Advancing Competency-Based Education Demonstration Project Act of 2013
Floor Speech
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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I rise today to join my colleague in support of the Advancing Competency-Based Education Demonstration Project Act of 2013, a bill that I had the honor to coauthor with Representative Salmon. I greatly appreciate his work, as well as the work of many others on this bill.
This bill will help unleash innovation that promises to improve the quality of a college education and, just as importantly, if not more, reduce the cost. It will allow innovative colleges and universities to shorten the time it takes to earn a degree, reduce college costs through self-paced programs based on learning rather than time spent in the seat--and let's be honest, some of that time is often sleeping.
This innovation, which is called competency-based education, has a lot of promise. There is a lot to learn along the way, pitfalls to avoid. The benefits that we will learn over time promise to help allow students to work at their own pace and progress by mastering the knowledge of a course, which is essentially what the purpose of the course should be.
By demonstrating mastery of the course, regardless of how long it takes, we can, a, ensure employers that there is quality with regard to the outcomes of that course; and, b, reduce costs by allowing a student, if they are capable, to proceed faster.
This growing trend of innovation is very important because it provides a way to increase innovation and decrease costs. Since the last reauthorization in 2007, higher education has become more and more expensive.
Mr. Chairman, the cost of attending a university has risen by almost five times per student since 1983. At the same time that that cost has risen and a higher education has become harder and harder for American families to afford, the returns of a higher education have also increased.
College graduates who are working full time earn almost $17,000 more a year annually than their peers who only have a high school diploma.
While a 4-year university degree isn't always the best option for everyone, some form of postsecondary education, whether it is a community college or whether it is a certification program, has become increasingly imperative to landing a good-paying job in the 21st century workforce.
Competency-based education can increase access to higher education for both nontraditional students, as well as college-age students--oftentimes who have a job--a family, and other commitments.
The National Center for Education Statistics reports that of the 17 1/2 million people enrolled in college, only 15 percent were attending a 4-year college and living on campus.
So when we think about higher education and who is attending college, only 15 percent of those are having the experience I had or perhaps many of our colleagues had, where you go and you live in a dorm and you attend college for 4 years. That is only 15 percent.
The other 85 percent are doing something else. It might mean taking classes at night, it might mean online education, or it might mean taking courses over a longer period of time. That has been the innovative center around cost reduction and improvements in quality.
H.R. 3136 will help align our higher education system with workforce needs. By providing a framework for measuring and assessing competencies, students are more likely to matriculate with the knowledge they actually need to master to be able to hold a good job.
Likewise, businesses will know what to expect upon hiring these students. That is why I am proud to say this legislation has garnered the support of the Chamber of Commerce, which has applauded competency-based education as an opportunity for employers to work with colleges to help identify skills and competencies for specific courses and programs.
This legislation, just as importantly, if not more, will help combat the rising cost of college. In higher education today, there are very few incentives for institutions to decrease costs.
To fully address this, we would need to do a reauthorization of the Higher Education Act--that is not what we have before us today--but we do have a constructive bill that will allow colleges and universities to adopt new technology, remove some of those barriers to innovation that exist today, and allow universities to look beyond delivering traditional classroom instruction, as they did in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, and look at what a classroom of the 21st century might look like beyond the walls of the physical classroom.
Competency-based education is one of the first innovations in higher education that is specifically designed to help decrease costs and make college more affordable, while also improving quality in terms of what the student has learned.
At its core, what we are talking about here today, competency-based education, flips the traditional campus model on its head, so that learning is the constant, and time and location are the variable and are self-paced.
The result is actually a more uniform and measurable education, ensuring that students actually learn what they are set out to learn versus sitting in a seat for a period of time.
Because competencies are demonstrable skills, schools can potentially form articulation agreements with one another even easier under this bill and under the innovation pilot programs allowed under this bill, saving students and taxpayers money and giving students and families more options, geographically and within a city.
I am thrilled that the Department of Education has done what they could to allow some programs to explore this model through their Experimental Sites Initiative, but there are several advantages to legislation.
First and foremost, we are able to expand the Experimental Sites Initiative from four programs to 20 under this bill, and secondly, we are giving congressional bipartisan approval to this concept, which is far more enduring than the whim of a particular Secretary or a particular administration.
I am proud to say that institutions in my home district, like Colorado State University's Global Campus, are demonstrating that online public universities with competency-based programs can lead the way in attracting, educating, and graduating adult learners and other contemporary students and, at the same time, benefit the physical campus of the public university.
Colorado State University-Global Campus was created by the Colorado State University System Board of Governors in 2007 as the very first 100 percent online State university in the United States.
A longtime leader in academic innovation, CSU-Global already offers alternative credit options, including competency-based exams, which meet or exceed the rigorous academic standards required of a State university. These options help students to manage out-of-pocket expenses and reduce the overall cost of their education, while also rewarding them for their demonstration of knowledge.
However, CSU-Global and programs like it still need to adhere to the overly rigid higher education structure, which inhibits innovation by limiting schedules on which students can enroll and when students can receive financial aid.
In order to continue to be successful and innovate, programs like CSU-Global need the flexibility that this bill enhances to meet their students' needs.
As Congress considers the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, this project is more crucial than ever. That is why I was proud to work with Representative Salmon on this legislation, which would permit institutions chosen by the Secretary to waive certain regulations that stand in the way of adopting competency-based models that reward both students and universities based on what students learn rather than how much time they sat in a seat, regardless of whether they are awake or asleep.
I want to thank Ranking Member Miller and Chairman Kline for working with my colleagues and I to craft this bipartisan bill that promises to increase innovation, increase equality, and decrease costs in higher education, and I strongly encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me in voting ``yes'' on H.R. 3136 to support competency-based education and allow for laboratories of innovation across our great country as we all seek to reduce the costs and improve the quality of an increasingly important advanced education degree to help middle class families achieve their dreams in our country.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, I am very excited that, at a time when there are great divisions in this body on so many substantive issues that the American people want us to address, be it immigration reform or addressing our budget deficit, or be it within the realm of education, replacing No Child Left Behind or ESEA with an education law that makes sense for our country, or the Higher Education Act, at least we are able to come together around innovation and removing barriers that currently exist to innovations in higher education that promise to improve the quality and help certify the quality of what students learn, and at the same time reduce costs and allow students more options and choices with regard to how they can pursue an advanced degree or particular content knowledge that can help them achieve the job of their dreams.
While I am pleased that Secretary Duncan and the administration have allowed some programs to explore this model through the Experimental Sites Initiative, this bill is even more important today because we will not only expand to 20 sites the number of sites that will be allowed to experiment with regard to competency-based education, but just as importantly, we will provide a more enduring, bipartisan imprint on this important innovative policy.
We live in a very exciting time, Mr. Chairman, and technology promises to help us reinvent both kindergarten through 12th-grade education, as well as higher education, in ways that benefit American families. But we must adopt our legal framework to ensure that that happens.
Rather than continue to exclusively reward time that sits in seats with a professor up front lecturing, we need to make sure we are inclusive enough and allow innovation that allows students to proceed at their own pace, in their homes, so long as they can demonstrate they can master the knowledge that is the goal of the course.
Employers benefit, which is why the U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports this bill, by knowing that students have achieved content area knowledge of the course. Universities like Colorado State University in Fort Collins benefit because through the auxiliary institution they are able to offer even more varieties of courses to both their on-campus students as well as the surrounding community.
Most importantly, students and families benefit by having more choices and being able to afford a college education at a time when it is increasingly important in the global economy.
Competency-based education can increase quality and decrease costs, when done right. In allowing innovation and experimentation, we will learn what doesn't work and we will learn what does work. There are good ways to do it, and there are ways that fall short. But to be able to get to that answer that to employers and universities and families and our country offers so much promise, we need to allow this innovation to occur and change the restrictive laws that currently lock the bulk of funding into the seat time requirements of the Carnegie units.
I want to thank Ranking Member Miller, Chairman Kline, Representative Salmon, and others for working to craft this bipartisan bill that will increase both access and innovation in higher education.
I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on H.R. 3136 to support competency-based education and provide contemporary students with the ability to attain a degree that is based on their knowledge and skills instead of how long they are sitting in a seat.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, the Walberg amendment would allow institutions that have shown success with their demonstration projects to increase the number of students that can participate in their programs, helping to scale and allow more students to benefit.
By increasing the number of students in successful programs, we can better get a sense of how successful programs can be brought to scale.
Institutions should be rewarded with the ability to run a more robust demonstration project if their programs are reducing costs, improving quality, shortening time to degree. We should make sure that they are allowed to expand and remove any barriers to that.
Therefore, I am proud to join my colleague in support of the Walberg amendment. I encourage my colleagues to vote ``yes'' so that institutions will be able to run more robust and scalable demonstration projects.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of the McNerney amendment. This amendment will require participating institutions to show how they are addressing the needs of veterans and members of the Armed Forces in their demonstration project.
Americans with military experience, both present or in their past, stand to benefit tremendously from competency-based education because they leave the military with a wide range of practicable, demonstrable, and marketable skills.
I have talked to so many veterans in my district who felt that they received excellent education within the military around a particular task, but get no credit for that with regard to the demonstrable skills that they have achieved. This amendment will help that occur.
Ensuring that institutions report more on how veterans and members of the Armed Forces are performing in demonstration projects will help highlight those who have served our country to the Department of Education so we can better identify best practices and expand best practices to those who have served.
I strongly urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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