Lawmakers Discuss Solutions for College Pricing Transparency
By Maria Carrasco, NASFAA Staff Reporter
From creating legislation for a standardized financial aid offer to implementing financial value transparency (FVT) regulations and more, lawmakers on Tuesday discussed different methods to increase transparency in college pricing and efforts to address rising higher education costs for students and their families.
The hearing, held by the House Education & Workforce Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development, focused on the current state of college pricing and what Congress can do to increase transparency.
Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah), chair of the subcommittee, used his opening remarks to highlight past initiatives from Congress seeking to increase transparency in college pricing, including the bipartisan College Transparency Act, which has been reintroduced in Congress multiple times but has not yet been passed and signed into law.
"These reforms are rooted in a simple idea: students and families deserve honesty and transparency,” Owens said during the hearing. “They should have access to the information they need to budget, plan, and make the college choice that is best for them without a lawyer or an accountant.”
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle critiqued rising college prices, with Owens calling out “deceptive” financial aid offers, where he said some institutions advertise prices to students and families that bear little resemblance to what they ultimately pay.
Rep. Alma Adams (D-N.C.), ranking member of the subcommittee, noted that greater college price transparency is essential for students and families to make informed decisions about where to attend college. However, she said, more must be done.
“Institutions of higher education can and must do more to be more transparent with students and their families about the cost of attendance and their student aid options,” Adams said. “That being said, more transparency will not address many of the root causes of the rising cost of college. Right now, our country is facing a college affordability crisis that has been made exponentially worse by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans.”
Joining the hearing were several higher education experts, including Justin Draeger, senior vice president of affordability at Strada Education Foundation, Lee S. Wishing III, vice president for student recruitment and chief marketing officer of Grove City College, Amy Laitinen, senior director of higher education at New America, and Andrew Gillen, research fellow at the Cato Institute.
During his opening remarks, Draeger, who previously served as NASFAA’s president and CEO, highlighted his research into what students and families want regarding transparency in college pricing. Notably, students and families want a “clear, all-in number” of how much it will cost to attend college, as early as possible, with no surprise fees. Students and families also want guarantees, within reason, that the price to attend college won't change while they're enrolled, and they want a clear sense of return on their investment when paying for college.
“We can fix this if we prioritize clear numbers early, standardized, plain-language, all-in pricing, and fix incentives focused on simplification at every level of enrollment and financial aid,” Draeger said. “Students and families are not asking for miracles. They're asking all of us to work together at the federal, state, and institutional level, focused on honesty, predictability, and clarity, not complexity.”
Throughout Tuesday's hearing, lawmakers raised many topics as potential solutions to increase transparency in college pricing. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.) asked Laitinen to speak on the importance of the College Transparency Act, which aims to provide students with information about enrollment, completion, and postsecondary earnings for institutions and majors nationwide.
Laitinen said many students and families are currently left in the dark, trying to figure out where to attend college and how to pay for it. According to Laitinen, enacting the College Transparency Act would fill in important gaps so students and their families could make an informed decision.
Bonamici noted that the need for more transparency in college pricing comes as the Trump administration defunded the National Center for Education Statistics, which has a central role in collecting college outcomes.
Lawmakers also discussed legislation aimed at mandating a standardized financial aid offer for institutions to use. Throughout the years, many iterations of legislation trying to do so have been introduced in Congress but none have been passed and signed into law.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Laitinen called on Congress to pass the Understanding the True Cost of College Act, legislation first introduced in 2019 that would create a standardized financial aid offer.
While NASFAA does not support rigid standardization of financial aid offers, NASFAA has continually worked on the issue of improving financial aid offers. That effort includes developing resources like aid offer models for institutions, an aid offer comparison tool for students and families, a glossary of terms for financial aid offers, and more.
Additionally, NASFAA – along with other higher education organizations and hundreds of institutions – is part of the College Cost Transparency Initiative, which aims to improve the clarity, accuracy, and consistency of financial aid offers by producing a set of guiding principles and minimal standards to be used when developing aid offers.
Another topic discussed among the lawmakers was FVT regulations as a solution to promote more transparency in college pricing. Laitinen called on Congress to encourage the Department of Education (ED) to release the data already collected from this regulation and implement it fully.
The hearing concluded with Owens thanking the panel of witnesses for their expertise and calling on Congress to provide innovative solutions to issues with college pricing.
“We've lost our mission, and it's time for us to bring back the idea that the product should be our kids – not the institution, not to bloat our bureaucracy,” Owens said. “I'm so thankful we're finally having this conversation, because obviously this has been going on for quite a while.”
Publication Date: 9/17/2025
Peter G | 9/17/2025 1:56:51 PM
As a community college that does not offer housing, 61% of our 'COA' stems from local food/housing costs and only 20% from tuition/fees.
Justin's comment about complexity is certainly to a point fair, but airfare pricing is moderately complex for a product that is of fairly limited duration and variability. "College" is in most cases a multi-year experience where the student has very significant inputs into the product along the way. Sure in airfare you can opt for one-way in the same way a student could opt for one-year, but there's no "half-time" flight option, as much as I sometimes wish there were.
Schools could lean more into block pricing as more simple on paper, sure, but then you end up with pushback from the students (and legislators) who feel it's unfair Student A is paying for Student B.
James B | 9/17/2025 1:44:39 PM
To some degree, everything discussed in this article feels like a distraction. High tuition costs, standardized award letter language, tuition/price guarantees, etc. are all a political and policy distraction from funding at the state and federal level. This is part of the game. State divestment is real, and at least one Boston Federal Reserve report, which to me feels significant because the northeast is still educational bastion in our country, found that, "... when other factors are held constant, each dollar of reduced state appropriations leads, on average, to a 17 cent increase in net tuition and fees and a 30 cent decrease in instructional expenditures at public doctoral
institutions" (source: https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/new-england-public-policy-center-research-report/2019/consequences-of-state-disinvestment-in-public-higher-education.aspx). As much as possible I think those people at the table need to redirect attention to the core problem we are facing, instead of engaging in this theater.
You must be logged in to comment on this page.