Providing for Consideration of H.R. 3136, Advancing Competency-Based Education Demonstration Project Act of 2013, and Providing for Consideration of H.R. 4984, Empowering Students Through Enhanced Financial Counseling Actt

Floor Speech

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Mr. SALMON. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the rule and the underlying bill, H.R. 3136, the Advancing Competency-Based Education Demonstration Project of 2014.

I would like to thank Chairman Kline and the subcommittee Chairwoman Foxx for their support and work on this legislation. I am really appreciative of Representative Polis and all of his fine work. This truly is a bipartisan bill.

I would also like to state how proud I am to be part of a body that has actually taken its job very, very seriously for the hard times that most Americans have fallen upon, and I am proud that over the course of the last year and a half since I rejoined the Congress, that we passed over 320 bills--40 of them that would create jobs in this economy immediately--that are languishing in the Majority Leader of the Senate's drawer and have no action taken.

A lot of the American public are frustrated, and they have gone to calling this the do-nothing Congress. Well, let me tell you, half the Congress--the House--is actually doing its work.

When it comes to the appropriation bills, which we are required by our rules and our laws to do every year, the House will have done its duty by the end of this year in passing all the appropriation bills. I think we have done 10 of them so far. I believe the Senate hasn't done any.

So I think that when it comes to dealing with the cost of higher education, this is a big step in the right direction. We are aware of the cost of higher education. It has grown by more than 500 percent since 1985 compared to an overall inflation rate of 121 percent.

Federal regulations greatly impede the efforts to reduce the cost of a college degree. As a result, we have got to implement policies to allow institutions to be innovative in developing new models of education, instead of continuing with the status quo because the status quo is not working.

That is why I introduced the Advancing Competency-Based Education Demonstration Project of 2014 with my colleagues Representative Polis and Representative Brooks.

This important bipartisan legislation will set up a pilot project to allow institutions to more easily develop innovative ways to deliver education to their students. H.R. 3136 is the first step in allowing students to earn a degree and enter the job market sooner based on their knowledge and their skill set, rather than seat time in the classroom.

My bill will direct the Secretary of Education to implement a demonstration project and to waive regulatory requirements that impede innovations that might decrease costs to students.

The program would allow colleges to provide college credit to students who can prove competencies through prior work and life experience, rather than a specified amount of time in the classroom.

In our field hearing that we held in Arizona, two of our college presidents from Arizona State University and the University of Arizona said that this will immensely help them to be able to get students through their degree programs quicker, based on their competency.

They all agreed that the group of people that it will probably help more than anybody else in America are our returning veterans because they come with certain skill sets that they don't get credit for.

I would like to just talk 1 minute about how that process works because I had it work in my life. I served a mission for my church to Taiwan when I was a young man, and I came back fluent in Mandarin and Chinese.

It didn't make a lot of sense for me to go through Chinese 101 and learn how to say ``where is the bathroom'' with the other kids when I could already speak fluent Mandarin and Chinese.

I was able to test out of that by demonstrating my competency of already being fluent in the language, and I got just about an entire semester's worth of credit.

That is what we are talking about here. People who have been in the military, people who have been in other jobs that they have had, where they have been able to learn skills that don't necessarily translate into book work, but they are a lot more proficient at those skills than a lot of kids entering the classroom. This is going to cut through a lot of the garbage and allow people to be able to get those degrees earlier and, thereby, reducing their costs.

This legislation passed out of the Education and the Workforce Committee by a voice vote, and it allows higher education institutions to explore more innovative ways to deliver education, measure quality, and disperse financial aid based on actual learning, again, rather than seat time.

It provides flexibility to the schools looking to provide students a more personalized, cost-effective education, and I think that is what we are all here for.

I thank the Speaker for entertaining my ideas, and I thank the gentlewoman for giving me the time.

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