WASHINGTON – In order to make college more affordable and graduate more students, states and institutions should adopt innovative practices that lessen the time it takes to earn a degree and embrace finance structures that are tied to completion.
Those were some of the major points made Wednesday during a congressional hearing titled “Keeping College Within Reach: Exploring State Efforts to Curb Costs.”
“There’s going to be a need for a new approach to higher education finance,” said Scott D. Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO) and one of four witnesses who testified Wednesday before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training.
“The bottom line is there simply won’t be enough money to go around,” Pattison said, citing ongoing fiscal challenges being faced by states. “Now more than ever, public higher education, every level of state government, local government, the federal government will need to work together to improve access and performance, while spending resources wisely and efficiently and figuring out how to cut costs.”
While no one at the hearing disputed the need to make college affordable, differences emerged over what role the federal government should play in making that a reality.
From the outset of the hearing, those differences largely ran along partisan lines, with Republicans railing against increased federal regulations and higher education subsidies and Democrats emphasizing the need for diversity and highlighting the role of minority-serving institutions, or MSIs, in delivering affordable education.
