Testimony Before the Iowa Higher Education Committee

Neetu Arnold testified in a hearing before the Iowa Higher Education Committee.

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss college affordability in Iowa public universities. It is a privilege to be with you Chairman Collins, Ranking Member Burns, and other members of this committee.

A few years ago, I wrote a report on college affordability and administrative bloat called Priced Out. Besides digging through higher education data and filing public records requests, a major part of my research was interviewing students, parents, and college administrators. When talking to individuals who had experience with higher education today, I saw a theme emerging: higher education wasn’t living up to its promise of opportunity and social mobility. It was instead doubling down on waste and political activism. College was becoming too expensive to justify for many Americans, and that combined with extremist political culture was only going to alienate it further from ordinary Americans if nothing changed. While some people I talked to at the time seemed aware that a crisis was on the horizon, many still clung to their rapidly fading notion of what college used to represent.

Today, things are different. People are quickly awakening to the reality that higher education is facing a crisis of confidence. Some administrators seem to be aware of the crisis facing higher education, but they don’t know how to fix it. Much of that is because policy discussions around these issues can be difficult, if lawmakers even have the will power to address them seriously.

Click here to read the full testimony.

______________________

Neetu Arnold is a Paulson Policy Analyst at the Manhattan Institute.