Strengthening Transparency in Higher Education Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Ranking Member Hinojosa for the time, and I thank the chairman and Ranking Member Miller, and Chairwoman Foxx for their hard work on this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 4983, the Strengthening Transparency in Higher Education Act. This legislation will help prospective students and their families by providing more accessible information about the costs of attending our Nation's colleges and universities.

The bill before us today includes provisions that I authored that will improve a tool already available to help students and their families assess the cost of attending college, the net price calculator.

Currently, students and families have to guess where the calculators are located on the schools' Web pages, what each school calls the calculator, and whether the information it provides is accurate.

Additionally, veterans and servicemembers must try to determine whether the estimates provided by such calculators accurately reflect the academic benefits they have earned through their service.

As the ranking member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, one of my roles is to help government work more effectively and efficiently.

My bill, the Net Price Calculator Improvement Act, H.R. 3694, addresses the challenges identified with current net price calculators by ensuring that they will provide consistent and comparable price information for colleges and universities based on up-to-date data.

My legislation would also ensure that institutions place the calculators in consistent locations on their Web sites, and it would protect students who use the calculators from data mining.

I applaud my colleagues on the Education and the Workforce Committee for including these critical provisions in H.R. 4983, and urge the passage of this legislation.

As I close, let me note that the bill before us is an important first step in the process of reauthorizing the Higher Education Act, and it contains important reforms. However, our work will not be done by simply passing this bill.

The bills before the House this week ignore the bread and butter of the Federal higher education policy, Federal student aid. We must reauthorize the Higher Education Act in its entirety as quickly as possible.

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