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United States SenateSenate Hart BuildingSuite 302Washington, DC 20.'510

Lamar Alexander

United States Senator. Tennessee

Floor Remarks of U.S. SenatorLamar AlexanderIntroduction of the Higher EducationSimplification and Deregulation Act of 2005June 16, 2005

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent hat I may bring in a few boxes of regulationsabout which I am going to speak on higher education. These are 7,000 regulations.We have 6,000 autonomous nstitutions of higher education in the United States,colleges and universities. The Presiding Officer comes from the State that has some ofthe finest colleges and universities anywhere in America. I will not begin to name thembecause here are so many of them I might leave one out. Every single college oruniversity, public or private, in North Carolina, Tennessee,or Colorado which hasstudents with Federal grants or loans gets all of these boxes this year. These are theFederal regulations under title IV of the Higher Education Act that somebody at thesmallest college or the biggest university must wade through in order to help studentshave Federal grants and Federal oans. The Federal grant and Federal loans are one of thegreat successstories of the United Statesof America. I will talk more about that.Mr. President, 60 percent of our college students and university students at those 6,000public and private and profit and nonprofit institutes of higher education, 60 percent ofthem have a Federal grant or loan to help pay for college. That has increased over the last4 or 5 years about] 0 times faster -9 times faster -than State funding for highereducation.But my goal today, in my remarks and in the bill I am introducing, is to make it easierfor boys and girls and men and women who attend our colleges and universities -andmany of them are mature, older students -to make it easier or them to go through thesedocuments. And then, on the other hand, to make it easier or our colleges anduniversities to comply with all these rules and regulations. I would like for them to bespending their time and their money helping our students earn instead of spending theirtime and their money reporting to us what they are doing.That is the purpose of what I want to do today. I am introducing the Higher EducationSimplification and Deregulation Act of 2005, a bill that does what I just described. It willhelp students get access o available financial resources.Second, t will reduce the burdenon colleges and universities imposed by Federal regulations so they can devote more oftheir time doing what they are meant o do: provide the highest quality postsecondaryeducation in the world. And third, it will ensure hat the autonomy and independenceofour 6,000 institutions of higher education are preserved.

I am delighted I illl1 able to interrupt the energy debate o talk about higher educationbecause think while it sounds ike we are shifting gears, they really go together. If I amlooking at our country today, and I had to take an exam this minute about the two greatestissues acing the United Statesof America, I would say, No.1, terrorism, and, No.2,competitiveness. "Competitiveness" a big word, meaning: How are we going to keep ourjobs? How are we going to keep our standardof living in this country when we have 5 or6 percent of the people in the world, and yet we produce a third of all the money,consume 25 percent of all the energy? And China and India and Singapore and Malaysia,not to mention Japan and Europe, are saying: Wait a minute. Our brains are as good asthose American brains. A lot of our studentshave been going to the United States,creating obs for those Americans. In fact, 572,000 foreign students are in this countrytoday, basically improving our standardof living by their work here.So we are in a very competitive time. Just as we have been saying in energy, herecomes China, here comes Malaysia, here comes India buying up the oil reserves, drivingup the price. Here comes Germany and other parts of the world with lower natural gasprices than we have. And our obs are going toward them.

The other hing we could do to ensure ur good obs and o keepour higherstandard fliving is to focus on our brainpower.The greatadvantageshe United States f America hashad sinceWorld War II havebeenour low cost, eliable supplyand accesso energy, our science nd echnology dge,and our educationalnstitutions.Thereare so many examples f that.

Mrs. Kay Bailey Hutchison, the senior Senator rom Texas, and our majority leader,SenatorBill Frist, had a little session n the leader's office last year. They invited theformer Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. He was concluding his residencyat the Library of Congress. remember after he had said what he had to say, we asked ourquestions.Senator Hutchison asked of PresidentCardoso: Mr. President, what is the one thing youare going to remember about the United States rom your stay here at the Library ofCongress that you will take with you back to your country of Brazil? Without a moment'shesitation, he said: The American university, the greatnessand the autonomy of theAmerican university.I will tell you another story. A few years ago:, was asked o be the president of theUniversity of Tennessee. t was 1988. I was glad to do it. I had been chairman of theboard of the university for 8 years as Governor, and I appointed a lot of the trustees, but Iwas not a skilled university president. So I sought out David Gardner, the president of theUniversity of California, which I regard, with all respect o North Carolina, at least at thattime, to be the outstanding public university in America and perhaps one of the best inthe world.I said to David Gardner: Why is the University of California so good? Without amoment's hesitation, he said: First, autonomy. When California created he university -they created four branches of government, really: legislative, executive, udicial, and thenthe University of California. He said: Fundamentally, they give us the money, and thenour board and we decide how to spend t. Our autonomy has permitted us to do thesecond hing, set very high standards.And then he said the third thing was the large

amountof Federaldollars hat ollows studentso the educationalnstitUtionof their choice.So autonomy,excellence, nd choice--Federal ollars ollowing studentso the schoolsof their choice.That s how David Gardner xplained he California model for excellencein highereducation.

That model has worked for our country since the GI bill for veterans was enacted n1944. I have wondered many times how we were fortunate enough o have decided to doit in the way they did it. This was for the veterans. It was the end of World War II. Therewere college presidents who were very upset about the idea of giving the veterans moneyand just telling them to go wherever they wanted to go to college.The president of the University of Chicago said it would make the University ofChicago a hobo's ungle. But we know what it did. We had veterans coming back andtaking their GI bill. Many of them took it to Catholic high schools and other high schoolsbecause hey had not finished high school. But they went wherever they wanted, to anyaccredited institution. They went to Yeshiva. They went to Vanderbilt. They went to thehistorically Black colleges and universities acrossAmerica, including Harvard. It did notmatter. If it was accredited, they chose he institution.The same ormula was applied when the Pel grants were created by this Congress nhonor of SenatorPell, who was a former Member of this body; as s true with SenatorStafford and the Stafford loans. Instead of giving those grants and loans to the Universityof North Carolina and the University of Tennessee, hey went to the student. The studentthen said: Well, I will decide where I want to go. I may want to go to Rhodes College, orI may want to go to Lenore Rhyne or I may want to go to the University of Florida orYeshiva or Howard. They go where they want to go.Becauseof that, we now have 6,000 autonomous nstitutions around the country. Manyof them are nonprofit. Many of them are for profit. Eighty percent of our students go topublic institutions, but 20 percent go to private institutions. Because t is a marketplace of6,000 institutions, and some are, of course, better han others, because t is a marketplace,we have been able to adapt o a changing world that now has different subjects, differentstandards,a more global environment, and studentswho are, by and large, much olderand have different needs han they did before.If we had not had that kind of marketplace of colleges and universities, we would bestuck in the mud, and we would not have former President Cardoso of Brazil talking sowell about our colleges and universities.We do not just have some of the best colleges and universities in the world; we havealmost all of them. And the rest of the world knows that. We do not have 572,000 foreignstudents studying in our country this year becausewe made them come, or even becausewe give them scholarships. They pay to come for the most part. They are the brighteststudents n most of these countries. And 60 percent of our postdoctoral students are fromoverseas.Half our students n computer and engineering graduate programs are fromoverseas.They are here for that reason. So we attract these students. The FederalGovernment has continued to be generous.