House Holds Hearing Focused on Lowering Higher Education Costs for Students
By Maria Carrasco, NASFAA Staff Reporter
The House Education & Workforce Committee met on Tuesday to discuss how innovative technologies and initiatives in higher education could be used to lower costs to students and families.
The hearing touched on multiple technologies and initiatives done through institutions and states, and included dual enrollment, course sharing, and artificial intelligence (AI), some of which students currently use, or could use in the future, to access and complete postsecondary education.
Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), chair of the House Education & Workforce Committee, stressed the importance of innovation in higher education in his opening remarks, noting that roughly 61% of first-time students earn a degree within six years, and completion rates are even lower for non-traditional and part-time students.
“As a result, nearly 42 million Americans have attended college but left without earning a credential,” Walberg said. “Too many students invest time and money and effort in higher education without ever seeing the return they deserve. At the same time, a divide persists between how educators and graduates view workforce readiness.”
Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), ranking member of the House Education & Workforce Committee, in his opening remarks noted that innovation in higher education is crucial to ensure that students can complete their postsecondary education.
“Practices such as offering flexible learning options, leveraging digital tools, providing student services and financial support, can improve students' college experience and completion,” Scott said. “But not all innovations make a difference. Some even come at the expense of student outcomes or equity, and our core responsibility as federal policymakers is to make sure that every student can succeed, regardless of background.”
Joining the committee were Jeffrey Docking of Adrian College, Kollin Napier of the Mississippi Artificial Intelligence Network (MAIN), Wil Del Pilar of EdTrust, and Tade Oyerinde of Campus.edu.
During his opening testimony, Docking shared his experience of creating a course sharing platform at his institution in 2018, called Rize. Through course sharing, Docking said his institution was able to offer new classes and start new majors for only a fraction of the cost to the institution and the student. At his own institution, Adrian College, Rize has added 36 new academic programs over the past five years without adding one new professor, he said.
Rep. Mark Harris (R-N.C.) asked Docking how institutions could cut costs and tuition without sacrificing academic quality. Docking said many students, especially post-pandemic, want to have online courses, and that online courses have gotten much better since the pandemic.
Another key focus of the hearing was on AI and its use to cut costs for students. Napier spoke on MAIN’s work, which is based in Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College (MGCC), and is the country’s first statewide AI innovation initiative in higher education.
MAIN has a partnership with every public community college and university in Mississippi, where it provides an AI curriculum delivered online at no cost to learners, according to Napier. This prevents every institution from duplicating introductory course development and expands access for working adults who cannot enroll on a semester schedule, he said.
Beyond these initiatives and technologies, Tuesday’s hearing also focused on the Trump administration’s priorities and Republicans' higher education priorities – notably, the dismantling of the Department of Education (ED) and the enactment of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA).
Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.) stressed the importance of continuing funding for crucial higher education programs, such as the TRIO and GEAR UP programs, which she said help marginalized, first-generation college students.
“If my colleagues in the majority truly cared about improving student outcomes and opening doors of opportunity and lowering college costs, they would be fighting against President Trump's unconstitutional effort to dismantle the Department of Education, and they would have opposed the big, ugly bill that eliminated subsidized student loans and slashed federal funding for graduate education,” Bonamici said.
Meanwhile, Walberg, during his closing remarks, said the OBBBA is an effort to reduce unnecessary costs of postsecondary education to students.
Several Democrats also raised concerns about slashing the funding of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), noting the importance of reliable data to help institutions and states to create and maintain student success.
“Without [IES], we lose the capacity to measure whether our investments in education are working, whether students are succeeding, or whether we're simply throwing money into programs that aren't making a difference,” Scott said. “[Without IES] we can't even properly track student outcomes, let alone identify and fix what's broken.”
Walberg ended the hearing by thanking the witnesses and reiterated the need for higher education to lower costs to students while also creating student success.
“I appreciate today that we have evidence of institutions who have not shied away from the One Big Beautiful Bill and its efforts to give encouragement to reduce the unnecessary costs to our students in education,” said Walberg.
Publication Date: 11/19/2025
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