John Hickenlooper Asks Witness About Increased Earnings Transparency For College Students

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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.

Transcript

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

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