Net Price Calculator Improvement Act

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 4983) to simplify and streamline the information regarding institutions of higher education made publicly available by the Secretary of Education, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 4983.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise today in support of the Strengthening Transparency in Higher Education Act.

The Education and the Workforce Committee has held 14 hearings on higher education, and throughout these hearings, it has become increasingly clear that students and families face a deluge of data that often provides little to no useful information as they try to make the important decisions of where to pursue postsecondary educations.

Despite repeated attempts to enhance transparency in the higher education system, students and families still struggle to access important information that will assist in their searches for the right colleges or universities. To make matters worse, data that is available often ignores a large portion of students enrolled in the postsecondary education system or fails to capture crucial information students and families need to view the entire landscape of higher education.

That is why my colleague, Representative Luke Messer, and I authored the bill before us today. The Strengthening Transparency in Higher Education Act attempts to streamline existing Federal transparency efforts to avoid duplicative information and confusion for students by creating a consumer-tested college dashboard that would display only key information students need when deciding which schools to attend

as well as ensuring that all students are appropriately represented in the data presented.

Taxpayers provide a great deal of money to help students attend the institutions of their choice and to pursue their passions. Therefore, we should make every effort to see that students have the best information available to help them make good decisions for where to continue their educations. The Strengthening Transparency in Higher Education Act seeks to make that information more accessible and easier to understand.

I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this legislation, which passed with bipartisan support out of the Education Committee.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Messer), my distinguished colleague and cosponsor for this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to our distinguished colleague from Tennessee (Mr. Roe).

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I also want to thank our colleagues on both sides of the aisle for working together on what I think is an important piece of legislation that will help families and students in the future.

I want to give particular thanks to the staffs on both sides of the aisle. The Education and the Workforce Committee has been very active this year and last year on presenting excellent legislation to this House, and I want to thank the staff for their good work.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on H.R. 4983, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise to express my support for H.R. 4983, the Strengthening Transparency in Higher Education Act.

The underlying bill strengthens the state of transparency in higher education by establishing a new college dashboard Web site, which replaces the Network Navigator and ensures the inclusion of nontraditional students in the data matrix.

The college dashboard Web site will provide better and more accessible information for students and families. Key information will consist of enrollment and completion data on full-time and part-time students as well as those segregated by Pell recipients--or race and ethnicity and disability--as well as information on net price, average student loan debt, and college costs.

The bill promotes transparency on the use of adjunct faculty. For the first time, our Nation's colleges will be required to report the ratio of part-time to full-time instructors by degree level. In addition, this legislation creates a more accessible calculator with clearer, more individualized information on student costs. Finally, the bill requires that the college dashboard Web site be consumer-tested with other agencies and students and institutions and experts to ensure it provides understandable and relevant information.

I am proud to say that Texas has been a leader in this area. The University of Texas' system, for example, has developed an impressive college productivity dashboard designed to increase transparency and to measure productivity in a more effective way. Above all, the UT system's dashboard also provides students, families, and policymakers with robust data and information that they can use to make more informed decisions.

Having better data and information has allowed the University of Texas to identify achievement gaps and to make improvements in areas that need reform. More accurate data on college participation and completion, for instance, can help to improve student outcomes, particularly for low-income students and students of color.

In closing, I applaud Chairman Kline, Ranking Member Miller, and Ranking Member Foxx for working in a bipartisan manner to advance this legislation, and I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote in favor of H.R. 4983.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott), a distinguished member of the Education Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I am honored to yield 3 minutes to my colleague from New Jersey (Mr. Holt).

Mr. Speaker I am honored to yield 3 minutes to my colleague from Maryland (Mr. Cummings).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Before I close, I want to say that I look forward to working with my friends on the other side of the aisle as soon as possible so that we can complete, in its entirety, the reauthorization of higher education which is greatly needed here in our country.

Mr. Speaker, I have no more speakers, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Ranking Member Hinojosa for the time, and I thank the chairman and Ranking Member Miller, and Chairwoman Foxx for their hard work on this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 4983, the Strengthening Transparency in Higher Education Act. This legislation will help prospective students and their families by providing more accessible information about the costs of attending our Nation's colleges and universities.

The bill before us today includes provisions that I authored that will improve a tool already available to help students and their families assess the cost of attending college, the net price calculator.

Currently, students and families have to guess where the calculators are located on the schools' Web pages, what each school calls the calculator, and whether the information it provides is accurate.

Additionally, veterans and servicemembers must try to determine whether the estimates provided by such calculators accurately reflect the academic benefits they have earned through their service.

As the ranking member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, one of my roles is to help government work more effectively and efficiently.

My bill, the Net Price Calculator Improvement Act, H.R. 3694, addresses the challenges identified with current net price calculators by ensuring that they will provide consistent and comparable price information for colleges and universities based on up-to-date data.

My legislation would also ensure that institutions place the calculators in consistent locations on their Web sites, and it would protect students who use the calculators from data mining.

I applaud my colleagues on the Education and the Workforce Committee for including these critical provisions in H.R. 4983, and urge the passage of this legislation.

As I close, let me note that the bill before us is an important first step in the process of reauthorizing the Higher Education Act, and it contains important reforms. However, our work will not be done by simply passing this bill.

The bills before the House this week ignore the bread and butter of the Federal higher education policy, Federal student aid. We must reauthorize the Higher Education Act in its entirety as quickly as possible.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 4983, the Strengthening Transparency in Higher Education Act.

With the cost of a college education increasing, and outstanding student loan debt now at a staggering $1.2 trillion, it is more important than ever for students and their families to have the necessary information to make informed decisions about their educational pursuits.

This legislation empowers students and their families by improving the dissemination of key information about colleges and universities through a consumer-tested college dashboard.

This bill coordinates and streamlines information from multiple Federal agencies to assist students in comparing schools to determine which will best suit their unique needs.

The only college completion rates currently available to students and their families are for the traditional, first-time, full-time student. At East Tennessee State University in my hometown, only about 60 percent of the students fit this description, leaving a significant portion of students not represented by the data.

Completion rates for other groups of students, such as veterans and Pell Grant recipients, are included in the college dashboard to ensure that this information is representative of all students.

Surprisingly, despite spending approximately $32 billion each year to provide Pell Grants to over 9 million students, we have little information about the educational outcomes for these students. By taking a more thorough look at the results this program is producing, we can improve the likelihood of student success.

In addition to providing students and parents with better information, this

bill will give us new tools to help strengthen the Pell Grants program, while ensuring it is a good investment for taxpayers.

To ensure that resource is utilized, students will be provided links to the college dashboard for each prospective school they look at, thus providing this important information to them at the pinnacle of their college search.

I thank the chairwoman and the ranking member on this bipartisan legislation, and I encourage its support.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas.

This bill creates a new Department of Education Web site that includes data allowing prospective students to better understand the cost of specific institutions, and I thank the chairman and the ranking member for working with me to improve this bill before it came to the floor.

The current Department of Education Web site is incomplete and misleading. The current Web site does not include the net price to a student according to that student's income level, which could cause, and does cause, lower and middle class students to reject schools that they, in fact, could afford.

They or their parents would see average net price, calculated for all students, and immediately assume it is unaffordable for them. The changes that I have included in this bill allow a parent or a prospective student to find, upfront, on the home page, the average net price of attending, based on the family's income level. And this information may lead students to consider institutions they would have otherwise excluded.

The difference between the average cost, calculated for all students, and the cost to a student, say, from a $40,000 income level, may be many thousands of dollars.

Now, I should add, in conclusion, that while this bill that we take up today makes some progress, this and the other bills we will be considering fall short of what is really needed: a comprehensive effort to help more students afford college.

We should be considering doubling the Pell Grants, reducing student loan interest rates, and doing all those other things that would be in a comprehensive higher education bill. I am sorry to say we are ignoring those solutions.

Nevertheless, I welcome the modest improvements that we will see in the legislation being considered here, and I hope that soon we will get to the comprehensive higher education legislation that the students of America deserve.