E&W Blog

Today, the Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development held a hearing to highlight how the Working Families Tax Cuts is lowering college costs.


Subcommittee Chairman Burgess Owens (R-UT) discussed how colleges are spending more money on administrative bloat, athletics, and non-academic programs rather than teaching. 

“Recent college enrollment surveys and federal data show that a long-running trend is continuing: colleges are on track to spend more per student on administrative costs than on teaching. It’s no surprise, then, that Americans have begun to question the value of postsecondary education,” he said. 

Chairman Tim Walberg (R-MI) used his line of questioning to push back on critics who claim Republican policies in the Working Families Tax Cuts like graduate loan limits are preventing access to degrees.


“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 are ensuring access to high-quality programs that can deliver an economic return that’s on par with the amount that people are able to borrow,” said Dr. Beth Akers, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Dr. Akers discussed with Rep. Mark Harris (R-NC) how colleges are not transparent about costs. “We’ve made it really hard for people to make good decisions,” she said. “The information technically exists…but American students, especially young high school students...don’t know…where the information is…Secondly, institutions have made it difficult for the potential student to interpret the financial aid offers that they give to them.” 


The Working Families Tax Cuts will drive down college costs by ending unlimited federal borrowing for graduate students, encouraging colleges to lower tuition and students to think critically about cost as they choose a postsecondary program and school.

Rep. Bob Onder (R-MO) showcased how states are leading the way in addressing college costs and providing high quality education through policies like tenure review. “The intent [with this policy] is accountability and value,” said Mr. Geoffrey Landward, Commissioner at the Utah System of Higher Education. “We have to ask the question ‘are you contributing to the core mission of the university and are you doing so efficiently and effectively?’” Mr. Raymond Rodrigues, Chancellor at the State University System of Florida, told Rep. Ryan Mackenzie (R-PA) how Florida is also lowering college costs through policy changes. “We changed our metric on completion—[leaving] the universal six-year graduation metric and [adopting] a four-year graduation metric. [This change encourages] our institutions to identify…the barriers that are keeping their students from graduating in four years and [gives] them incentives to eliminate those barriers. If you do that right off the bat, you’re saving your students 50 percent of the costs because they’re getting out in four years instead of six,” Mr. Rodrigues said. 

The end result of this policy change? Florida’s four-year graduation rate is at 60 percent while the national six-year graduation rate is 65 percent. “We are almost doing in four years what the typical public university does in six,” Mr. Rodrigues concluded. 

Bottom line: Committee Republicans are working to bring down college costs so students can pursue an education and feel assured their degree is worth the cost.