Schatz, Murphy Announce New Legislation to Lower the Cost of College

WASHINGTON — Today, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) announced their plans to introduce new legislation to make college more affordable for students across the United States. Over the last 30 years, the cost of college has increased by a whopping 300 percent, forcing some students to take on crushing student loan burdens or putting a degree entirely out of reach for others. Student loan debt is now the highest form of personal debt in the nation, reaching over $1.1 trillion for 38 million student loan borrowers across the country. 

Next month, Murphy and Schatz will introduce new legislation to put an end to these rising college costs and ensure students have access to quality education with less of a need to take out costly student loans. The bill focuses on two priorities: innovation and accountability. While some colleges and education experts have developed new and creative ideas to reduce the cost of college, not enough colleges have actually put these ideas into practice. Furthermore, the cost of college is now at its highest and still continues to rise, and the federal government invests more money than ever before in higher education. In spite of its investment, in many ways schools are not held accountable to students and American taxpayers.

“I’ve heard from students and educators all across Connecticut and the message is clear: we need college administrators to wake up every day thinking about how they’re going to bring down the cost of college for students,” said Murphy. “Our legislation will incentivize schools to create new, innovative programs to bring down the cost of college while improving the quality of a degree, and will set new standards for schools that receive federal funding so that they’re more accountable to students and the taxpayer. I look forward to introducing this legislation in the coming weeks.”

“College affordability is one of the biggest middle class issues of our time - no generation escapes the issue,” said Schatz. “If we’re subsidizing higher education with federal dollars, we have a responsibility to incentivize institutions of higher education to be more affordable, provide access to low-income students and deliver quality for students.  Each college can have whatever mission it wants, but if these institutions want to receive federal dollars, our bill says that part of that mission must involve affordability and access.”

To encourage colleges to innovate and be accountable to the students they serve, the bill does the following:

• Creates a new evidence-based competitive pilot program to encourage innovation. Currently, there is little incentive for colleges to test ideas that may reduce the cost of college. This new pilot program would spark innovation by authorizing and funding a new evidence-based competitive pilot program to encourage institutions to develop programs that offer high-quality education, lower costs, and reduce the time for completing a degree. These programs would potentially include online courses, competency-based degrees, dual-enrollment programs, and accelerated degrees.

• Implements rigorous evaluations for new programs. Under the Murphy-Schatz bill, institutions that receive funding to implement new, innovative programs that reduce the cost of college would undergo rigorous evaluations of these programs to ensure that students are getting a quality education.

• Creates new commission to recommend accountability standards for all institutions that receive Title IV dollars. In order to ensure that all schools are delivering quality education for their students, the Murphy-Schatz bill would create a commission of students, education experts, and stakeholders to recommend minimum standards for each institution in the United States to meet in order to remain eligible for federal funding. Those standards will focus on the access schools provide to low- and middle-income students, affordability, and value.

• Rewards institutions that do best on new accountability measures.  Institutions that do best on these measures will receive funding award to be used for additional need-based aid for students. Institutions that consistently fall below the standards created by the new commission will be incentivized to improve by requiring them to commit to improvement.

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