Partisanship was put aside yesterday as Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) met at the American Enterprise Institute to promote their co-sponsored legislation Student Right to Know Before You Go Act, which focuses on supplying students and their families with the necessary information to determine the value of their education.
“I think one of the things we need to start grappling with is that kids are now making decisions at 17 years of age that have dramatic impact on them when they’re 55 in terms of how much money they owe and where they work,” Rubio said in the AEI hearing.
The legislation, which was first introduced in February, would give students access to statistics on things such as graduation rates at institutions and post-graduation average annual earnings for certain careers, according to a PDF on Wyden’s website. The bill would also transform the existing information collection systems under the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, or IPEDS. The changes are intended to make the data more usable, organized, and consistent across the board, as well as taking much of the information reporting pressure off of educational institutions and placing it on state governments.
“Students have a right to know how long it will take them to complete their education, what their likelihood of completion is, how far that education will take them after graduation, and at what cost,” Wyden’s PDF summary states. Colleges and states, as Wyden said at the hearing, already collect most of this information, but one comprehensive database does not exist.
“At best, the information that students get today is incomplete,” Wyden said. He cited a lack of uniform standards, poor communication between states, incomplete information and the increasing number of mobile students as reasons for the confusion students and their parents currently face when trying to gauge the value of a college degree.
Rubio, who had more than $125,000 of debt following his education, admitted that he did not fully understand how to weigh the cost and benefits of his degrees when he was young. “Every month, some lady called Sallie Mae was taking money out of my bank account,” Rubio joked, drawing laughter from the audience. “I don’t know if you guys know her.” He went on to say that his education was a worthwhile investment for him.
Wyden noted that over the years, the crisis in education has been about simply getting students access to education. “I think we ought to go, however, to access plus value,” he said.
