Florida from Tallahassee, Florida. I thank the witnesses for being here today and look forward to your testimony. Pursuant to committee rules, I would ask that each of you limit your oral presentation to a three-minute summary of your written statement. As committee members have many questions for you, the clock will count down from three minutes. However, pursuant to committee rule 8(d) and committee practice, we will not cut off your testimony until you reach the five-minute mark. I would also like to remind the witnesses to be aware of your responsibility to provide accurate information to the subcommittee. I first want to recognize Dr. Akers for your testimony.

Thank you and good morning, Chairman Owens, Ranking Member Adams, and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. Higher education and workforce policy affect nearly every American family, and getting this policy right matters enormously for students and taxpayers alike. I am an economist who studies how federal higher education policy affects students and institutions. My remarks today will focus on two points: why reform has been necessary and what Congress should do next. Higher education still pays off on average, but outcomes vary enormously across programs. Many programs deliver strong economic mobility, while others leave students with debt and little improvement in earnings. For too long, federal policy subsidized enrollment without paying enough attention to results. Students often enroll without clear information about costs and outcomes, and taxpayers carry growing risk when programs consistently fail to deliver value. The recent reconciliation legislation marked an important shift by tying access to federal loans more closely to student outcomes. It is hard to overstate how important this innovation was for those of us who have been following this field for a long time. It established a simple principle: programs that routinely leave students financially worse off should not continue receiving federal loan dollars. The legislation also introduced new limits on graduate student borrowing. These limits operate as a consumer protection, helping prevent students from taking on debt that exceeds the economic value of their degree, while also restoring some price discipline in graduate education. But the work is not finished. I hope that Congress continues this work to strengthen accountability by paying greater attention to price. Programs that deliver similar earnings at much lower cost provide better value to students and taxpayers and should be recognized as such by policy. Congress should also continue improving transparency so students have clear, usable information before enrolling and before borrowing. That includes ensuring students receive standardized, easy-to-understand financial aid offers and have access to program-level information on cost, completion rates, post-enrollment earnings, so they can make informed decisions before taking on debt. The question before Congress is whether federal policy will continue rewarding enrollment alone or increasingly reward results that matter to students and taxpayers. The reconciliation legislation showed meaningful progress in that direction. Building on that progress can help ensure postsecondary education consistently delivers on its promise. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

Thank you. I now recognize Mr. Landward for your testimony.

Thank you, Chairman Owens, Ranking Member Adams, members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I appear before you on behalf of the Utah Board of Higher Education to discuss one of our most urgent priorities in Utah: keeping higher education affordable and accessible while ensuring it delivers real value to students, taxpayers, and the workforce. Higher education remains essential to economic mobility, civic life, and national competitiveness. Yet for too many families, the rising cost of college has created the perception that higher education is out of reach. Over the past 50 years, tuition and fees at public four-year institutions have risen nearly three times faster than inflation. If left unaddressed, this trend threatens access, public trust, and long-term workforce development. The causes of rising costs are complex. They include macroeconomic forces such as increased demand for credentials in a knowledge-based economy, the rising cost of labor-intensive services. They also include institutional pressures, mission creep, regulatory burden, duplication of programs, expanded student services, and intense competition for enrollment. No single factor explains the problem, and no single solution will fix it. In Utah, we believe affordability requires strong governance, disciplined decision-making, and a relentless focus on student value. First, we are redesigning our system of higher education to fully capture the benefits of systemness. A recent performance audit confirmed that institutions too often act independently, duplicate programs, and compete rather than collaborate. Our response is a multi-year system redesign built around regional higher education centers with specialized institutional roles, shared services, and coordinated academic pathways. This approach emphasizes collaboration over competition, reduces duplication, and expands access without unnecessary cost growth. Second, Utah has implemented some of the most transparent and disciplined tuition and fee policies in the country. Institutions are required to justify every proposed increase through public hearings, clear cost disclosures, and board-level scrutiny. As a result, Utah's public institutions already have among the lowest tuition in the nation, and real tuition levels have declined over the past three years. Third, we are aligning funding with value through strategic reinvestment. Under a recent state law, institutions were required to reallocate $60 million statewide towards high-value workforce-aligned programs. Early results show significant reinvestment in healthcare, engineering, computer science, and technical education while reducing administrative costs and strengthening instruction. Utah's outcomes reflect this approach. We have the lowest average student loan debt in the nation and one of the lowest rates of students graduating with debt. This is driven by low tuition, strong concurrent enrollment, high-value technical pathways, and a culture that emphasizes responsible investment. Finally, federal policy matters. Financial aid reform, transparent value reporting, accountability for program outcomes, and expanded Pell eligibility for short-term credentials all support affordability when aligned with student return on investment. Affordability is not about lowering quality. It is about delivering education that is efficient, accountable, and worth the investment. Utah's experience shows that strong governance and clear incentives can bend the cost curve while expanding opportunity. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

Thank you. Now I'd like to recognize Dr. Morgan for your testimony.

Thank you. Good morning, Chairman Owens, Ranking Member Adams, and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify at this hearing. The cost of college is simply too high for most families to afford. Tuition and fees for undergraduates this past year were almost $12,000 for an in-state public college student, $4,000 for a community college student, and more than $43,000 for a private nonprofit, and that's not even including room and board, books, and other expenses. For millions of students, the only option to afford an education is to take on mountains of debt. Total federal student loan debt stands at nearly $1.7 trillion, with the average federal student loan burden just under $40,000. Under the Trump administration's watch, an increasing number of borrowers have struggled to repay their loans, with an astounding one out of every four borrowers currently delinquent on their loan. Unfortunately, the prospect of higher education has become a catch-22 for families across the country. Making a safe, secure living too often requires education after high school, but getting that degree requires taking on enormous debt and financial risk that could leave them worse off. The Century Foundation's own research found that people without a college credential are living in a different, harsher economy. They're twice as likely as their college-educated counterparts to skip meals or medication due to cost, twice as likely to report being late on their bills, and far more likely to turn to debt to cover their expenses. Higher education was expensive before Donald Trump came into office, but actions taken by his administration and by Congress have made the situation far worse. First and foremost, in the last year, the Trump administration has driven up daily costs, from utilities to healthcare to school supplies, so much so that Americans are forced to make impossible tradeoffs between putting food on the table, keeping their lights on, and getting the medical care that they need and deserve. I know the president has called the issue of affordability a hoax, but for countless families across the country, this pain is real. Congress's decision to gut Medicaid and SNAP to pay for massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans only deepened that pain, as did its decision to stand by and watch health insurance costs skyrocket. Now, three in 10 Americans are delaying or skipping medical care due to cost. One in three people are skipping meals due to finances. Millions of Americans are behind on their utility bills. Nearly 40 percent of working-class people are relying on short-term debt like buy-now-pay-later to cover their bills. Second, HR 1 has created a huge vulnerability for public higher education that is already driving up tuition prices in many states. HR 1's cuts to Medicaid and SNAP are putting immense pressure on state budgets. And as states scramble to fill those gaps, we are already seeing them cut appropriations for public higher education, leading to tuition increases. Several states have slashed higher education funding or raised prices, and unfortunately, I expect we'll see more in the coming year. Third, Congress and the Trump administration have drastically increased the cost of student loans, both for current and future borrowers. HR 1 eliminated income-driven repayment plans, including the SAVE plan, replacing them with a skimpy single plan that puts borrowers at higher risk of default. That change alone will cost many borrowers between $2,800 and $4,800 per year. HR 1 also placed borrowing limits on certain federal loans, creating new and lucrative opportunities for the student loan industry. Major private lenders like Sallie Mae, Navient, and SoFi lobbied for these limits, and they're standing ready to extract profits from students. As SoFi told its investors, their company would be very happy to step in for the government and would absolutely capture that opportunity. Finally, the Trump administration has opened the door to predatory education programs and student loan servicers by taking the cops off the beat, sidelining the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and eliminating the units at Federal Student Aid in charge of enforcement. While there are many actions that Congress can take to undo this damage, I urge you to focus on using the big levers that the federal government has to make real change, not incremental tinkering on the edges or clever programs that make good headlines in trade publications but no difference in family budgets. We need change that families can actually feel, change that makes life more affordable for all Americans. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

Thank you. Last, I'd like to recognize Mr. Rodrigues for your testimony.

Good morning and thank you, Chair Owens. I bring greetings from your hometown of Tallahassee. And also, good morning, Ranking Member Adams and members of the subcommittee. I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge my former colleague in the Florida House, Congressman Randy Fine, who during his time in Tallahassee was always willing to tackle tough issues in education. So I'm pleased to see you're serving on this committee. In October 2025, the Pew Research Center conducted a survey, and in that survey, seven out of 10 Americans responded that they thought higher education was on the wrong track. Eight out of 10 expressed concerns around college affordability. In Florida, our state university system serves 431,000 students over 12 institutions, making it the second largest in the country. For the last 15 years, we have been on a path of reform, and that path has taught us three lessons I'd like to share with the subcommittee today. The first lesson is that change is possible. During the Great Recession from 2008 to 2013, Florida cut its higher education appropriations by 43 percent. That was nearly twice the national average during that time period of 23 percent. During that same five-year period, we raised tuition 86 percent, which was the highest in the country and well above the national average of 39 percent. At 2013, we came out of the Great Recession in Florida and in Florida we did something different. We embraced performance-based funding, which is funding based on successful student outcomes. We knew that that would bring in accountability, and this was our second lesson: is that accountability works. Since we've implemented performance-based funding, we have seen significant student success. Our academic progress rate is up to 90 percent. Our six-year graduation rate is up to 76 percent, number one in the country. Our four-year graduation rate is up to 60 percent, number two in the country. And our post-graduation employment rate is up to 74 percent. The third lesson we learned is that student success can drive affordability. Each year we present the results of our 10 performance-based funding metrics to our legislature and to our governor. And our legislature and governor have taken the progress that we've made and they have continued to invest in our system as a result of that. In-state resident undergraduate tuition in Florida has been frozen since 2013. We now have the lowest resident undergraduate tuition and fees at $6,359, nearly half the national average of $11,950. Important for us is that at the end of spring semester, a student can leave and if they're willing to work full-time during summer, even if it's a minimum wage job, they can earn enough over the summer that before the fall semester begins, they will have earned enough to pay both their fall and spring tuition and fees, making us one of the last systems that you can work your way through. The result of low tuition and fees is that fewer students need student loans. In our most recent data, 80 percent of our Florida resident undergraduates were enrolled with no student loans. Accountability, transparency, and affordability have transformed our system in our pursuit of academic excellence. We continue to reform in other areas as well, such as containing administrative growth, post-tenure review, eliminating indoctrination, and creating transparency tools for families like MyFloridaFuture. In closing, I commend Congress for passing the Working Families Tax Cut Act. For the first time, the federal government has introduced accountability measures around student outcomes. Florida is proof positive that accountability in higher education works, and I look forward to taking your questions.

Thank you. Under committee rule 9, we will now ask questions to witnesses under the five-minute rule. I will recognize myself for five minutes. First of all, I had a chance to go through all your testimonies and I'm very impressed. Thank you so much for taking the time to do that. It's going to add a lot to our conversation and how we move forward. Dr. Akers, in your testimony you mentioned in the past we rewarded participation at whatever cost, going to paraphrase. When moving forward, we're going to reward outcomes that matter to the student, worker, and taxpayer. That's a remarkable way of approaching this. What are your thoughts on the Working Families Tax Cut capping federal student loans for graduate and professional students?

I think this is a tremendously important move for consumer protection. We've been talking for a decade now about student borrowers being victims of this system that does not have any underwriting, that does not help them discern whether debt will be affordable for them to take on. The limits put in place reasonable limits to bring in line the amount that people are borrowing with what they can anticipate to see as a return from those degrees.

Thank you. Mr. Landward, let me just say coming from Utah and also growing up in Tallahassee, keeping up with that, there's a culture that we're seeing in both states as one of collaboration and more importantly keeping the student first, not the institution. So I want to applaud you both for making that happen. We know that confusion about how much college education costs can cause students to make poor decisions about their higher education options and be a major barrier for students considering postgraduate education. How does Utah require institutions of higher education to be transparent about their tuition policies?

Thank you, Chair. In Utah, we feel an obligation because we are so highly supported by the state legislature and because of the investment that the state makes. We have an obligation to ensure not only that we're putting downward pressure on tuition, but those who are reaping the benefits of this investment understand the nature of the investment. And so in Utah, we require first of all all of the institutions to hold public hearings and advertise those hearings with the students on campus in multiple venues to ensure they have an opportunity to come and hear what is the tuition paying for, if there is an increase, what is that increase going to pay for, how is it going to benefit the students, and then take that information and feedback and then make a recommendation to the Board of Higher Education. We take an opportunity to scrutinize all of those disclosures. And we also require them to provide us alternative scenarios. In other words, saying instead of raising tuition what would it look like if we reduce the tuition that you're requesting to this level, or what would it look like at zero? Please give us those scenarios and then to push back on those to ensure that they're uncovering every opportunity to find different ways to pay for the needs for these increases. That kind of public disclosure helps ensure that not only students understand what the tuition is paying for, but also that our institutions understand that they have to justify every increase to ensure that it's going to provide value to those students.

...generation and working students, but that affordability has increasingly been preserved by shifting costs onto students rather than sustained public investment. So can you explain how state funding for public colleges has changed over the last few decades and how those shifts translate directly into higher tuition and fees for students? From a policy perspective, why is sustained state and federal investment in public colleges one of the most effective ways to control costs without sacrificing quality or access?

Absolutely. So I'll just start by saying public colleges and universities are really the backbone of our higher education system. This is where about 70 percent of individuals are going to school, and it's incredibly important to keep them accessible and affordable for all students. Traditionally, state appropriations have been the way that we have done that. So the combined mix of appropriations from state government and grant aid from the federal government have allowed students to attend public colleges at a very affordable rate. However, we've seen over time that when state budgets are squeezed, one of the first things to go is investment in public higher education. And as those state appropriations shrink, tuition goes up. And that's part of why I'm particularly concerned about what we've seen in H.R. 1, which is going to put that kind of pressure on state budgets and increase tuition costs for students.

Thank you, ma'am. The millions of borrowers are struggling with delinquency and default not because they were irresponsible, but because the cost of college and the cost of living outpaces the wages. So what does the evidence show about how student loan default affects borrowers' financial stability, including credit access, housing, and employment? And looking ahead, what policies are most effective at preventing default before it happens, and what should Congress be doing now to support borrowers who are already distressed?

Delinquency on student loans has incredible negative effects on people's lives. There's both the punitive effects of the way that we collect student loans through wage garnishment and other measures in the federal student loan program. And there's also the effect of having a defaulted student loan on people's credit reports, which can, of course, impact their ability to get credit. But I think people don't always understand that it also impacts their ability to get a job, to get housing. So this can be really crushing for students and for borrowers. I think when you think about what the federal government can do here, as a former employee at the Department of Education, what I saw was that shift from delinquency to default is really the barrier where we want to focus our attention. If we can keep people in repayment on their student loans, we can keep them afloat and we can keep them out of the default bucket where it's incredibly difficult to pull them back out. So I think this is where income-driven repayment plans really become important.

Thank you. The Century Foundation has played a critical role in documenting and evaluating the chronic underfunding of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. I look forward to seeing that advocacy continue. I had the opportunity to work closely with Denise Smith during the HBCU Brain Trust last semester. I've taught 40 years on an HBCU campus. I went to a public university myself. But based on that work, why have public HBCUs continued to receive unequal treatment by their states even after decades of legal settlements and federal attention, and how does that underinvestment show up for students in concrete ways?

I really want to thank you for your advocacy on this issue. It's an issue that has been incredibly important to The Century Foundation because it's important to people in this country and to creating equitable access not just to higher education but to jobs. We know that HBCUs provide incredible support for Black students around the country and also have experienced unequal funding. And so it's incredibly important that we focus in on equalizing the funding for those schools so that students can experience the same outcomes as their peers.

So what should Congress expect from states and institutions to ensure that HBCU funding gaps are actually closed, not just acknowledged? And how can organizations like yours continue to play a role in holding systems accountable for delivering on that promise?

I think we need to persistently put the data in front of our leaders, not only at the federal level but at the state level, to make sure that they can't walk away from these gaps that they've created and that they've allowed to foster over decades. To me, that kind of advocacy is really important from an organization like Century, and I appreciate the advocacy that we've had from you and others in terms of the impact that that has.

Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to put in the record the College Investor article, Administrative Bloat is False.

Without objection.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. I'd now like to recognize the chairman of the full committee, my friend from Michigan, Chairman Walberg.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for having a great panel here today. And panel, thank you for being here. It's great to have a panel that is an actual showcase of what happens when you focus on accountability and responsibility for outcome as opposed to just throwing money at it, as we've done for the past number of years with more government loans, which has exacerbated the cost of college education because there's no limit to what the government can give. The private sector will hold accountable. And so to see states that are focusing on accountability and responsibility for outcome, thank you for having them here. And it's good to see your state represented well from Utah as well as from Florida. Dr. Akers, what do you say to the people who often say, a lot of whining going on out there, even before the one big beautiful bill is in action fully for how we're dealing with student loan issues, but the people who are concerned that graduate student loan limits will impede college access?

Graduate student loan limits are critically important to ensure that people are not continuing to take on amounts of debt that are unaffordable based on what they're likely to earn in the future. There's a lot of concern about different programs, whether professional graduate degree programs have eligibility for different loan limits. It's really important to rewind and come back to the point that the limits on graduate and professional loans altogether, the objective is to make sure that people are not able to borrow more than is going to be affordable for them to pay in the future. Yes, giving people piles of money with unlimited access to credit will create more access, but the question is access to what? I think it's critically important that we're ensuring access to high-quality programs, to programs that can deliver an economic return that's on par with the amount that people are able to borrow.

Thank you. I agree. Mr. Landward, good to see you here today. Missed seeing you in Utah, in Salt Lake City at the great roundtable that our chairman had out there, but you were well represented and thank you for that. We've heard concerns that reforms in the Working Families Tax Cuts threaten college access. But don't skyrocketing college costs also make college unattainable for many students?

Thank you for the question. The answer is yes. Ultimately, in the Utah system of higher education and as prioritized by the state legislature, affordability is one of the key priorities that we have. It's no secret, any study about college-going rates and even college retention, the cost of going to college and staying in college is one of the primary barriers to access and to completion. And we simply have to recognize that as a system of higher education, we have an obligation to the students who enroll in our institutions to ensure that they are affordable. And so when we look at whatever reforms are coming either from the federal government or at a state level, the intent here is that we want students to go and we want them to stay and we want them to graduate. And we'd like them to graduate in a way where they actually have a return on that investment, meaning that they're going to earn more than what they had to put in. The data shows that if they can get degrees that have that kind of return, it is so worth the investment that they're making. And so we have to make sure that we're removing all of those barriers to affordability.

And it encourages them for continuing education in the future as they develop beyond the job that they're in as they start. So thank you. Mr. Rodrigues, boy, it's exciting to hear that a student in Florida, many students at least, can work during the summer and pay for their school bill. Kind of hearkens back to my days of maybe working two, three jobs in a summer, but still paying for my education. How did Florida address administrative bloat while holding institutions of higher education to high standards of operational efficiency?

That's a great question. What we've seen over the last four decades is that the growth of administration has averaged around 3.9 percent annually. In Florida, we require each university when they submit their legislative budget request, which is what they give the legislature asking for appropriations, to include on that request their number of administrators, FTE equivalent, and their five-year trend. So they know when they go to the legislature to ask for funding, that legislature has that top of mind when they're considering that appropriation request. What we have found is over the last 10 years, our appropriations have grown a total of 2 percent in administration. I'm sorry, our administration has grown a total of 2 percent over the last 10 years.

Wow. Wow. Mr. Chairman, could I, without objection, enter into the hearing record a report from the American Enterprise Institute, the Education Council, and the Century Foundation, which recommends, and I quote, "reasonable loan limits"? That's exactly what we did in the Working Families Tax Cuts.

Without objection. Okay. I'd now like to recognize my good friend from California, Mr. Takano.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the witnesses for being here. Chairman Walberg, you know, the premise of his line of questioning was that private markets will correct bloat and bring down college costs. With the passage of the Republican budget bill H.R. 1, Republicans laid out their vision for higher education clearly. They believe that college costs will be lowered through privatization, deregulation, and competition in the free market. Dr. Morgan, what do we know about college pricing and student outcomes in the for-profit sector?

Thank you for the question. So we know that college pricing in the for-profit sector is meant to maximize profits for shareholders rather than provide an affordable education for students. And so what we see in the for-profit sector is high prices, high levels of debt for students, and very little spending on instruction. So more often than not, we're seeing students who are getting a very high-priced education that provides very poor outcomes in the labor market and in terms of their student debt repayment.

So in this case, does relying on free market competition-based model effectively lower tuition?

These colleges are not competing on price for students, right? They are competing for access to federal aid dollars. They're competing for access to profits.

And there doesn't seem to be any attention to this particular sector in H.R. 1 or among your counterparts at the table.

No. In fact, you know, H.R. 1 has very little attention to the issue of affordability overall and in fact works in the opposite direction. It's increasing costs on families across the board, which is making it harder for them to afford higher education.

Thank you. Republicans seem to be operating on the theory that an increase in federal financial aid available to students leads to an increase in tuition for all. Dr. Morgan, in which sector of higher education has this theory been shown to be true? Public higher education, private higher education, or in the for-profit sector?

So the studies that I've reviewed have shown that in the for-profit sector, when there is an increase in financial aid, we see a corresponding increase in tuition prices. And that is, I believe, driven by this profit motive. They are looking to suck in as much federal financial aid as they can.

So an increase in financial aid has not been demonstrably shown for increases in public higher ed or in private higher education, but mainly in the for-profit sector.

No, certainly not to the same degree as the for-profit sector. I think the other thing to remember here is that even if federal financial aid were driving up tuition prices, the idea that simply limiting federal aid would somehow bring down tuition prices is a fallacy. What we're seeing is the creation of a gap between federal student loans and tuition prices that families are having to fill by turning to the private market for private student loans.

So H.R. 1 capped how much students could borrow in federal loans, limited student eligibility for Pell Grants, and fully replaced the student loan repayment system with one that is ultimately much more expensive for borrowers. Changes which all increasingly pushed American students toward the private loan market. Dr. Morgan, will the changes made in H.R. 1 safeguard students against defaulting on their loans or exacerbate the risk of default?

They are certainly going to exacerbate the risk of default. I think in particular the dialing back on the income-driven repayment plans available to people to give them a less generous option puts students at risk of default, but also shifting them over to the private market for loans puts many, many students at risk of default. And it puts them at risk of default on a loan that is more predatory than what they would have gotten in the federal system.

So my Republican colleagues say that greater privatization in higher education will protect the American taxpayer from subsidizing student loans. But without corresponding protections for student borrowers and accountability measures, the private markets will have free rein to treat these students like piggy banks. Dr. Morgan, we are accelerating American students toward the brink of a massive default crisis at a breakneck speed. What will a default crisis ultimately cost the American taxpayer?

I can't put an exact figure on it, but I just really want to emphasize that the crisis in defaults and even just in delinquencies isn't just an impact on the individual borrower, it's an impact on the economy as a whole. It inhibits people's job mobility, it inhibits their ability to get housing, and it inhibits their ability to consume, which is what powers our economy altogether. So this is really a crisis that we all need to be paying attention to, and that's happening right under our nose even in the federal student loan program.

I'm afraid to say that my Republican colleagues want to take a victory lap today, but I want to warn all Americans that these policies that they have embedded in H.R. 1 are going to create a default crisis that will leave every American, every American footing the bill. I yield back.

Thank you. I'd now like to recognize my good friend from North Carolina, Mr. Harris.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to all of you on the panel for your testimonies here and your written testimonies that I enjoyed reading. Dr. Akers, every year millions of high school seniors face one of the most significant and difficult decisions of their lives: what comes next after graduation? However, these young adults are all too often led astray when deciding on which college they should attend, what field of study to pursue, or even whether college is necessary at all to achieve their career goals. So I want to just ask you up front, in your view, how is today's higher education system failing high school students as they prepare to make these significant life-altering decisions?

I'd say the primary way in which the system is failing students is that we are not delivering on the promise of opportunity. On average, higher education is delivering opportunity in spades, but there are plenty of programs out there that are allowed or have been allowed to continue to receive funding through federal programs that are consistently delivering students not into good economic opportunity. So I would say the variation that we've seen historically, hopefully which will now be stopped by the implementation of the reconciliation legislation, has been the significant failure for students.

Well, as you noted in your testimony, while a college degree can and often does pay off for many Americans, those outcomes are highly program-specific. And for some students, attending college actually leaves them worse off financially than if they had never enrolled. And you also highlighted what you described as an information gap, I noticed, where students enroll without a clear understanding of the true cost of their degree. So how does this information gap impact students' decision-making, and who would you say are disproportionately harmed by these misguided and irresponsible policies?

In general, I'd say it's the already economically or racially disadvantaged students who are struggling to make the best decisions about college. We've made it really hard for people to make good decisions. The information technically exists. There's a website out there, the collegescorecard.gov. I go there all the time. But American students, especially young high school students or even returning adults, don't know that this is where the information is that they need to make decisions. Secondly, institutions have made it difficult for students to interpret or potential students to interpret the financial aid offers that they give to them in a self-serving manner. We need to make it more clear so that people can make decisions that are in their own best interest.

Well, and I agree. And Congress has the responsibility to hold colleges and universities accountable, which is why in H.R. 1 Republicans placed reasonable limits on how much students can borrow. I will ask you one more. In your expert opinion, how will these reforms not only help rein in rising college costs, but also increase accountability in higher education by ensuring institutions prioritize value over volume when offering degree programs?

For the first time, this legislation puts in place standards that says to an institution, if you are not delivering your graduates, your students, into better economic circumstances than where you started, we do not want you in the federal lending program. That is a tremendous win both for individual students and for taxpayers. Layer on top of that what I think is a really important protection for graduate students. We have struggled to pin down exactly through research the relationship between the availability of credit in student lending programs and prices. But very recently, a set of economists were able to pin down very precisely there has been a tremendous increase in cost of graduate professional programs because of the eligibility for credit that has been largely unconstrained. And so this is going to for the first time put downward pressure on prices of those programs, which really works to serve students better because they get a better deal, they get those returns at a lower cost, and also protects taxpayers from the downside of having to repay these loans.

I've only got a minute left. And Mr. Landward and Mr. Rodrigues, I will say I was greatly encouraged by the steps your respective states have taken to ensure institutions of higher education remain accountable to both students and taxpayers. So since I only have about 45 seconds left, Mr. Landward, Utah requires public institutions to submit three-year plans to evaluate your programs and administrative costs. How has this planning requirement changed decision-making at the institutional level, and can you give us any specific examples of how costs have been reduced?

Thank you for the question. I'll be brief. We do require now institutions to provide a three-year what we call a strategic reinvestment plan. And these investment plans were developed through a state law that essentially took $60 million out of the state higher education budget, held it, and then had those institutions tell us in a three-year plan where would that money come from in cuts and where would it go based on criteria like enrollment, completion rates, discipline-related professional outcomes including placement, employment, licensure, wage outcomes, current and future industry demand. All of these things showing that this is the type of thing that ensures a high return on investment. Institutions now are making decisions based on those criteria and can show that we have de-invested in programs that were poor performing or administrative costs that were not fundamental to the mission of the institution and have reinvested that back into instruction in programs that provide higher value to students. So the investment in higher education didn't go down, it's just smarter.

Thank you. My time's expired, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

Thank you. I'd now like to recognize my friend from Connecticut, Mr. Courtney.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the panel. So last November, the Department of Education issued its hit list in terms of occupations that no longer are defined as professions, which I think anybody who even has casually followed this issue has triggered a backlash of just biblical proportions. Particularly in the healthcare space where occupational therapists, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nurse anesthetists were treated basically removed as a professional occupation. Aside from the insult that I think many people in that area felt, I mean, what it had in real-life consequences is it put a lower cap in terms of borrowing. And again, the fantasy that we hear from some of these witnesses today, particularly from the American Enterprise Institute, that that's somehow going to introduce market discipline in terms of tuition. I mean, the fact of the matter is banks know better because they were lobbying for these caps because they understand that the limits are going to force student borrowers into the private market. And again, Dr. Morgan, maybe you can talk about that. You mentioned it in your testimony.

Yes, thank you. So I'll start with that lobbying effort. I think it's important to understand that we saw private lenders place paid advertisements in places like Politico, driving up this idea that student loans were this huge problem and that the thing that we needed to do was to cap them, right? So publicly they're saying we need caps on student loans. Privately what they were saying to their investors was, we're waiting in the wings, there's a profit opportunity for us here. And I think that those people who you're describing who are locked out of professional degree, the limits on professional degrees, so particularly nurse practitioners and other people in these advanced healthcare fields who are not doctors, they're exactly that prime kind of target, right? So for a SoFi or for a Sallie Mae, this is the person who they're going to go after. Those borrowers cannot expect their tuition to decrease to match the federal loan limit. They're going to end up paying for high-cost private student loans to fill the gap.

And of course with private loans, I mean, there's always an underwriting component in terms of trying to qualify for a loan, whether it's a collateral requirement or just again a financial position where the bank can certify that it's a low-risk loan. Banks again have sort of recognized that this is going to be an issue for a lot of students because they're now basically talking about coming to Congress to ask for loan guarantees, which is really just a trip back in time in terms of sort of the rip-off that was in the student loan space where banks were getting basically total government guarantees as well as higher interest rates. I mean, that's really sort of where they're trying to push this system. Isn't that correct?

Yeah, exactly. We've seen this play before, right, from the banks, where they get people hooked on the student loans and then they come in and they say, you know, if we can't offer the loans, people won't have access to college, why don't you help us out here? And it ends up costing the federal government an enormous amount of money and really for what, right? But you know, I think the other thing to think about here is for people who cannot get that loan from a Sallie Mae or a Navient or a SoFi, they're being turned to credit products that are much more predatory and much worse for them than even those private student loans. So we're going to see people taking on credit card debt, we're going to see them increasing their buy now, pay later debt, and turning to shadier providers with much higher interest rates and much more onerous terms for default.

Yeah. So the title of this hearing really should be about working families getting run over by the one big beautiful bill. Again, I know they're trying to rebrand the H.R. 1 to a different title, but the fact of the matter is most people in this country have sort of figured out what a scam it is. The American Nursing Association, when this announcement came out in November, they made it crystal clear: we have a nursing shortage in this country, and this whole enterprise is going to aggravate that nursing shortage. Mr. Chairman, I have a letter from the American Association of Nurse Anesthesiology, which again lays out the reason why the record of the fact that their members have almost a perfect record in terms of loan repayment. And again, the qualifications are highly stringent. They do incredibly important work. I just had a knee replacement in December. The anesthesiologist did a great job and I really appreciate that. Again, I would ask that it be entered into the record. And I would also note that on January 29, the comment period started for people on this new rule out of the Department of Education. Honestly, I think every member of Congress should be standing up for the healthcare providers, the caring professions, the fact that we have a shortage of critical people in our healthcare system which is only going to get worse and is being aggravated by H.R. 1's loan caps that again are just going to really hit one of the most critical sectors of our economy. Thank you. I yield back.

Thank you. I'd now like to recognize my friend from Florida, Mr. Fine.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I'd like to use my time to basically brag on Florida because Florida has led the way. And I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge Chancellor Rodrigues, who is a third-term member of the Florida House, took a shy, unassuming, very quiet member when he showed up under his wing and helped show me the ropes. And I was privileged during my time in the legislature to help spearhead a lot of the changes we've talked about here today. I chaired education committees for four of my eight and a half years. But while we've talked about loans, one of the things we have not spoken about in Florida is that in the state of Florida, every single student, every one, if they work hard, has the ability to go to one of our state institutions for free. In the state of Florida, we offer free in-state tuition to every single student who gets an IB diploma, a Cambridge AICE diploma, or frankly, thanks to the hard work of my son, who's now a high school senior, a College Board AP Capstone diploma. You get one of those, you go for free. That's no tuition, that's no loans. And we do that, I would note, with no state income tax either. That's why perhaps we're the number one state university system in the country with the lowest tuition. So Florida shows how to do this. Now, one other way in which Florida has distinguished itself, and I am dealing with this right now as the father of a high school senior, is the safest place in the country for Jewish students to attend school. Little known fact: more Jewish students attend the University of Florida as a raw number than any other institution in the United States. More than any other. And part of the reason for that is a bill that I worked on when I was in the Florida legislature and then House member Rodrigues voted for, House Bill 741, which was signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis almost seven years ago on May 29, 2019. A bill that required that antisemitism be defined and it be treated the same way in our institutions as racism. And so I'd like to take a minute to ask Chancellor Rodrigues to talk about if that bill has been effective in making Florida's institutions safe for Jewish students and if that might be one of the reasons why more Jewish students go to the University of Florida than any other institution in the United States.

Thank you for the question. I want to begin by addressing the first part of what you led with, which is what we provide students. In addition to those scholarships, Florida is number two in the nation in financial aid that is awarded to students. ...and we're number two in merit-based aid as well through Bright Futures scholarships as well as the ones you've mentioned. It's played a big role in allowing the best of our state to remain in our state and go to school for free. In terms of your legislation, it was very important. After the events of October 7, we saw demonstrations occurring in campuses across this country. While other states were struggling with whether the demonstrations crossed into the action of antisemitism, in Florida we had a definition of antisemitism because of your bill. So in Florida there was no ambiguity. We took the step of ensuring that First Amendment rights were protected. If students wanted to demonstrate they could, but we regulated the time, place, and manner. Because we had a working definition of antisemitism, we were able to ensure that our Jewish students were not harassed and we were able to ensure that none of the demonstrations impacted our classes or our common spaces like libraries that all students need access to. I would say that the definition, having the definition of antisemitism in statute, played a key role in our success. As far as whether that has attracted more students, I do know if you look at applications coming from the Northeast to our system, they have gone up since the events of October 7. I suspect there's correlation, but I don't have any data to support that.

And as a father of a high school senior who applied and I'm happy to know successfully got into all three Florida universities he applied to, I can tell you it is stunning how competitive these institutions, I mean I was shocked, there is not a single Florida state university that does not have competitive applications. There was a time when some of the lower-ranked ones, anyone who applied who was qualified could get in. That is no longer the case at any of the 12. Last question, very brief. When I ran that bill, people were concerned about courts finding it unconstitutional. In the seven years that it's been in effect, are you aware of any court cases that said that that bill has been unconstitutional?

There have been none in Florida.

All right. Thank you. And look, again, Florida leads the way. I believe very strongly if every state just replicated what you are doing in Florida, we wouldn't have any of these problems that so many people want to talk about today. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

Thank you. I'd like to recognize my friend from Arizona, Mrs. Grijalva. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am the proud parent of a freshman at the University of Arizona. And affordability, that affordability gap is real. We have a real problem with working families feeling like they can access higher education for their children. So I disagree with the statement that the chairman mentioned at the beginning saying, well, you know, people are questioning the value of higher education. No, we're questioning whether we can send our kids to school, period. So regardless of how academically, you know, their prowess in classrooms, their support systems here, there, and whatever, some of the programs that I believe federal funds have really, really done right is programs like TRIO. And TRIO are the programs like Upward Bound, Talent Search, and Student Support Services that really help students who are first-generation students who are from families where if these programs weren't available, they wouldn't even know how to access loans. And so I think that that, those programs are important and those programs are on the chopping block and many state and local universities and community colleges have tried to figure out a way to continue to support these programs. So I want to recognize Arizona's TRIO professionals and the Western Association of Educational Opportunity Personnel work I saw firsthand literally just last week, whose 2026 training, Rooted in Purpose, Growing in Community, reflects the essential role of these federally funded programs and how they play in supporting these students that we're talking about, first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented students in our community colleges and universities. And while TRIO provides the advocacy and support these students need to navigate higher education, that support must be matched by secure financial foundation. The most effective way to lower costs for these students and their families is to invest in the Pell Grant. As a federal program, as the federal government's foundational investment in college affordability, Pell Grants help more than seven million students attend and complete college each year. The evidence is clear. Need-based grant aid increases college enrollment and completion for low and moderate-income students. Pell Grants are especially well-targeted to those with the greatest financial need. 74 percent of recipients come from families earning $40,000 or less annually, including 34 percent of families earning $15,000 or less. As a result, the Pell Grant program serves as a powerful engine of economic mobility in communities across the country. Notably, 81 percent of Black students and nearly three-quarters of Latino students receive Pell Grants during their time in school. So Mr. Chairman, I ask for unanimous consent to enter into the record an article that further details the impact of Pell Grant programs on college access and student success.

No objection.

Thank you. So students across America are struggling to afford college, not only because of tuition but because meeting basic needs like food, housing, and childcare has become increasingly difficult. Recognizing these challenges, some institutions are responding with innovative supports for low-income students including campus food pantries, emergency financial aid, childcare for student parents, flexible options for adult learners. Dr. Morgan, given that the maximum Pell Grant now covers less than a quarter of the cost of attending a four-year public college, students are facing massive affordability gap even after receiving aid. Can you provide us with an overview of how this gap contributes to the basic need challenges such as food and housing insecurity that students face today?

Yes, I think there are two important factors for us to think about with this basic needs gap. So one is the one that you mentioned, which is that the Pell Grant and other aid that students get from their institution or from their state doesn't cover enough of the cost of college, putting a lot of burden on the individual who, as to your point, from lower-income families, particularly students of color, those burdens are already pretty insurmountable on their own. I think the other thing to think about is that, you know, the burden of paying for college doesn't fall on a family in a vacuum. It falls in the context of all the other costs that they face including healthcare, utilities, all of these costs that are rising under Donald Trump. So I think about the cost of healthcare in particular where Congress has allowed the subsidies for ACA to lapse and now families are facing much higher healthcare costs. For some families, that's an additional $4,000 a year, right? That is the cost of attending a community college, it's a big chunk of attending a four-year institution, and that's putting even more pressure on the individual. And to your point, colleges have done a lot to try to meet these basic needs, but they cannot keep up when this is three in five students who are facing basic needs challenges.

So how can federal, state, and local governments work with colleges to support students' basic needs?

I think that states and the federal government have to step in here. We have to understand that the aid that and the appropriations that we provide to these institutions are going to be the major way of filling that gap.

Yeah. So the HR 1 repayment assistant plan hurts low-income borrowers. Dr. Morgan, for millions of borrowers, student loan repayment is not just a financial issue, it shapes whether you can save for a home and start a family. So I appreciate all of your feedback here. Thank you, and I yield back.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Now my friend from Guam, Mr. Moylan.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And for the subcommittee hearing today, especially we are finally addressing the runaway college spending that we are seeing today. Mr. Landward, you expressed that really well on your opening statement, so thank you so much. And it is a runaway college spending situation that we're seeing here. We have a study here provided by the U.S. Consumer Goods and Services and Wages and it looked at the price changes from January 2000 to December 2025. They talked about housing, that was up 111 percent. They talked about medical care, up 140 percent. Childcare, up 158 percent. And then college tuition, up 200 percent. The only thing higher than that was hospital services, but 200 percent from the year 2000 to 2025. It's runaway, as we mentioned, what this hearing is about is runaway college spending. The issues are now what are we going to do about it, and that's why we're addressing our tax bill here for the Working Families Tax Cuts. And we have some meaningful provisions to combat this rising cost of college. Mr. Landward, you mentioned that a study done back in the '80s where the last time college costs kept up with the pace of median income was back in 1982. And so that's, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to enter into the record that we do have a Forbes article specifying that, stating such as it is that the cost of living and college costs are just not staying together. I'd like to enter that into the record.

No objections.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Rodrigues, you reminded me in your opening statement of what I went through going through college myself. I did have those part-time jobs and I did actually I joined the Army to help pay for my school and it worked out quite well. But back then it was 1986 when I graduated from college and I still have friends that I believe are still paying for their student loans as well. That's over 40 years ago. And that's why it's important we're having this and the House Republicans are working for lowering the financial barriers for all students. All students in the states, but also in the territories. The territories, Guam, which I'm from. It costs us much more to get our professional degree, to fly to the mainland, to house our students there, and then also the airfare of course, and then we're paying out-of-state tuition in addition to that. So compared to these price changes, it's enormous for the territories to try to get higher education to travel to the states and this is why this measure is important. So I'd like you, Dr. Akers, to please expand upon some of the things you were discussing, especially what the results of when we have unlimited federal borrowing for graduate students.

This is one of the critical problems that's been plaguing higher education for a decade now. The reconciliation legislation did really a fantastic job in taking a first step towards tackling it. We know that with graduate students able to borrow basically unlimited sums, pair that with a lack of high levels of financial literacy, and you get students paying more for their education than it's really going to be worth and is really appropriate for both those individuals and for taxpayers. These new limits put in place limits that put downward pressure on institutions so that they can charge less or they will charge less for these programs. And it also ensures that people are not going to be left with that overhang of debt to pay for their graduate and professional degrees that last well into their career. So it's a tremendous innovation, most critically as a consumer protection.

Thank you for that. Mr. Landward, you also mentioned a three-year plan. Can you expand a little bit more on that? It sounded really interesting.

Yeah, thank you. So again, this was a conversation with the Utah legislature. And in Utah, when you look at the total appropriated funds, tuition, and state support, Utah contributes 63 percent of the cost of higher education from taxpayer funds. And so the question was for taxpayers and for those who represent those taxpayers in the legislature, are they confident that that investment is providing a good return? In other words, is it providing value to the students and is it providing value to the state? And so they asked us to take a look at all of the programs, all of our administrative costs, basically anything that is included in that cost that is passed on through tuition and taxpayer support and say, can you make cuts in any of these areas? And as a reward for finding those cuts, we'll allow you to keep that investment from the state tax dollars as long as it's going to an area where we're seeing a high return on investment for the state itself. And when you look at where those reappropriations went to, every single one of the schools in our system got all that money back from the legislature. It went to areas like healthcare, engineering, computer science, general education, business, technical education. These are all programs that have high enrollment, high completion, high return on investment for the students, and they also help drive our economy.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

Thank you. I'd like now to recognize my friend from Oregon, Ms. Bonamici.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, and thank you to the witnesses. The cost of college is rising. That's clear. I hope my Republican colleagues can recognize that as Dr. Morgan said, one of the reasons is the persistent disinvestment in higher education at the state level. My colleague from Guam mentioned something about 1982. Well, in 1980, which happened to be the year I graduated from college and started law school, 79 percent of the revenue for public colleges came from state and local funds. But by 2021, it had dropped to 57 percent. I wouldn't be here today if I didn't have the grants, loans, and work-study that I got to work my way through two years of community college, two years of college, and three years of law school with a very manageable amount of debt. And I'll tell you, work-study was a great program. We need to enhance that. I've been working on that for a while. But we could also make a significant difference if we invested more at the federal level. It is not a lack of resources, it is a policy choice. Now I want to talk about the HR 1, which I call a big ugly bill because I don't think it's beautiful. You know, I support Workforce Pell, but I want those Workforce Pell grants to be available to people who affirmatively want to go into workforce jobs, not as a backup for somebody who thinks, I really could do well in college but I can't afford it. So first, we talked about this already in the committee, the HR 1 cuts Medicaid and SNAP, which is making it harder for families to pay for healthcare and groceries. And now states, as I know as a former state legislator, are trying to fill those gaps with their limited budgets and students will pay the price. And yes, they say Working Families Tax Cuts is part of the title of this hearing, but at the same time, all the other costs are going up because of chaotic tariff policies, not addressing things like affordable housing. So we are already facing those high costs for food, rent, healthcare, utility bills. But here's a point I want to emphasize. That big ugly bill gave ICE $75 billion, close to $75 billion, that's with a B dollars, and the Customs and Border Patrol almost $65 billion with a B dollars. That was a policy choice. It certainly wasn't mine. That doesn't sound so beautiful to me. In fact, it's been pretty catastrophic on many levels. I submit that if we had invested that $140 billion in education and economic development instead, we would be far better off as a nation. I want to ask you, Dr. Morgan, how does a fully funded public university system contribute to the economy and the well-being of the country?

Having a strong, robust public education system contributes not only to the ability of individuals to get ahead, but it also contributes to our communities and to states' economies as a whole. You know, our college and university system can be a driver of innovation, it can be a driver of workforce development and a way to handle kind of planning for the technological changes that are coming our way. But in fact, we're seeing the opposite in the country right now. You know, to your point, we're seeing investments in tax cuts for the wealthy, we're seeing investments in ICE, and we're ignoring these really critical parts of our infrastructure that help us prepare and build the kind of communities...

I also serve on the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, which I've been running back and forth to, and I want to say that, you know, right now, a lot of people in our institutions of higher education who are getting degrees in sciences, they're being recruited by other countries. And that's a serious concern. And we have scientists and people who come to this country to study and learn. That's a benefit for us. And we're seeing them not wanting to come right now because of cuts to research, cuts to science, and because of the terrible immigration policies that are making them feel afraid to come to this country. So I also want to talk about eliminating the Graduate PLUS loan program and establishing loan caps on professional degrees. Many prospective nurses, we've heard a lot from nurses, I know as a bipartisan co-chair of the Bipartisan Nursing Caucus, they're concerned, teachers, social workers, that they won't get the financial support they need to complete their degrees. I'm not sure if Republicans thought that this would somehow force institutions to lower their tuition when they want to implement this, but it seems implausible in light of the myriad financial pressures that they already face. So Dr. Morgan, how does HR 1 affect the ability of low-income students to afford nursing, medical school, and how will this affect access to affordable healthcare in the long term, especially in rural and underserved areas? And how should Congress reform graduate school funding to better serve and support students rather than eliminating Graduate PLUS loan program and establishing loan caps? What would be a better alternative?

This bill is going to make it much, much more expensive for people to pursue education in healthcare fields and particularly for people who are left out of that professional degree categorization, which was a policy choice by the Trump administration to narrowly define professional degrees. So it's going to cost people a lot more money. But I think your question asks a larger question about what this means for our healthcare system. And if you look at HR 1 as a whole, it's putting our entire healthcare system at risk, right? We're making it harder for people to be insured, we're making it harder for people to be able to work in hospitals, and I think we're reaching a point where people are seeing that every time they walk into a doctor's office.

I represent a lot of rural areas as well as urban areas and the word I've heard over and over from healthcare providers and systems like the Hospital Association is catastrophic. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

Thank you. I'd like now to recognize my friend from Wisconsin, Mr. Grothman.

First of all, a couple comments. Everybody loves Workforce Pell because it sounds so good. One of the degrees that they made the pitch on in my area was truck driving, whether you can go to tech school, learn how to drive truck. So I called some of my local trucking firms because I figured the law of supply and demand should be taken care of that. And sure enough, all of the ones that I talked to were already paying for the tuition, the trucking firm. So all we're doing with Workforce Pell is we're spending government dollars on a problem that was already being solved by the private sector. I don't know if anybody else called their trucking firms. And by the way, the same thing is true of advanced welding degrees. The companies were paying for it by their own and now we got the government coming in paying for something the private sector is paying for anyway. It seems to me one of the big problems with education is frequently people get degrees that there is not value of. We'll come back to nursing in a second, which is a great value. But you know, plumber, electrician today where we have such a huge shortage, those guys can be making far more than college graduates. Does anybody have any suggestions how we can prevent students, not from getting a nursing degree, but prevent students from getting a psychology degree or communication arts degree when they could do so much better going into the trades? That's where I think the real problem is. You want to take a crack at it, Beth?

I can jump in there. You know, my feeling is that we have an insufficiently informed set of consumers when it comes to higher education. We've done too little to help people understand what it is that they're paying for, what they're likely to pay, and what opportunity it's going to deliver to them in the future. Surveys show that people go to college for primarily one reason and that's to make more money. And so if we give people and empower them with this information, they will make the choices that lead them down those paths and that's I think the role of government today.

Okay. Just another factoid that I've been trying to point out here. You see those Walmart trucks driving around, you know, live better, whatever it says on the back of the Walmart trucks. Those guys make $140,000 a year, just so you know. Okay. I think one of the reasons I want you, some of you guys to comment on it. Well, first of all, I'll take a little bit of a shot at what we're doing here because I had some people from the private colleges in my office the other day. And with regard to nursing, they knew people who wanted to go through that program in like three years and wanted to go to summer school as well as the regular time. They felt that because we couldn't, because of the annual cap in student loan debt, that those students couldn't get through say in three years like they wanted. Do you think, Dr. Akers, there's any way to tinker with that program to get a little more out to kids who are doing summer school?

I can't say I'm an expert exactly on the mechanics of how we would make that possible, but that seems like a reasonable accommodation.

Okay, it's reasonable. Well, we'll let our committee chair, he's not here anymore, we'll let him remember that it's reasonable. I think one of the reasons why the cost of college has gone through the roof is the number of non-teaching personnel in universities and colleges has gone through the roof in the last 40 years. Right? Normally you'd think if I'm going to set up a college, the vast majority of my employees are going to be professors or teachers of some sort, but instead we've had a skyrocketing number of people in non-teaching positions. Does anyone care why that's true or comment on that?

I'll take a stab at that. I read a study that was released a year ago by an economist at AEI, Preston Cooper. He looked at all of the administration across higher education from IPEDS, he pulled the IPEDS data. And the big takeaway I took from his study is there's been tremendous growth in administration, but that tremendous growth is isolated to the top quintile. So for example, the institutions in the top quintile have about 161 administrators per 1,000 students, whereas the median across the country is 70. In Florida, we have 62 per 1,000 students. So I think what we're seeing is a significant increase, that increase is largely isolated to Ivy League, Ivy League Plus, and very prominent flagship institutions, but the vast majority of the institutions have had a very slow growth over that time.

I'm not sure if that's right. You mentioned administrators and one of the areas that I think is going up is counselors and those sort of people. But thank you very much for giving me that extra 10 seconds.

Thank you. I'd like to now recognize my friend from Georgia, Mrs. McBath.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. And thank you all for coming today. Thank you to each of our witnesses. I don't have any formal questions for you today, but I would like to say that the American people know that it has become far too expensive to simply get the skills necessary to provide a decent life for themselves and for their families. But the solution to that problem is not to cut federal dollars and to force students and families to make up the difference on their own with their savings or by taking out high-interest loans that they'll never be able to pay those back. Republican reconciliation bill does nothing to really lower the price of higher education on the back end or help people keep more of their own money. All this does is shift more of the cost of school away from the taxpayer dollars that people have already paid towards money that they have saved on their own. People are going to pay more of their own money for school while they pay the same amount in tax and get less in return from their government. Regardless of what you hear today, that truly is the truth. And I believe it's a major reason why the American people are so frustrated with their government. Instead of using tax dollars for schools and scholarships, instead of using the people's money for programs that really help them afford basics like daycare, prescription drugs, or any of the things that have gotten too expensive, this majority holds hearings and votes on bills to act like they are addressing these problems as they push policies that make these problems worse. Every Republican member of the House except for two voted to cut the Pell Grant and to take it away from part-time students who may be working or raising a family. Just two. The Pell Grant, a program for students with significant financial need, for the students and families who have the least in our country. There are members of this majority who had millions of dollars in PPP loans forgiven during the pandemic but refuse to help nurses and teachers go to school so that they can do some of the most important jobs that are needed in our society. There are members of this body who had loans forgiven for amounts that many Americans only dream of making in their lifetimes, all while they cut funding for health, healthcare, and education. Time and time again, Republicans ask the American people to listen to what they say, but please ignore what they do. To ignore the loans that they secure and forgive for themselves while they ask everyday people to buckle down and make sacrifices. Before coming to Congress, I was a flight attendant for 30 years. So I know what it's like to be a single mom and I know what it's like to struggle to make ends meet. But instead of doing anything to make life more affordable like capping interest rates on loans, Republicans are making Americans pay more for something that is as basic as getting a decent job. At a time when Americans are looking for some breathing room to keep their heads above water, this majority continues to support policies that squeeze them as much as possible. I would like to remind everyone that these are choices that this majority actively makes every single day. They choose to make life more expensive and increase the national debt that they claim that they care so much about. They choose to cut programs for disabled students, to cut grants and scholarships for the lowest-income students and families in this country. The American people are tired of these broken promises. They are tired of being asked to give more and more and more of themselves while it gets harder and more expensive to acquire the skills necessary to just get a decent job and keep it. I yield.

Thank you. I'd like to now recognize my friend from Missouri, Dr. Onder.

...exploded college costs, unlimited student loan borrowing. Before the passage of the Working Families Tax Cut Act, colleges were incentivized to raise the cost of attendance far beyond the pace of inflation because they knew they could count on the federal government to subsidize the increase. However, the job is not done. We can continue to make college more affordable by improving price transparency, something we need in many areas of the economy, including my own area of healthcare. I'm working with my friend from Kentucky, Chairman Brett Guthrie, on the Student Financial Clarity Act. Our bill creates a universal net price calculator and expands the college scorecard so students can compare costs, outcomes, and financial aid across multiple institutions. This committee has approved that bill, and I am hopeful that it will be brought to the House floor soon. After college, many students don't know how to navigate the loan repayment process. They are overwhelmed and don't feel they fully understand there will ever be an end in sight. They receive loan disclosures that are hard to understand. The disclosures should prioritize important personalized information such as origination fees, interest rates, and early payment plans. But current law only requires lenders to give three disclosures: one at reimbursement, one before repayment, one at disbursement, one at or before repayment, and one during repayment status. Ms. Akers, do you think students would benefit from regular monthly disclosures during the life of their loan?

Absolutely. We know from research that students are not aware of how much they're borrowing even just months after signing their initial promissory note. So the system is really broken. This is in the interest of the institutions who don't necessarily want them to have at top of mind how much they're paying every semester. But it's something that we need to fix, absolutely.

Do you think that those disclosures should include projected monthly payments based on how much a student borrowed with an option to pay any interest that accrues while the borrower is still in school?

Absolutely. I ran an experiment probably 10 years ago trying to show that when we give people this information, they become better informed, make better choices. Turns out they had so little information, anything we gave them was a huge game changer. I think that we need to put this information into context for student borrowers. That big number of how much they're borrowing, maybe $30,000 for some students, might be meaningless for somebody who has never managed a household budget. So anything adding context to allow people to make better decisions because if we empower them to do so, they will make the right decisions for themselves. So I think this is a step in the right direction.

I think a lot of policy errors we make in Washington regarding economic and social policy assume that people are not rational economic actors. I think that is far from the case. I think in almost every context in life, human beings are rational economic actors, but they can't be if there is not price transparency and transparency about terms of complex financial instruments like loans. So I appreciate that. You know, fortunately, there's also a bill that accomplishes the above, the Student Loan Disclosure Transparency Act. This bill was introduced last Congress by then-Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, and I look forward to reintroducing it with her successor, Congressman Vindman, as a co-lead. Let's see how much time I have left. Finally, I want to examine a state-level reform to make college more affordable again. As everyone in this room knows, the federal government plays a limited role in education policy and often states lead the way. By rewarding professors for strong student outcomes, tenure reform could increase institutional efficiency and refocus spending on student success. Mr. Landward, in your testimony, you discussed Utah's success with post-tenure review system reform. How does Utah's post-tenure review system help institutions control college costs for students and taxpayers?

Well, the intent here is accountability and value again. We're relentless on just asking the question. Anybody who is employed at any of our universities, no matter what role, we have to ask the question: are you contributing to the core mission of the institution? Are you doing so efficiently and effectively? With post-tenure review, this is an opportunity to give us sightlines into the performance of every professor, no matter what their status is in the faculty ranks. And this allows us to ensure that there's an annual review of their performance based on factors. There's a comprehensive post-tenure review every five years, but also that we're only making decisions based on substantive issues with their teaching and research and not political issues or other items. And so it balances that along with due process to ensure that we can protect academic freedom and still have transparency and accountability and performance.

Thank you very much. I yield back.

Thank you. I'd like to now recognize my friend from California, Mr. DeSaulnier.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank all the witnesses. It's an important discussion. I appreciate you being here. In the discussion in this committee for the past year, we've had a lot of not very subtle sort of elites versus working people. And I'm reminded of my parents, who were the first people in their families to ever go to college and how proud they were of that. My dad's dad was a cab driver in Lowell, Massachusetts, who ended up owning the company but never went to college. My mom's dad was a firefighter, an Irish firefighter outside of Boston, who could imagine, who was very proud of the fact that he worked very hard so that his daughter could go to college. So one of the things I wanted to ask you, Dr. Morgan, is sort of following in that, which we forget sometimes, that the American higher education system is something to be tremendously proud of. Like all human institutions, it has its shortcomings and sometimes things that I disagree with. But the importance of remembering that the people who go to college are like my grandparents aspiring for their kids to go to college. It's not all people who have had the good fortune to inherit a lot of money. Most people are aspiring to it. In California, I'm very proud of the University of California, California State University system, and in particular the community college system so that there is a track if people choose, if they want to do, if they want to graduate from high school and do career tech, that's great too, and we have a great program for that. But really discouraging the past year and all the politics of the optics of who are fighting for working people and elites and other class sort of challenges that this country has had. Dr. Morgan, what are the things that really stand out to you in what we refer to on our side as the big ugly bill that's really making it harder for that tradition of Americans to be able to aspire if they choose to go to college?

I really appreciate your question. I also grew up in a working-class area of Massachusetts where not a lot of people went to college and...

You don't have an accent. Way to go.

Over time, I just lost it.

I grew up, I was born in Lowell and grew up and went to college in Worcester.

Oh, great. I grew up in Fall River.

Oh, Fall River. Wicked. Go Pats.

So you saw exactly what you're describing. You know, people were really focused on getting their kids a better life, a more secure life than what they had. They're saving to send their kids to college. And you know, in many cases, that is what we want for our country, right? But what we've seen over time, from the time that I was going to college to now, that people have to take on incredible amounts of debt, both parents and students, to make that happen, right? And so they're ending up in a very risky situation where if they don't get the job that they thought they were going to get, they don't have that income they thought, they're going to be struggling to repay those loans and regretting the decision. And H.R. 1 makes that much more risky for people. You know, we're going to see the Medicaid and SNAP cuts squeeze state budgets to push public tuition, public college tuition even higher. And the bill makes it more expensive for people to pay back their loans as well. So if you are one of those people who takes on more debt than you can afford based on your income, this bill pushes you closer to default than you would have been otherwise.

So I listen to younger people all the time, my two sons in particular, who complain about baby boomers. And Elizabeth Warren's great book, The Two-Income Trap, long before she got involved in politics, I think really summed up the challenges generationally that the five household costs that economists count are education, healthcare, transportation, I'm spacing taxes, and I'm spacing on the last one. But when you look at those generationally, and education a key part of that, what we just talked about, it really makes the affordability issue tougher. I heard a comment in a meeting today that wages are far underperforming GDP. So all that money is going to capital investors. So the concentration of wealth is getting worse and worse, and education is part of that. So the very thing that some of my colleagues rail about when they complain about elitism, their actions from my perspective are fostering that. Working people and poor people can't afford to go to higher education when they have to worry about their paycheck to paycheck, but the rest of the GDP is growing because of private equity.

Absolutely. We're increasing that gap between working-class families and the wealthiest families in this country. And increasingly, our economy is getting tied up only in the decisions made by that wealthy elite part of the country, and the rest of us are kind of left on our own. It's really concerning. The only other thing I would say is that those same things that Elizabeth Warren wrote about so many years ago, education, healthcare, housing, those are the same costs that we're still waiting for our leaders to fix for us so that we can all live a more secure and stable life.

Well, as Benjamin Franklin said at the founding of this country, any investment in education will always be the best investment for Americans. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. I'd like to now have my friend from California, Mr. Kiley, recognized.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. A little over two years ago, we reached this crisis point in American higher education with sort of the horrifying antisemitism that we saw on our college campuses bringing this crisis into sharp relief. And I said at the time, this was a moment of reckoning for American higher education where, you know, we saw our universities, which are supposed to be the leading centers of open discourse and debate, had become some of the most repressive institutions in American life in terms of censorship and limiting free speech. We saw our universities, which are supposed to be places where humanist values flourish, becoming hotbeds of one of the world's most retrograde and ancient prejudices when it came to antisemitism. And then at the same time, it gave us an occasion to focus on other aspects of university life, where more and more our universities were becoming costlier and costlier for students, a greater and greater source of indebtedness for graduates, and yet delivering less and less value. We're not well-adapted in many cases to the demands of our modern economy and our workforce. So in response, this committee has been trying to tackle reforming American higher education from all of these different angles. We, of course, have had a still ongoing investigation into antisemitism with a number of leading university presidents resigning after testifying before this committee. In conjunction with that, we've seen in many institutions renewed commitments to freedom of speech, efforts to take antisemitism, treat it with the seriousness that it deserves, faculty reforms, reforms designed to promote institutional neutrality, reforms to eliminate coerced so-called diversity statements. So there's been some pretty good progress in that respect, though there's certainly a long ways to go. And then on the other side of the issue, with H.R. 1, we, of course, addressed the indebtedness and affordability aspects of the problem with trying to make college more affordable, limit indebtedness, and providing incentives to teach skills that are of economic value to graduates. So we've made progress there as well, though again, we still have a long way to go. And a lot of the reforms that need to happen, particularly when it comes to our public institutions, do exist at the state level. So I'm really glad that we have with us today two leaders of systems that have been very innovative in that respect. So I'd just like to give Commissioner Landward and Chancellor Rodrigues an opportunity to discuss some of the reforms you've highlighted today, but how your efforts sort of work towards addressing all of these aspects in a way that focuses the mission of the university on what universities are there for and ultimately allows you to serve your students and limit the costs and expense that go into getting an education.

Thank you for the question. With the risk of sounding reductive, in operating a system of higher education, a public system of higher education, the first question that we have to ask is: how is what we provide going to benefit the state of Utah and its citizens? Every dollar that comes in should provide value to the state. It should help drive economic prosperity. It should better the lives of the people that live within the state. It should provide students who receive their degrees or certificates high value in what they're offered. And so it's a fundamental question that you have to continue to ask in everything that we do, whether it's how we design our system, how we approach tuition and fee setting, how we approach what programs we offer and where we offer them, how we approach the mission of each institution. The question is: will this benefit the students and will this benefit the state? And so if we look at anything that's beyond that mission of that system or beyond the mission of the institution, then we have to question why we're providing it and why we're funding it. And if we just continue to ask those questions, is this best for the state, is this best for the student, we often get to the right decision, no matter what's happening around us, no matter what the swirl is saying. Those fundamental principles that we go back to lead to those better decisions, and that is we want higher education to be valuable and we want it to benefit the state and the student.

Great perspective. Does it benefit the state, does it benefit the student? Chancellor Rodrigues.

Thank you for the question. I mentioned in my opening remarks, we embrace performance-based funding, and we have metrics in addition to retention and graduation and post-graduate employment. We have metrics that tie our degrees to the workforce needs of the state, programs of strategic emphasis in both our undergraduate and graduate degrees. And the reason we have those metrics is to encourage universities to grow those majors so that the students benefit with a well-paying job when they graduate.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think that your efforts provide a great model, and the work of this committee has been truly of paramount importance when it comes to reforming higher education for the benefit of our young people and for our country's future. I yield back.

Thank you so much. I'd like to recognize my colleague from Minnesota, Ms. Omar.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Over the past year, we've heard our Republican colleagues claim that their solution in the one big beautiful bill will somehow make college cheaper for working families. This is the same bill that cut a trillion dollars out of Medicaid and over $180 billion from SNAP. The logic is hard to follow. By leaving millions without healthcare and struggling to buy groceries, higher education will apparently just become more accessible. It is no wonder that when the American people finally had the chance to see what was in this hideous bill, it was so unpopular that my Republican counterparts had to rebrand the name. But just because you put working families in the title doesn't mean you are not screwing them over. The reality is there is no amount of sugarcoating that can undo the damage that will be done by this disastrous legislation. Ms. Morgan, I'd like to ask you some basic questions to correct the record. Ms. Morgan, does this law, this new law, require schools to immediately lower their costs?

It does not.

Does this law drastically increase funding for Pell Grants and other grant programs so that students won't have to borrow loans to go to college?

It does not.

Okay. So without more grant assistance, without forcing colleges to lower their costs, does this bill provide more access to federal loans?

It does not.

All right. Thank you. So we're not making college, colleges lower their costs, we are not providing more grant aid, we are not taking, we are taking away federal loan options. Where do we expect families to come up with the money to make up the difference, Ms. Morgan?

I think there are two options. I think there are people who will not go to college because college has become more expensive under this bill, and I think there are people who are going to take on private student loan debt as a result.

All right. So let's talk about the private market. When this bill was being considered by Congress, private lenders were celebrating because they knew that this was their opportunity to cash in on the backs of families desperate to find a way to pay for their kids to go to college. Because these type of loans involve a lot more financial risk and fewer protections for consumers. Ms. Morgan, can you expand on why these private loans are so risky?

You know, private loan, there are a couple of different kinds of private loans. There are what we consider to be like the bread and butter private loans that are offered by maybe like a Sallie Mae or a Navient. These loans are going to have a higher interest rate and they're going to have fewer options for people when they get in trouble on paying their loan. They don't have the forgiveness options, they don't have the income-based repayment options. There's another kind of like underbelly of the student loan program that is predatory credit products. They're going to be available to lower-income students who can't get those bread and butter products. And those are going to be even worse. They're going to have higher interest rates, they're going to have more onerous repayment terms, and they're going to land people in default.

And how does the Trump administration's gutting of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau increase these risks?

There's no cop on the beat anymore. You know, there's no one keeping an eye on those private student lenders to make sure not even that they're treating students well, right, but that they're just following the basics of our consumer financial laws. So I think that's a huge concern. I think the other thing to bear in mind is that this CFPB over the past four years has still been trying to clean up the problems we saw private student lenders cause two decades ago. There are people who are still trying to deal with loans that they took out 20 years ago through predatory colleges and predatory lenders, and so there's no one, there's no one there to help those borrowers either.

It is clear that the Republicans' big ugly bill does nothing to make college more affordable, but what it does do very well is push working families into the jaws of the private market. Thank you so much for your testimony today, and I yield back.

Thank you. I'd like now to recognize my friend from Washington, Mr. Baumgartner.

Well, thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for holding such an important hearing. Higher education is truly one of the gems of American society and the way it creates social mobility, innovation that fuels our economy, and research that advances our family farms. But it is a jewel that has become tarnished in recent years with runaway costs and a growing leftist political agenda that has replaced the skills needed for the American job market with a radical and sometimes Marxist political ideology on college campus. So we certainly have a lot of work to do to polish this gem, and I salute the big beautiful bill and the work of this committee for doing some of that important polishing earlier this year. I am the son of a university professor and grew up in a college town. After attending Washington State University, I went to Africa and spent a year as a volunteer teaching at Catholic University of Mozambique and then went to Harvard for a master's degree where I was also a teaching fellow and taught some Harvard undergrads. And while a state senator, I spent a little bit of time teaching at Sciences Po University, a counterinsurgency course at Sciences Po University in Paris, which is sometimes referred to as the Harvard of France. And so I've had a wide variety of experiences in higher education, would not consider myself an expert, but have had a wide variety, and what I've come to conclude is there's not a lot of difference in undergraduate education outside of the will of students to work, that they can get a great education at really any institution if they have high standards and a culture of education. And that is why it is so distressing to me we have these mounting student debt loads across the country because we are taking away students' freedoms and their families' freedoms with all of this debt that has been piled onto college education that really does not serve an educational purpose.

...higher education and limit the amount of student debt.

Well, I am absolutely thrilled with the progress that was made through the reconciliation legislation. I'd like to see that work continued, particularly introducing the price metric into the accountability mechanism that was introduced through the do no economic harm standard for programs of study. Basically, when a program is offering a really low cost, I think that can be an additional way for them to pass the threshold of participating in the lending program.

Great. Well, thank you all of you. Again, our institutions of higher education are one of the real bright spots in this country. We want to continue those opportunities for students and families to succeed in life, and we've got to make sure, though, it's an affordable opportunity for everybody. So thank you again for being here, and with that, I yield back to the Chairman.

Thank you. I'd like to now recognize my friend from Virginia, Ranking Member Scott.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Akers, we've heard a lot about the value of the education. Just checking, is there inherent value in a four-year on-campus liberal arts education that can't be monetized?

Absolutely, I believe that's true. There are monetary value in college degrees. There's also something that's intangible and difficult to measure. I emphasize the financial return on investment because that feels like the first and most important step to making sure that Americans are able to be prosperous.

So the federal government does have an interest in funding that kind of education.

Absolutely.

Okay. And Mr. Landward, same question.

Yes, it does. In fact, when we've made reforms to how we're funding higher education, one of the priorities that we still maintained was that we need a strong, thriving general education program in all of our degrees because, frankly, we're doing a good job of giving our graduates occupational skills, but what employers are telling us is they still lack durable skills, and those durable skills oftentimes come from liberal arts degrees and general education.

Thank you. Dr. Morgan, we've heard about the difficulty that the big ugly bill has caused and the choice they have when they run out of money. They either don't go and lose the opportunity or get into the private market, whatever they can get. What are the consumer protections in federal financial loans that aren't available in the private sector?

I think the main protections are when you get into trouble on your loan. If you get into trouble on a federal student loan, presuming that there's proper oversight of our loan servicers, which we don't always have, you know, you have the availability of income-driven repayment plans. You also have the option to get your loan forgiven if you work hard and go into public service or after a certain amount of time of repayment. You don't have access to those protections on a private student loan.

What about income-based payments?

You don't have access to income-based repayment on a private student loan.

The increase in costs is the fact that you have, you're paying PhDs, higher-salaried people. Have those in the workforce with higher salaries, have those salaries gone up more or less than other salaries?

The salaries for people with PhDs generally or at colleges?

Well, both. I mean, if your workforce includes a lot of PhDs and the higher-income, higher-educated workforce income is going up higher than inflation, wouldn't that mean that college costs would be going up, have an upward pressure on costs?

I actually don't know the answer to the question. I know that having professors at our institutions who have a PhD provides a much richer experience. And I know we've heard a lot about tenure from the committee today, the subcommittee, but I think there's a real concern with people who are forced into adjunct positions at schools. More and more students at our colleges are being taught by adjunct professors who don't have the same protection and don't have the same benefits as a full-time job. And more and more they're being pushed into programs where the courseware is actually not even provided by the school itself but by an online program manager.

How much of the increase in costs is due to room and board and not instructional?

We've seen an increase in costs across the board. So tuition and fees are going up, but you're correct that room and board is going up as well. And that's related, you know, both to some of the factors we've discussed today, including disinvestment, but don't forget colleges are part of the economy as well that's being affected by the tariffs and other options the Trump administration has taken to drive up costs across the board.

You mentioned disinvestment. How much has state investment, disinvestment affected college costs?

We've seen it over the last several decades. I believe Congresswoman Bonamici quoted the numbers themselves, but we've seen a drastic decrease in the investment of states in public higher education systems. And I believe that we're poised to see more as a result of HR 1 where the cuts to SNAP and to Medicaid are putting immense pressure on state budgets in addition to the requirement to put in place costly work requirement systems. And we're going to see that squeeze affect public higher education.

And what does that do to a student's cost?

It's going to drive up tuition across the board for students pursuing their degrees at public universities.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. Thank you so much. We will now move to our closing remarks. I'd like to recognize Ms. Adams for her closing remarks.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you once again to our witnesses for speaking with us today. As we close, I want to bring us back to first principles. College has never been just a personal investment. It is a public good. So when we expand access to higher education, we strengthen our workforce, our economy, and our democracy. When we restrict it, we entrench inequality and leave talent on the table. The affordability crisis that we've witnessed today is not inevitable. It's the result of policy choices. We can choose to reinvest in students, support institutions that deliver real outcomes, and address the basic needs that determine whether students can succeed once they enroll. Or we can continue down a path that narrows opportunity and tells millions of capable students that higher education simply isn't meant for them. Our responsibility is clear. We should be lowering costs, expanding access, and ensuring that every student, regardless of income, background, or zip code, has a fair shot at earning a degree and building a better future. That is the promise of the American dream, and it is a promise worth keeping. Thank you all for being here, for your testimony. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Thank you. Thank you so much. This has been extremely, extremely helpful. And I want to start off by just first of all agreeing, Ms. Morgan, with your comments about how bad things are. Explosion of tuition, enrollment in which kids come in, they enroll, they quit, they leave with debt they'll never pay off, with job skills they'll never have, and not be able to really build the American dream. But this isn't from the last six months of the family working tax plan. It's from the last 16 years when in 2010, President Obama through Affordable Act, a portion of Affordable Care Act, took everything from the private sector and put it into the government. So government has controlled this for the last 16 years. We cannot look at the last six months and say because of our reforms all these things are happening. We're now about to take care of that. I think the biggest thing that I am concerned about is how little we know in our country about capitalism. We are the number one destination in the world because of something called capitalism. Now just quickly, what does capitalism mean and what does it mean to this industry here? It's about return on investment. It's competition, it's merit, it's value, and the product of all that is profit. Now if it's a good program, there's a lot of profit, which it should be. It should spread throughout the entire country. People should be wanting to take advantage of it. If it's a terrible product, it should go broke. What we're finding out is that the government does not, is insulated from this concept. They can have a terrible competition, no competition, no value, no merit, and still make a lot of profit off the customers, the students who pay their life's blood for the rest of their life trying to pay off loans. So we need to get back to teaching that. I think that when I listen to my friends here from Utah and Florida, I'll say this about Utah. We are the, we lead the country in terms of small business startups. There's an entrepreneurial concept, there's a culture in which we're trying to figure out how to give the best return on investment to what we're dealing with. And I think the same thing, the way I listen to how you guys are solving things, same thing with Florida. We need to realize that government solutions have never worked. I just came back from Latin America this last week. They are realizing after the last couple of years they want to get away from that stuff. So no, it is not the government that's going to give us the out of this. It's going to be entrepreneurs, innovators, those who truly are in the game for the right reasons, that is to make sure our kids are number one. Not the institutions, not the professors, not those around just kind of sucking in everything they can from government payouts. So I'm excited about the fact we're having this conversation. We can all agree it's broken. It costs too much. We're getting too little of a return on investment with our kids coming out not being prepared to go to work, not being hopeful for their future, being angry about everything. That's not what our higher education should be about. And the other thing is this. Let's just make sure we're transparent enough that everyone realizes they don't have to go into debt to go to a four-year college. How about trades? If that could be their way out, if they could look at that as being their way to achieve their dreams, let them go for that. I think it's very helpful that we finally have competition for higher education. It's going to make higher education better. It's going to make sure that the best of the best are proving themselves and outcomes will allow parents to say, okay, I will invest in this, or the kids will invest in this because it's going to give me a good return on investment. And if it does not, then that institution should go broke, period. So I'm excited about the fact we're finally after the last six months putting in reforms. Six months. So please as you go back and think about how terrible things are, it's not because of the Republicans' one big beautiful bill. We'll see that in the coming year, and I think you're going to be very, very excited about how we're going to turn this out when everyone can kind of see the product and return on investment and also be educated. So that being said, again, I want to thank every one of you. This is such a healthy conversation. I think that the bottom line, if our kids are the end result, if our kids are the focus, our priorities, we're going to come around and figure out how to make sure that works out and that their legacy will be something we can be very proud of. So that being said, I'd like to thank our witnesses again for taking the time to testify before the subcommittee today. Without objections, there are no further business, the subcommittee stands adjourned. [Gavel sounds.]