During a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing prior to the Congressional recess, Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO) questioned Dr. Andrew Gillen, Research Fellow at the Cato Institute, about earnings transparency.
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00:00Senator Hickenlooper. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I thank all of you for your work on
00:06behalf of the future generations of this country. I want to ask a couple
00:12different questions and maybe I'll go down the list that the at one time
00:17there's or various times there's been talk of a website that would actually
00:21allow prospective students to see of any university or as best as best
00:27estimated it could be and there'll be a large battle of this what kind of
00:30earnings they could achieve based on what sub what they studied and these are
00:35averages and I think there would have to be qualifications on that so I want to
00:41ask each of you just to very briefly kind of give a thumbs up or what's a real
00:45concern about that I recognize the limitations and then tied into that
00:50there's also from time to time been efforts to allow students future loans
00:57to be able to declare bankruptcy what would happen if you took away that that
01:01right that the lenders are looking for to make sure they can get paid back and
01:06obviously you would probably decrease access I recognize that but I postulate
01:11those two questions what about the the website that the best ability tries to
01:15give prospective students of vision what they can earn in the future why don't you
01:21start down at the end with you Mr. Gillen. Yeah so I think that's a great idea we do
01:25have an early version of this it's a the college scorecard website you can look
01:30up by college and major what the what the earnings of graduates are so there's
01:35some limitations there because not everybody graduates but I I think that's a
01:39great start we can build on it I think it's borderline criminal that you we don't
01:44also tell them okay what what jobs do they get like do the veterinarians
01:46graduates do they work as a vets or are they working somewhere else not that
01:52that's necessary bad but but definitely a great idea and then in terms of the
01:56second question was about loans no no this second which could they declare
02:05bankruptcy on loans on loans um that's a great question so I would argue no for
02:13now but I would put a cap on it so it's I'd basically say you can't you can't
02:17declare bankruptcy the first three years after graduation because nobody has any
02:22assets but after a few years okay great I changed my major four times in
02:29college and I think most people do oftentimes you choose a major not just
02:34because you're interested in the field but you choose it because you love the
02:36faculty and so I'm not a huge fan of saying that what you major and necessarily
02:40is the predictor of what your life success will be or the earnings that you'll
02:43have in that I did a study of 550 senior leaders and I found 73% of them
02:49actually majored in a liberal arts field even though most of them were
02:52working in business later so the major is not directly the predictor of what
02:55your long-term success is but I think it's important for us to be more
02:58transparent of the outcomes that our students are getting and that's what I
03:01think you're trying to get at right and certainly if you're switching majors
03:04wouldn't have that website to see all right even though I really like this
03:07faculty what's my future like absolutely I believe we should have to
03:13show students what the average earnings are in that region for the degree that
03:17they choose I think that's a big deal it's not just for that there may may be
03:22some majors and I'll use teaching as an example where we have people who want to
03:26be teachers but we all know full well those teachers will not necessarily earn
03:29the same thing as compared to others in terms of your second question on
03:34bankruptcy I believe there are catastrophic things that happen in the
03:37lives of everyone and so student loans like any other kind of debt should be
03:41eligible for bankruptcy interesting career and labor market outcomes are
03:46critical we infuse those into our first advising session with our community
03:51college students a national model would be exceptional it just needs to be
03:57reflected of the community and what's happening in the economy in that local
04:02community I think it also needs to be reflected back to the programs
04:06themselves where they know what their student outcomes are and can adjust
04:11their curriculum to be responsive to it bankruptcy I'm gonna leave that to the
04:17policy expert our mr. Pierce well then I'll take my cue and I'll start with
04:21bankruptcy and say restoring people's rights to bankruptcy is vital we've had a
04:25decades-long experiment denying people bankruptcy rights and it's resulted in
04:29people staying in debt for decades into retirement the government is
04:32required to chase people down and take their Social Security checks having an
04:37exhaust valve in the student loan system makes people get a fresh start and live
04:41whole economic lives I would also note just building on what I think I agree
04:45with what everybody else said about the value of data and shopping and
04:48transparency the Trump administration has fired the statisticians
04:52responsible for managing the college scorecard we are flying blind now that's
04:57very sobering well I'm out of time and I'm not out of questions I will maybe come back for a
05:02second round later or I will submit them in writing but I appreciate your work for
05:06the record I switched majors three times I got a degree in an undergraduate degree
05:11in English and creative writing and I sucked as a writer so my friends were
05:15pointed that out to me so that I ended up going back getting a master's in
05:18geology which is a pretty steep but having a better understanding through the
05:22along the way would have I think been a value to a lot of students I yield back to
05:26the chair Senator Hickenlooper Senator Warren and I have the College
05:29Transparency Act you should be a co-sponsor it does exactly that which you
05:33were saying we should be doing I am super well thank you we younger junior
05:40senators don't always get the notice and appreciation that we deserve let's get
05:45Kane and Blunt Rochester and these guys too