2016 Presidential Campaign Blog: Iowa

What They're Saying About… “Chris Christie Lays Out Education Plan”
Honorary Chairman Governor Christie Offered A “Wide-Ranging” Series Of “Detailed Proposals To Tackle Exploding Higher Education Costs And Struggling K-12 Public Education Systems”

Headlines …
“In Iowa, Christie Slams Unions, Details Education Agenda”
– The Washington Times
“Christie Lays Out Education Agenda In Iowa”
– Des Moines Register
“Chris Christie Spells Out Education Plan”
– CNN
“Christie Proposes ‘Unbundling’ College Costs, Changing Teacher Contract Rules”
– Radio Iowa
“Christie Wants Colleges To Be More Open About Their Spending”
– The Associated Press
__________________________________________
What They’re Saying …
Des Moines Register: “In a wide-ranging education policy speech at Iowa State University, Chris Christie took aim at unions and college spending and called for teacher tenure reform, merit pay, charter schools and greater disclosure of university expenses.” (Joel Aschbrenner, “Christie lays out education agenda in Iowa,” Des Moines Register, 6/11/15)
• “Darrell Jessen, of Iowa Falls … [said] Christie talked about ‘the strangle-hold teachers unions have on the education system" and "putting power back in the hands of parents and students.’”
Radio Iowa: “Ken Anderson of Marshalltown likes Christie’s ‘direct approach.’ ‘I’ve been following him for a couple of years, so I’ve got a lot of interest in Governor Christie and this is my first opportunity to hear him in person,’ Anderson said. ‘I was impressed and still have strong support for what he might do.’” (O. Kay Henderson, “Christie Proposes ‘Unbundling’ College Costs, Changing Teacher Contract Rules,” Radio Iowa, 6/11/15)
• “Thurston Gable of Harley is an Iowa State student who plans to be a history teacher. ‘As someone that’s got a pretty large stake in education for the rest of my life, I loved everything he stood for,’ Gable said. ‘I want to work hard. I want to be judged by my own merits and my own work ethic and not by what a union negotiator says on behalf.’”
Politico: “New Jersey Gov. … Chris Christie laid out a multi-pronged higher education agenda Thursday, and a key part — unsurprisingly — is college affordability.” (Allie Grasgreen, “Christie: Debt-free college is 'wrong,’” Politico, 6/11/15)
• “Christie also wants to consider approaches like tax credits for donors to higher education grant organizations, and income-share agreements, where students repay private financing received in college with some percentage of their income in the future.”
CNN: “Gov. Chris Christie blasted Democratic plans for free college in an hour-long speech on education Thursday, offering instead a list of detailed proposals to tackle exploding higher education costs and struggling K-12 public education systems.” (Ashley Killough, “Chris Christie spells out education plan,” CNN, 6/11/15)
• “Speaking to a packed room at Iowa State University, the New Jersey Republican said the push for debt-free college programs is ‘wrong’ and a ‘typical liberal approach.’”
• “Instead the New Jersey governor proposed a policy called income share agreements, which would require students to pay a percentage of their salary for a certain period of time after they graduate, rather than take out student loans. The percentage they pay depends on how successful they are.”
Washington Times: “Mr. Christie relayed how he helped push through reforms on teacher tenure in his state and merit pay to schools in Newark while expanding charter schools and the state’s public school choice program, but also noted that a 'last in, first out' layoff policy he’s fought against still exists.” (David Sherfinski, “In Iowa, Christie slams unions, details education agenda,” Washington Times, 6/11/15)
• “To make college more affordable, Mr. Christie raised the idea of income share agreements, where students pay for college with a percentage of future earnings, as well as potentially holding classes at off-peak hours to reduce costs.”
The Associated Press: “Christie took aim at tuition costs, a concern that has come up frequently during his travels to early-voting states.” (Jill Colvin, “Christie blasts teachers unions, colleges 'drunk on cash,'” The Associated Press, 6/11/15)
• “Christie said schools need to be more open about their finances and unbundle costs so students don't have to pay for services they're not using. He said they should have to do so as a condition for getting federal aid and grants.”
• “New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Thursday proposed withholding federal aid to colleges that refuse to provide more transparency in their finances and endorsed letting students pay down their loans with community service.”
• “Speaking at Iowa State University in Ames, … [Christie] also blasted teachers unions for putting 'the comfort of adults ahead of the potential of our kids.' He held out concessions he'd won on tenure protections in New Jersey as a model for the nation. His speech on education was his fourth in a policy series ...”
The Wall Street Journal: “Gov. Chris Christie endorsed income-sharing agreements and other proposals to help make college tuition affordable, while attacking teacher unions for impeding change on the public school level.” (Heather Haddon, “Christie Says Many Colleges ‘Drunk on Cash’,” WSJ, 6/11/15)
• “Mr. Christie threw support behind income-sharing agreements, a student loan alternative where investors earns a certain percentage of pupil’s future income in exchange for tuition funding now. He also supported a system that would reward students with tuition grants in exchange for community service.”
The New York Times: “[M]r. Christie spoke at length on his educational record in New Jersey and how that would inform his vision for the country. And … Mr. Christie spent the majority of his time tackling the issue of student debt in higher education, another frequent talking point on the campaign trail.” (Nick Corasaniti, “Chris Christie Lays Out Education Plan,” New York Times - First Draft , 6/11/15)
• “Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey leaned on the podium with his right elbow, his standard let-me-give-it-to-you-straight stance, and gave one of his classic blunt warnings, this time setting up a nearly hourlong speech laying out his educational platform.”
NBC News: “[Christie] offered a number of proposals aimed at cutting the cost of a four-year degree, including discounted weekend classes and an itemized tuition bills that would give students a more complete picture of how schools are spending their money.” (Andrew Rafferty, “Chris Christie: Tuition Rising Because Colleges 'Drunk on Cash,’” NBC News, 6/11/15)

Remarks of Honorary Chairman Governor Chris Christie on Education in Ames, Iowa on June 11, 2015. As Prepared for Delivery

Speech on Education in Ames
Iowa State University
Memorial Union
2229 Lincoln Way
Ames, Iowa
June 11, 2015

Thank you for your kind words. It’s great to be here and to be back in Iowa.

As Governor of New Jersey, I get to visit a lot of interesting places and to meet a lot of people. But there are some places that are really special for me – and some of the most special are college campuses.

Because the way I see it, every place of learning is a chance to see our future.

Here at Iowa State, we get to see the future of agriculture, engineering, science, communications and so many other fields where you’re leading the way.

We get to see the future of leadership – the amazing students and faculty who will define our country’s path in the years ahead.
And we get to see young people choosing their own futures – getting the skills and knowledge to go out into the world and achieve new opportunities for themselves, their families and communities.

Every great university is a monument to our faith in the future.

Every quality school is a ladder helping us to reach higher in that future.

And every hardworking student and teacher is leading us into the future.

There is no greater cause for hope or force for change in our country, than education. When we get education right, that’s when we can get more people climbing that ladder as individuals.

But education is also how we climb that ladder as a country.

Think about everything in the last 100 years that defined the American century. We built an economy without equal. We won the wars and kept the peace. We led the world in new discoveries and innovation – exploring wonders from the inside of an atom to the surface of other worlds.

Every single achievement began with education - the hunger of a student, the wisdom of a teacher.
The race for the stars began at a classroom desk – when we trained a new generation of engineers who built the Apollo program. It was scientists at the Ames Laboratory who helped lead the Manhattan Project, delivering the weapons to end one world war and deter the next. And it was Iowa State that helped usher in a new digital age, with the invention of the first electronic digital computer – right here on this campus.

So when we talk about how to continue improving education in our country, for me that’s a debate that’s full of hope – and it’s something I’m looking forward to talking about with all of you today. I know this is a really important issue for Americans everywhere, and in every community I visit, this is an issue that people want to talk about, and have a lot of ideas and concerns about. So this is something we need to have a conversation about.

But here’s the interesting thing about the education debate. Everyone agrees that education is essential for our country’s future – but at the national level almost no one is having a productive conversation.

When reformers talk about how we can improve the quality of teaching in our schools, or hold teachers accountable for the performance of their students, they’re shouted down for being ‘anti-teacher.’

When people talk about how to give parents greater choice over the way their children are educated, or ways to introduce greater innovation into public schools, they’re condemned as enemies of public education.

And when it comes to giving more young people a chance to participate in higher education without absorbing mountains of debt, or to improving the quality of teaching and research in our universities, it’s called outrageously disruptive to time-tested institutions.

I don’t think that this approach serves our country well, and I don’t think it’s worthy of anyone who wants to be a leader in our country. Because right now, there are a lot of signs that we’re starting to fall behind in education.
In the most recent OECD rankings, out of 34 countries the United States is in 27th place for math and 20th for science when it comes to measuring standards of achievement for 15 year-olds.

In 1995, we had some of the highest college graduation rates among the major industrialized economies. Now we’re somewhere near the bottom.

In a survey of American scientists, just 16% say that our K-12 education system is above average or better when it comes to teaching our kids the things they need to know. Among American CEOs, 97% say their company faces a skills gap in the US – finding qualified candidates to fill the roles they need.

But the data doesn’t even tell the full story. It doesn’t tell us the human cost of a broken education system.
The bright young kid who wants to do well in school, but is punished for being born into the wrong zip code – and a failing school district.

The mom and dad desperately trying to make ends meet so their child can be the first in their family to earn a college degree.
Heroic educators who want to do what’s right for their students, but are smothered by bureaucracy and the defenders of the status quo.

Well if we want education to remain that force for change in our country, then we need to do better. And we need to have a real discussion about the education reforms we need – where we can acknowledge the challenges we face without wallowing in pessimism.
We owe it to our students. We owe it to parents and teachers. And we owe it to our communities and our country. Because if we don’t fix education, we hurt the quality of life for all of us; we don’t get to climb the ladder of progress as a nation, we don’t get to aim for the stars in the 21st century.

So it’s time we had a conversation about education that isn’t defined by ideological dogma or narrow institutional interests.
Let’s talk about what real education reform for America looks like – and let’s put hope back into education.

A model for K-12 reform

Let’s start by talking about how we can improve our public school system as a country.

Now every school district has its own challenges. But we also know that in K-12 education, we face common challenges in every community. We need to ensure that every child receives a quality education, no matter what their zip code is. We need to reward good teachers and demand accountability in our classrooms. And we need to acknowledge that not all children face the same circumstances – and parents deserve to choose the best way to educate them.

When I took office as Governor at the beginning of 2010, I inherited a situation where we had to face all of those challenges – and in some cases, some pretty extreme versions of them.

New Jersey was spending more per pupil in our public schools than almost any other state in America. But in many cases, children weren’t receiving the education they deserved.

While many public schools were succeeding, others were failing – and often, the successes were used to camouflage the failures.
While the vast majority of our public school teachers were performing well, some were underperforming and holding school districts back – and administrators were powerless to take action.

And in some communities education had become an intractable problem for generation after generation. In Newark, our largest city, just one in four ninth graders entering high school that year were predicted to finish high school 4 years later. In the city of Asbury Park, we were spending nearly $30,000 per pupil, per year, but the dropout rate was almost 10 times the state average.
Now lots of people said we couldn’t fix it or that we should just throw more money at it. The pessimists, led by the teachers’ unions, declared that unless you have a PhD in education, your solutions are too simplistic. More money was the only real solution. They claimed that those of us who acknowledged our failures didn’t respect the work of teachers.

But it wasn’t that reformers were ignoring the interests of teachers. It was teachers’ unions who were ignoring their own members – the majority of heroic, tireless educators who just want to do the best for their students. The union put the comfort of adults ahead of the potential of our kids.

Well when the unions said that only more money could reform K-12 education, here’s what I said to them – we need accountability, competition and choice. That’s what will put our children first.

I’m a product of the public school system in New Jersey. I would not be standing here if it weren’t for wonderful teachers and a great school system that prepared me for college and law school, and all the things that I had to confront intellectually and professionally in my life. So not taking on the challenge wasn’t an option.

Here’s what we did.

In a bipartisan effort, Republicans and Democrats in the state legislature came together with my administration, with teachers and principals, with school administrators and with education experts to build support for comprehensive education reform, and then to enact it.

For the first time in 100 years, we came together to reform teacher tenure in New Jersey – so that failing teachers can be removed from the classroom, and held accountable for the performance of their students. There is no other profession in this country where if you are failing and hurting the interests of the people you’re supposed to serve, you can get away without any repercussions. There is no other profession where we stand for that kind of conduct. To put children first, reforming teacher tenure is a first and reasonable step in the right direction.

Through hard-nosed collective bargaining, for the first time we also brought merit pay to schools in Newark. More than two decades of research showed that the two factors used to calculate a teacher’s salary – credentials and time served – aren’t actually related to a teacher’s effectiveness in the classroom. So we changed this system so that now we can pay the best teachers more, and reflect actual results. In every other aspect of American society we reward achievement and pay more for excellence, and it seems to work pretty well. So again, another reasonable step forward.

We opened up New Jersey’s public school choice program to any interested school district, giving parents greater choice over where to send their children. This is a program driven by a simple principle – I think parents are better suited to make decisions about their children’s education than union leaders. This upcoming year, nearly 5,000 students will attend schools outside their hometowns, and about 132 school districts are participating in that program. So it looks like parents agree.

We’ve also helped expand quality charter schools across New Jersey, adding 35 new schools over the past five years and closing 17 poor performing ones. We now have 87 charter schools across the state, with more than 37,000 students enrolled.

And over the last four years we’ve invested a record amount in aid to our public schools – nearly $12 billion in the current fiscal year. Money on its own won’t get the job done, but if we combine that with meaningful reform, we can use taxpayer money responsibly in a way that really makes a difference.

As part of that we made sure that we’re investing in better leaders and administration in schools, with our principals and superintendents. When I came into office, 70% of the school superintendents in New Jersey were being paid more than the Governor. That just seemed crazy to me, so we’ve changed the system to ensure we’re not blowing tons of money on bureaucracy and that bonuses for administrators are based on objective measured performance of students in their districts.

Of course, there are plenty of things we still need to fix. In Camden, Newark, Paterson and other cities, we need to continue working hard to turn around failing schools. But we’ve already started to make progress.

We’ve challenged the antiquated rule around who gets laid off when budgets get cut. We’ve always had a system called ‘last in, first out’ – if you’re the teacher who joined the school most recently, even if you’re the highest performing teacher, you’ll still be the person to get laid off first. That makes no sense. But the power of the teacher’s union has prevented us from instituting quality-based layoffs. It is insane but it is the worst policy money can buy – bought by the unions to protect their most ineffective members. So getting rid of ‘last in, first out’ must be something we take on at the national level.

We’ve grown the number of charter schools and passed Urban Hope legislation to create renaissance schools in our highest risk districts. We’ve brought in transformative leaders and programs. And none of this we’ve done on our own. We worked with teachers. We listened to community leaders and parents to get buy-in. We brought in new expertise and talent.

If our goal is to provide a quality education for every child, no matter where they live, sometimes that means giving communities new options to deal with unique circumstances. And that’s what we did.

Education can be fixed. And there are great people on both sides of the political aisle and wonderful teachers who are willing to do the right thing.

Now, none of this was easy. In fact, it was really, really hard to pull people together when we faced so much opposition.
But we must keep going. We cannot back down. And we didn’t take no for an answer.
We must put the God given potential of every child first.

A few years ago I got a letter from a woman living in Texas.

“Dear Governor-elect Christie,” she wrote. “I saw you on CNN this week and you look just like the dark-haired young man who entered my fifth grade classroom 37 years ago. I challenged you back then and you answered that challenge. I hope you remember me because I sure remember you. And I’m proud of you.” That teacher was named Ruth Manishin and she was my fifth grade teacher. She remembered me 37 years later over the T.V. And I certainly remembered her.

That story is very special for me. Because it’s not about me. It’s about that teacher.

That's what teachers do when they’re at their best. They are memorable. And they change lives.

The enemy we face is the mediocrity of inaction – the people who would rather not speak up to fix a broken system because it’s difficult, or rather shout down those with reasonable, bipartisan solutions to advance selfish interests.

We successfully fought that in New Jersey to get tenure reform and merit pay. Public school choice and more charter schools. But we lost fights too – last in, first out still exists as do some failing school districts. The fight has had some successes but the fight is far from over. We need a President who will fight for parents and their children – to put them in control of their education and not the unions and the education establishment.

Let’s put children’s interests before special interests – and demand that every child in this country get a great education.
Reforming Higher Education

But after high school, comes higher education. And improving higher education is the other half of the education reform our country needs.

And let’s be clear – higher education is an opportunity that every person in our country should have access to. Because the consequences can be totally life-changing.

I want to share a story with you about my father, Bill Christie.

My dad was an outstanding high school student. He was top of his class, and seemed destined for greater things. In fact, he got an offer of admission from Columbia University.

But my dad couldn’t go. He couldn’t afford it, and he was incredibly disappointed.

My dad ended up being drafted into the Army during the Korean War. And after he got back, he wasn’t sure about what to do with the rest of his life. So he wound up working at the Breyers ice cream plant in Newark, New Jersey.

At this point in the story, my dad’s life could have gone in an entirely different direction. He could have worked on the production line forever. But then an older man on that line took it upon himself to give my dad some advice. ‘You’re a smart young man’ he said. ‘You fought in the Army. Why don’t you go to college on the GI Bill?’

My dad was still sore from not being able to go to Columbia. He wasn’t sure if he should take his colleague’s advice. But eventually he did, and he enrolled at Rutgers, where he completed his bachelor’s degree over 6 years – while continuing to work to pay his way through college.

So because my dad was helped by that colleague, and by the GI Bill, he was able to get his degree in accounting. And he ended up becoming a Certified Public Accountant and having a career in accounting and on Wall Street for 40 years. Because he had the determination, but also the support, he was able to change his life, and lift his family up. And that’s the reason I’m here talking with all of you.

For me, this is a really personal story. But it’s also the story of how our system is supposed to work – a system where we all need to take personal responsibility to grasp the opportunities of higher education, but also one where we can get a leg up when we need it. And it’s a story about what a college education means.

Today, we know that story is also backed up by data. From research we know that there is no other time in history when going to college is more closely tied to economic mobility. In the United States, people with a college degree on average are paid more than 74% more than those with just a high school diploma. And for almost every parent and family, a college education is something they strive to achieve for their children. 94% of parents say they want their kids to go to college.

Well, I think that’s a good thing, and we should celebrate and encourage every young person who has the drive to go to college.
Republicans have always believed that the future belongs to hardworking, ambitious Americans. We should celebrate and support every young person who dreams of bettering themselves through higher education.

And as for our state and federal governments, their role should be clear. They need to make it easier for every student to get a higher education and to support them in reaching their full potential through affordable, quality higher education programs.
So how do we achieve this?

Part of the solution will be through the steps we take to improve K-12 education. If we can improve the quality of the learning experience in our high schools, if we can reduce the number of high school graduates who need remedial training before taking a college class, more young people will be motivated and prepared to go on to higher education. If we improve one part of our education system, we can improve all of it.

States should also offer early intervention programs to ensure college readiness, and in New Jersey this is something we’ve really invested in. We launched a pilot program, College Readiness Now, that offers low income students the chance to take remediation classes early in their high school careers, before they enroll in college – allowing students to close achievements gaps that can hold them back later in their college careers.

Community colleges across New Jersey have been working with over 60 high schools to help high school juniors and seniors to improve their English and math skills. We’ve been running this since last year with the support of state-administered federal funding, and more than 900 students have already been helped through spring and summer transition programs offered by community colleges. After completing the program, all of the students showed progress and about half were ready for college. So this is something we’re really encouraged about and think can be a great model for other states.

But getting high school students ready for college is only part of the solution. To help more students into higher education, we need to solve some bigger challenges.

Making college more affordable

The first of these is making college more affordable.

Now the affordability of higher education has been a big challenge for a long time. But since the economic downturn in 2008, this has become an ever-bigger issue – and one that’s having a really severe impact on a lot of students and families.

Over the last few years, tuition rates have gone through the roof. They’ve been steadily climbing since the ‘80s, but over the last decade they’ve exploded at public, four-year colleges. Grants and financial assistance from the states have helped a bit, but they haven’t kept pace with costs.

Students are having to take on two, three or more jobs just to get by – making it more difficult for them to focus on studying and completing their degrees. And that’s probably why only about 40% of students who go to public four year colleges have finished their degrees four years later.

And entire generations are being saddled with debt. A college education lasts a lifetime – but so does the debt.
So for too many students, they’re caught between a rock and a hard place. They can go to college, struggle to get by, and face crippling debts. Or they cannot go to college – and face the loss of economic opportunities and mobility that comes from that.
It’s time we stop making a college education a choice between the lesser of two hardships.

If we want young people to continue aspiring towards a college education, and if we want students to have the means and the confidence to complete their programs, then we need to support them.

It’s not about just making higher education free. That is a typical liberal approach. It is wrong. And we know it. There are always costs involved, and if college graduates are going to reap the greater economic rewards and opportunities of earning a degree, then it seems fair for them to support the cost of the education they’re receiving. Earning a degree should actually involve earning it.
But for the neediest students, we can and should do more. And that’s where I think we should focus our efforts to make college more affordable.

Over recent decades, there’s been a steady increase in the amount of economic assistance available for middle-class students to earn a college degree. In the last ten years, Pell Grants have grown by 118%, subsidized student loans have grown by 12%, and unsubsidized loans by more than 150%.

Certainly, there’s more we can do to help middle-class students to support themselves through college, and to manage the burden of debt. I will discuss that in a moment. First, let’s discuss the situation facing students at the bottom of the economic ladder.
Even while federal government spending for higher education has grown, the resources for poorer students have grown increasingly slimmer. Overall, students from families making less than $40,000 now receive a smaller proportion of all federal higher education aid than students from more well-off backgrounds. Over the last ten years, the only federal student aid programs to be cut have been for the neediest students. The Federal Supplemental Education Opportunity Grant shrunk by 20%. Perkins Loans – one of the oldest and most valuable student aid programs for those with “exceptional financial need” – declined by 54% over the last decade. Congress hasn’t even made a new contribution to that program since President Bush’s 2005 budget.

If we believe in social mobility and economic empowerment, then we need to fix this. The poorest students deserve to go to college too, and they have a chance to receive the greatest boost from this.

And they already face the greatest challenges – they’re the least likely to go to college in the first place, or to complete their degrees.

Without delay, Congress should reconsider its spending priorities when it comes to higher education, and properly fund and expand student aid programs for the families at the bottom of the economic ladder. Everyone deserves a chance to climb that ladder, and it’s the right thing to do.

There are other efforts we should consider when it comes to affordability for students from middle class backgrounds.
One interesting proposal from Governor Branstad is for Student Debt Reduction Organization tax credits. This would give taxpayers, either individuals or companies, the option to donate to one of these organizations in exchange for a tax credit. This organization would then be able to award grants to students in exchange for them completing some form of community service. That seems like a win-win situation for students, communities and taxpayers, and it merits consideration not just in Iowa, but across America. Ideas like this prove once again why Governor Branstad has been a leader in education for three decades. Affordability and innovation go hand in hand, and proposals like this can help us to drive the conversation around affordability in a new direction.

Another innovative approach could be the use of income share agreements. This is a program where students agree to pay some percentage of their future income for a defined period of time in exchange for private financing. Unlike traditional student loans, the amount a student pays depends on their success.

This has a lot of potential benefits. With traditional private loans, students whose degrees don’t pay off can wind up getting stuck with crippling repayments. But with an income share agreement, there’s no lump sum to repay and so there’s very strong downside protection for students. Meanwhile, the investors in these programs have incredibly strong incentives to help students find a quality program that sets them up for long-term career success, and to continue advising and guiding students after graduation. Income share agreements also have the potential to stem tuition inflation, and reward high quality but lower cost programs.

Of course, it’s all in the details. Anything like this would have to be structured so it’s fair and effective for students. But we need to have a bigger national conversation about how to innovate on student financing - and options like this should be on the table.

Greater transparency, accountability, competition

But expanding our student financing options is only part of the solution to making higher education more affordable and accessible.
We also need to help universities to run better – and to introduce greater transparency, accountability and competition into our higher education system.

We know that there are so many extraordinary universities and leaders in higher education out there. But we also know that there are institutions out there which are less effective, and don’t always offer their students the academic value and the value for money that we should demand.

Today we see an increasing number of schools that aren’t driven by the needs of students, they’re driven by tuition fees. They aren’t meeting their responsibility to be stewards of public resources. Some colleges are drunk on cash and embarking on crazy spending binges, just because they know they can get huge revenues from tuition. We have million dollar plus salaries for education administrators, and millions more being poured into unnecessary college bureaucracy.

That’s not a good system for students. That’s not a sustainable system for anyone. Because institutions that waste money like that aren’t being run well. Professor Clayton Christensen at Harvard Business School estimates that up to 50% of U.S. colleges could go bankrupt in the next 10 to 15 years. That’s hopefully hyperbole. But it’s no exaggeration that institutions are going to fail, and they’re going to hurt students – because they aren’t using money responsibly today, or planning for tomorrow.
Here’s how we can fix this.

First, colleges should provide much greater transparency about how they’re spending their money, both before and after someone decides to become a student there.

If you’re buying a house, there’s a lot of data we can look at to decide if this is a wise investment. What kind of neighborhood is this? How will my future costs change?

But with a degree, which is easily the other big expense in people’s lives, we usually have much less information about how a college is spending its money. People are told that degrees are worth an extra million dollars over the course of their life – so trust us. We’ll spend your money well.

And when you become a student, and you’re charged for your tuition, you still don’t get a lot of information about how all that money is actually used. The college bill is the most opaque bill in the world. It is often just three lines – tuition, room and board and other fees. It’s like getting a restaurant bill that just says “food.” We would not accept that for a $60 dinner bill. We should not accept it for a $60,000 college bill.

People should be able to know in advance how colleges are spending money, where their resources are going, and how they expect prices to change in the future. And after students are enrolled at college, they should be able to see cost itemization for tuition, so they can know what they’re really paying for.

And if we can break out those costs, we should also unbundle them – allowing students, to just pay for the education and not all the add-ons. Now, of course there’s huge value in students getting the full college experience. But for students from low-income backgrounds, those extra costs can mean the difference between going to college or not. So we have a big opportunity here to make a difference in affordability too.

This is about empowering consumers. People will vote with their feet by deciding which colleges to attend, based on whether they’re using money wisely. And by shining a light on wasteful spending, we can make colleges more disciplined. So we should demand transparency from every educational institution, and make this a requirement for participating in federal grant and aid programs. If you are unwilling to show us what we are paying for and permit us to pay for the education we want, then we should prohibit those institutions from taxpayer-funded programs. It is simple fairness and common sense.

And once we have that transparency, we should work with institutions to help them run leaner and smarter.

Part of that will come just from schools being able to analyze and compare their operating costs with other similar institutions. Sharing data is already something that will be transformative.

But we can also do more to help institutions to manage their assets and facilities in more efficient ways. One obvious thing we should be doing is encouraging schools to look at programs with low levels of graduation, and to see if that’s because of a lack of quality or a lack of interest from students. Failing programs should be cut, and the resources used elsewhere.
Lots of schools also have exorbitant operating and maintenance costs because they’re not optimizing the way they use their physical space. They hold all the classes during peak hours, and so need to build a lot more facilities. But that’s not even helpful for a lot of students who want to be able to combine studying with work – wouldn’t it make more sense to offer more evening and weekend classes? Should we offer more classes on Fridays?

Kean University in New Jersey has been offering students up to 20% discounts in tuition for courses taken on Fridays and Saturdays. At the University of Iowa, departments have been directed to schedule more classes on Fridays. These are sensible steps that can help institutions to cater to more students, without driving up operating costs. And we should encourage every institution to think about incorporating the same.

Innovation, flexibility, alternative options

And this brings me to the final piece of the education reform puzzle.

We just need to be more imaginative about what higher education can look like.

We shouldn’t fear to think about alternatives to traditional four-year universities. The world is changing – and education ought to change with it. We should give students lots of different ways to learn, as long as they’re getting valuable preparation for the things they want to do in their lives.

Higher education should be for everyone. But that doesn’t mean there’s a single model for everyone. And there are some really valuable options that more people should be offered.

Right now, we encourage students to focus on earning one four-year degree, and to get all the training they need in a single burst. But increasingly, students want the flexibility to jump in and out of education as needed – to follow jobs and opportunities during college when they need to, or to return to college later for additional training, as they require new skills. We should work to create ‘stackable credentials’ so that students can re-enroll at different colleges without losing credits. That’s going to make learning more efficient, more affordable and more responsive to the changing needs of industry.

We should also give people other ways to get the skills and earn the credentials they need.

We should consider ways to extend the use of apprenticeships, and to make them more attractive for young people and employers. Learning on the job is still learning, and for many professions it’s the most valuable experience there is. So we should provide tax incentives to cover the cost of apprentice wages and program costs.

Students in every state should also have the option to get some sort of on-the-job training before finishing high school, and this is something we’ve already been doing in New Jersey. There are high schools where students can earn certifications in welding through a partnership with the American Welding Society, train to use Oracle databases, or become technology specialists certified by Microsoft. These are all meaningful education options that can help students to choose their path after high school.

We should invest more in offering high-quality professional training opportunities.

In New Jersey and in Iowa, employers work with community colleges to bring skill training programs onto their sites. For example, students at Iowa Central Community College can complete their degrees while also getting on the job experience at Cargill. Linking employers with skill development programs like this seems like a really good model, and it’s something we shouldn’t just be offering through community colleges, but through private and for-profit institutions too.

And if more companies and organizations want to step up and provide valuable training courses, then we should get Department of Education bureaucrats off their backs and rein in onerous regulations.

Right now a lot of state and federal regulations make it really difficult to offer training programs that can evolve to keep up with the needs of our labor market. If you want to get access to federal aid for a program, then you have to be an accredited provider and to do that, you have to grant degrees. In many states if you change your curricula you have to ask for approval again, and if you provide online training then you have to be approved in every state individually. None of that makes sense to me, and we should get rid of regulations holding people back from getting the skills they need.

And if people have the right skills and knowledge, then they should be able to earn some type of credential. We should have an option for certifying students based on their prior learning, professional or military experience, and participation in training programs – allowing them to ultimately earn certification or complete a sub-baccalaureate program of study. We have done this in New Jersey with returning veterans and it has been wildly successful. Research by the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce predicts that by 2020, 30% of jobs will require less than a bachelor's degree, but more than a high school diploma. Why not allow people to just get the qualifications they need to get the job they want?

Of course, if students do decide later to go on to college, then they should still be able to earn credit for the knowledge they’ve earned outside the classroom. That’s what we’ve done with the New Jersey PLAN program, allowing students to earn credit towards their degrees through Prior Learning Assessment. We’ve shortened the time students need to be in the classroom, lowered costs and expanded qualifications to more hardworking young people. And that’s really all I think you can ask for in a program.

Close

So that’s how I see the opportunities ahead for us in education reform as a country.

We face a lot of big challenges in the years ahead. We need to do more to improve the quality of K-12 education, we need to speak out and stand up to the entrenched educational interests and we also need to make higher education more affordable. We need to improve the way our higher education institutions operate, and to provide meaningful alternatives to 4-year traditional degree programs.

I’ve think we’ve made a lot of progress in New Jersey, and there are things we’ve achieved that can be an inspiration and model for reformers in other states and at the national level. But education reform is a bigger conversation that we need to have now as a country. So this is something I’m looking forward to being a part of in the months and years ahead.

One thing should be clear with all this.

There might not be simple solutions to education reform. But there are solutions.

America cannot be a middle of the pack country in math and science today and expect to be the world’s number one economic and military power for the 21st century. That is where we are headed without a real change of course, facing some hard and uncomfortable truths and forcing our nation to fix the shortcomings we have in our education system. We need to do it now. Everyday we wait, we are wasting the God given potential of another child. And that, in my view, is immoral.

We can achieve extraordinary things when we dare to innovate and when we challenge the status quo. If we fight the purveyors of the attitude that “we’ve always done it this way,” we give our children a fighting chance.
We are Americans. We came from everywhere in the world to create a new world. We didn’t have a blueprint for how to build our country. But we did it, and we got to lead the world.

We did it because we opened our minds and opened our books. We learned the ways of the world, and we learned how to improve ourselves. And for every young person who chose to study, they made life better for everyone around them too.

Today, there are too many young people being left behind. That’s not worthy of a great nation. So we need to go get them, and to give every child a chance at greatness. And the longer we wait, the more lives slip through our fingers.

Our country’s future is at stake. Let’s act now to prepare a new generation to head out into the world. Let’s give our young people the strength to build a new American century – and let’s win the future. The time for education reform is now. Thank you.

2016 Presidential Campaign Blog

Blog

Advertisement

4President

Connect

Categories

Archives

2016 RSS

Hillary Clinton Iowa Campaign Launch Photos, Iowa State Fairgrounds, Des Moines, Iowa, June 14, 2015 Part 3 of 3 #Hillary2016

Hillary Clinton Iowa Campaign Launch Photos, Iowa State Fairgrounds, Des Moines, Iowa, June 14, 2015 Part 2 of 3 #Hillary2016

Hillary Clinton Iowa Campaign Launch Photos, Iowa State Fairgrounds, Des Moines, Iowa, June 14, 2015 Part 1 of 3 #Hillary2016

Bernie Sanders Announces Staff Hires at Iowa Statewide Headquarters Opening Today

Mike Huckabee to Make Stops in Clarinda, Red Oak and Creston, Iowa on June 17, 2015

What They're Saying About Chris Christie's Education Plan Speech in Ames, Iowa on June 11, 2015

Iowa GOP State Central Committee Votes to Cancel Iowa Straw Poll, Previously Planned for August 8, 2015

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery of Chris Christie on Education at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa on June 11, 2015

Jeb Bush Announcement Tour Backyard Meet and Greet in Washington, Iowa on Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Hillary Clinton will Return to Iowa on Saturday, June 13, and Sunday, June 14, 2015

2016 Candidates

Recent Posts

Ad

Ads

2016

Republican State Party Websites

Democratic State Party Websites