Transcripts For CSPAN3 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20141107

Cspans washington journal recently conducted interviews with president s at universities in the big ten conference. Challenges facing Higher Education. Its about 50 minutes. This week, we continue our month long series of interviews with University President s in conjunction with the cspan buss Big Ten College tour. This morning, cspan bus is on the campus of penn state and University Park in pennsylvania. And joining us from the bus is penn states president eric barron. Good morning, sir. Good morning. To start with, being an educator yourself and overseeing a university, what would you say are the greatest challenges that you see when it comes to the topic of Higher Education . I think there are a lot of them. No one specific topic. Access and affordability. In making sure that students fully utilize the opportunities that are presented by a campus further their success in life. I think we have challenges and innovation after years of flatter, declining budgets, there are a lot of different challenges. Lets start with the topic of access. W does how would you define the problems with it. . I think there are a lot of good signs we can be proud of. The number of first and family i students at penn state is growing. 530 million in the last capitale campaign. We have a below averagesylv for pennsylvania and for the nation. Student default rates, all thoso are good signs if you dig a little bit deeper, you see thata there are really two problems that i think have an enormous impact. One of thoseth is that we have t many students going years five and six, and in going years five and six, theyre borrowing money to do it. So theyre not completing as fast as they can. A large number of them are students that are not as well off financially. And what they end up doing is creating the cycle of working too many hours, taking fewer classes, perhaps not doing quite as well as their talent would allow because theyre working. And thenorwa they go forward an take more time to graduate. Some of them give up. This is the group of people t t thatie, for which i believe we have too many people that dont complete. And then in years five and six, theyre borrowing more moneyrow because thats whats it takes that degree if they are going to complete. Those things say that total cost of a degree, which is, i think, unfortunately reflective of a year five and six. And this notion thatn you can quite afford it so, you dont graduate at the same high rate or you take you take longer. I think if we can beat back those problems w, well drive dn student debt numbers. R stud well make our students more successful. If you think about it, a lot off people talk about that tuition increase. Okay. And, you know, what are they doing . Why do they keep increasing eepn tuition . But the biggest tuition increasd of all is to go a fifth year and a sixth year . And notut only you pay your tuin housing, but youre not in the job market. So id say s a lot of good st s storistorieser but good universities have to dig a little bit deeper. Weve got specific issues that were going to target. As a person who oversees the university then, what are some ways you can decrease the numbers that go on to year five and six. Theres a lot of things. Theres everything from advising and being able to create a map for a student. And if they fall off and miss ae course and that costs them an extra year because that course is a prerequisite and not offered to the next year. That you knock on their door and say, did you do that on purpose . Did you realize thats going tot cost you another years if you continue on with that major . So theres parts that are like that. Components like that that you can address. But also, for a needbased student, can we use our world campus to give essentially an cd online semester scholarship . Where in the summer you take t a nine credits and we make sure that student in taking those kio credits doesnt have to take on debt . Different kindo of scholarships the way to think about it. Th and then, we make we make up for the fact that they didnt take as many credits during the year. I also like the idea of lookingu at a student and saying, okay, i youre going to work 20 hours a week. Andbu at minimum wage job. But we dont want you to work more than 20 hours a week. You work 20 hours a week and then we look at what your famil, contribution is and the scholarships and the loans. And if theres a gap, theres an unmet need, can we deliver a kind of penn state promise that well fill that gap . So for all the pennsylvania lara students, additional scholarships on the order of 30 million. And we could look every single one of those students in the eye dont work more than 20 hours a asweek. N youll do better in the classroom, youll finish in f r four, you wont take on that extra debt, and were going to help you were going to help you fulfill that College Education. And my bet is well watch the Graduation Rates otifon the needbased students go up. And well see the loan rates go down. 2025853880. For educator, if you want to ask our guests of an academic nature, especially in the college experience, d by pen 2025853882. For pennsylvania residents, 2025853883. Were joined by eric barron, joining us on our cspan bus as it continues to travel to big ten universities. Can we ask about the Jerry Sandusky case . Give us a status report about what the university is doing in . Light of what happened two years ago about the molestation of these boys. Where is the university right now . Okay. Well, of course thats an incredible tragedy. And out of that has come a u university that probably has tht strongest compliance and Ethics Program of any university in the count country. We dont look at were followinh the rules, we look at whether were doing the right thing. We h and we pulled together an incredible team. Weve looked at over 100 different topics for which we felt we could do improvements and create a greater sense oeafn control. And this is a model institution. And i believe that especially in the athletics arena of ethics and compliance, were going to see a lot of universitiespe cop what penn state has done because its such a fine program. Pl as far as specifics, what has the university put in place to make sure these instances dont happen again . Well, just as an example, compliance and ethics is outside of athletics. Its not within thatit i chain e command. Its its a completely independent operation, independent authority and that makes a substantial impact as an you might imagine to make sure that you have individuals that feel free and know they have the backing to do whats right. But, therescall a dramatically different hr system. Theres considerably c more compliance, focus and training l associated with all youth programs, for example. Ho its extremely comprehensive. One of the issues was, people who passed on information and what was done with that information and, you know, how do youfo you how have you be the system where theres more communication if theres an incident reported to one person and make sure it gets to the proper authorities . Re i of theres a full page of different ways in which individuals can report. Report anonymously or through a particular process. Very hard for something to slip through the cracks at this point. How much money has the university spent on this . Money i dont. Sign i have notif added up the amoun of money, but it is significant. For those, the legal fees, for paying settlements, does that come out of the general budget . Ome port student tuition . Where does that money come from . Well, some portion of it is covered by insurance. Ad some portion of it is covered by athletics. At the myre predecessor made a promise that there were going to be no tuition dollarsn of in there. President eric barron of penn state joining us to talk about issues otof academics and education as part of cspans Big Ten College bus tour. Our first call from you comes from bob. Bob, youre on. Go ahead with your statement ork comment. Morning, thanks for taking my call. I am actually a grandparent. And im concerned about my grand kids. I recently was laid off from my job, and im actually 63 years old now. But i was trying to get some help witi h reeducation. And i was focused on one the on particular thing, gun smithing, actually. And the only way i was going to get it was, the cy wanted me to take in a bunch of fillin courses to get so many credits. One of them was literature, nothing to do with gunsmithing. And it seems like theyre just trying to sell a lot of these n extra courses. If a person is focused on something that may be machine shop or Something Like that, se. Its kind of a waste for them to spend their time and moneyon on courses like literature theyre never going to use. Bob, thanks. President barron, go ahead. Yes, of course, the education that comes out of any university has a particular stamp on it from the faculty that suggests that if you have a degree from our institution, you have a breadth of critical communication skills and road n Critical Thinking skills and understanding of a broad number of issues and that not only do you have depth but you have breadth. And this signals a degree from an institution like penn state. P one of the wonderful things about penn state is also that we have multiple entry points for that allows individuals to be successful youre at home, youre not mobile. You canaree youre in a care you have opportunities through the world campus. Youre residential in the state of pennsylvania. You would like to live at home. We have Commonwealth Campuses that have lower tuition on the order of 8,000 a year less than the University Park campus. Youre interested in a particular area that is more technical. Theres penn college. And the penn College Education is considerably more focused. So really, this is also a matter of having you pick a university that matches up to what youre interested in. Sure and so, you really should seek out those opportunities to make sure that your interest and your objectives match with particular programs. Because, obviously a penn state degree signals to everybody a certain scope of activity, a eph certain depth of activity. And so, i would encourage you to look carefully at those programl that are more focused on a erese particular skill set that your interested in. James is a student from georgia. Go ahead. Good morning. Id like to hear your comments on the fact that professors generally get paid more if they are good researchers or good writers as opposed to being good teachers. I found that some of the best teachers i have are the are at the bottom of the Department Head and dont do as Much Research or publishing as some of the teachers who spend less time with the students. Is that going to change any time soon, do you think . Okay. Well, i would say that this was true in many universities uni a may be true in some universities today. But true in many universities that were Major Research universities. If you go back quite a while in time. But today, teaching skills are highly valued. And you dont get tenure. You dont get promoted if youre not very good in the classroom and youre not interacting well with students. And, in fact, weve moved from c model where we made a decision, okay, this person was a Great Researcher, were going to w were going to reward that individual to one in which we want it all for you to get tenure and promotion. At the same time, were also recognizing thatake we need to e advantage of the strengths and skills of different individuals. So youre watching a lot of universities move to a point where they also have faculty that are what i would call mission faculty. So they are superb teachers, and we put them in the classroom, and their function and their Job Description is basically to bes in that classroom and be superb teachers and work on the oposal scholarship of teaching while s theyre doing it. They may be writing proposals o. How to improve the delivery of the curriculum. And also other faculty that areo more oriented towards research. B and i think what you discover is probably i the individuals thato it all and do it all very well are the ones that will be more highly paid. 2025853880. For students, for parents, 2025853881. Educators, 2025853882, and foa residents, 2025853883. From new york, heres frank. Go ahead. Let me push the button first. Frank, good morning, go ahead. Caller whats the average salary of a professor paid . Ch and the second question, what io the salary of the head coach of your Football Teamket. Okay. So heres the way to look at it. Were driven by the market. Es clearly driven by the market. We benchmark against a set of universities that really solid e top quality universities. And we work hard to have our faculty salaries be competitive in that marketplace. Mi we work within the market. And so, you know, it is true. Uly we have a football coach that t makes millions and faculty that make quite a bit. Could quite a bit less. We could do this all very differently. I we also know that our Football Program is paying for largely all the other sports. Th and penn state is an institutiot that wants all the gifts of all of our students to be something they can hone and take advantage of and excel in. Were one of those few programs out there for which no tuition dollar, no University Dollar crosses into athletics. An so, yes, of course, that prograi is important to us and its l important to us that successful and were competing in the marketplace for talent. We work to hard to compete in the marketplace for faculty. I would like it to be different. I dont thinkk you can operater outside the marketplace in todays Higher Education. Not for faculty, no the for staff, not for athletics. Milton is a parent from philadelphia. Hi. Caller yes, id like to make this comment. I think its ae pr scandal that ncaa gave most of the privileges back to penn state in light of this sandusky scandal. What kind of message does that send to other universities down the road that may engage in to inappropriate behavior. You do something and they penalize what kind of message do we send our kids . You get a punishment, then maybe well let you off. That sends a horrible message to our college students. Ther and it also sends a horrible in message to other universities that may engage in inappropriatt behavior, but then they get to get a slap on the wrist down the line. They get rewarded for it. T thats my comment. Thank you. Yeah. You know, sandusky wasnt a sick man and he fooled a lot of people, i think. And thats rather sad. Pped and the ncaa stepped out of their process in creating penalties for penn state. A lot of people are uncomfortable with the fact that they stepped out of their process in order to do that. Personally, i think that no matter what the ncaa did, penn n state wouldve stepped up to look at, okay, this is never going to happen again. T thin were going to put in those, i dont think anybody needed to tell us. We were to put in those effortsp on utcompliance, and we wouldv put in those efforts at at a stronger, ethical background. But so what the ncaa is saying, and its really the president s s that make up the ncaa. Ha what theyre saying ist that pen state as an institution has done so many remarkable things to handle this problem, that they shouldnt punish our students any further. S. If you look carefully, they didnt give us back the money penalties that were there. What they did was say why are we punishing a student athlete . Why are we making sure that a student cant have a scholarship to come to penn state when we bl of the highest Graduation Rates of Football Players . Okay. So lets notally punish those students, especially when you see what penn state has done. T i so the penalties they removed were the penalties that punished students and student athletes. Thats what they ended. And in my view, thats entirely appropriate on many differe fronts, but primarily on the front, on the front that we are a Model Program and in many different ways, were leading the way. Ed and it is not because in my view that they realize that something happened and now that what i happened is less significant. Nk i dont believe thats the way theyre thinking at all. Ng a theyre looking at it and saying, okay, we stepped out ofs our wprocess, this was too significant an issue. More it was a national issue, penn state stepped in there, and did more than just the right thing. I and like i said, we wouldve done it anyway. E im convinced we wouldve done every single one of those things anyway because we we dont want Something Like that to happen. From pennsylvania, an educator, this is dan, go ahead. Im sorry, i am not the educator. Ons on y first, im sorry, i always forget your name, sir, but congratulations on yousirnc posn and since you just started. And also id like to congratulate you as a penn st e alum alumni, has come up the ranks. And i think because of that, you have at measure of a vested interest in what the schools about. A member of the college of medicine. A becausust like to say that lack of attention to this campuu because of its geographical suld distance from the main campus has resulted in someen things tt need attention. And i would leave it there and in your discretion. And if i might call you or in the future through your office, i would appreciate that very much. T so im not sure i that i t wonder if you could help me with the question. I wasnt sure i quite heard that at the end. He talked a little bitra abot pus an the geographical distance between main campus and other qualm puss. That may be something very e toy unique to your university and how you deal with those issuesl. It is. We have 24 locations. And a medical school, two law schools, a penn college that is more technically oriented. And University Park in the center of the state. Ok a and a lot of people look at this and say, this is very unusual, how does that function . What i look at it is it is, one, an opportunity to provide a lower cost to education to many students. So, and you can see that. In t 40 of the students in the Commonwealth Campusesst are fir in their family to go to college. Ther and theyre largely living at homevi and having access to an education from a university tiei thats in then top 1 of all universities in the world. This was a wonderful opportunity. They also have a much closer connection to their community, which is also incredibly valuable when you think about student career success as onedif your objectives. So, yes, theres some distance issu issues its a successful english task wherever you take o it. So i think those distance issues are less significant to us e isw because what we believe is were truly delivering opportunity toh a huge number of students. And you just think about that number. 40 of the students in the Commonwealth Campuses as being first in their family to go to college, and then you realize that penn state is truly fulfillingis t its mission of mg sure that were educating the residents of the state of pennsylvania. Heres alan. Alan, good morning. Caller good morning. I have a question about d unique unStudent Loans. Specifically, the fact that and bankruptcy protections are removed uniquely from Student Loans and no other type of loans is a very large problem after graduation for a lot of people. And, you know, its sort of, i dont know if its ironic or troubling, but the the lobbie association of Financial Aid administratorsst t typically los against students on this topic. R either sideways or against. And i find that really disconcerting. Do you have any thoughts on that . At you know, i dont know about that particular lobbying effort that youre talking about. And obviously, you know, were paying attentiony i to the rul. But this is the way i look at it. We need to drive these numbers down. The 200 so if i take the class 2007 entering class, so now i know what they borrowed in years five and six, those students at penng state borrowed 23 million. To go years five and six. And you can see their loan rates going up and some peoplewe c tso disappearing. We can save an enormous amount of money if we can get those students to graduate in four years or less. Theyre in the job market and being successful, and we actually drive, drive those numbers down. If you think of all the different ways in which we can enable a studentt fa to not falf the map, to make sure they have their courses in order, to advantage students perhaps with the world campus to be taking m classes coming out of high school and coming in with the credits that allow them to go through this system even more quickly s. Theres some evidence that if you add Financial Literacy to st part of the training for the studentsof w and they have a se of what they might be paying per month when they graduate, that they borrow less. King because some of that borrowing is actually because theyre n working on a particular style od living that g they want to havev they go,e okay, thats not wor it to me. Are thin i would rather have another roommate. And so, i think to these are t things that the universities really have control over. I think, you know, its time tom Pay Attention to them and look at this as an opportunity to drive down the amount of borrowing that students are doing. O help of course we should look closely at what loan policies are and attempting to help our students to be, to not have to pay too high an interest. Ove but i think the thing that we have the most control overr is taking on the objective of. Driving down student debt. Primarily by getting them to graduate earlier. Penn state president on our cspan bus as it continues its tour of big ten universities f e across the United States. With us for another 15 minutes, anne, parent from georgia. Caller hello, yes, my name is anne from georgia, and calling about penn state. Pportu years ago, imni a senior citiz now. Years ago, my son had the opportunity to attend the great college. So and its unfair that the event occurred. He goes to that i guess you d the president , how long you been the president there . They could not help him. And as a result, my son left penn state walking because his life was threatened. And thats why i was calling. Thank you. Bye. President . Yeah, im not sure what i can add to that. I dont its so difficult, io individual student cases to understand exactly what the situation is. I dont think it makes sense for me. Me typ do students have to add something about do students have some type ok advocate on campus to help them with issues they may have academic or financial . Yes. Theres a huge focus here on helping students with Financial Aid, scholarships, work study, and we basically have 75 of our students that get some sort of financial toaid. Very active office, working very hard to help people be successful. I know the caller was calling, i believe, from georgia , and, of ging to course, this is out of state tuition and that makes it a lot more challenging to meet that unmet need. Sk ft. Worth, texas. Chris is up next. Hello. Caller id like to ask president barron about the deteriorating conditions for teaching faculty. Theres been a dramatic explosion over the past 20, 30 h years. And administrators and their staff while faculty rates have increased have not kept up with that. Faculty, nowwidehe 70 nationwide, i dont know about penn state. E pove and theyre underpaid tremendously. Rtat sometimes theyre living at the poverty level. And i was wondering what he thinks about that situation. Well, there are a lot of different models out there. Unfortunately, the recession sent a lot of universities into. A mode where they didnt want to commit longterm to faculty. And so they hired people parttime to fill classes because if they received one more budget cut, then it didnt make it didnt make the base faculty vulnerable, and they were more capable of managing st the budget. This was probably the saddest storyer for Higher Education ist that the longterm impact that the recession and cuts in state support have actually at many different institutions altered the composition of the faculty just purely as a budget reality. I will say that at penn state that the student faculty ratio is 171. This is a very competitive rate. And we work hard to deliver in e the classroom. And as i said earlier in the program, we work hard to be competitive in salaries. This is a university that thats, you know, is between number eight of all publics and number 14 of all publics, and it moves a little bit in individual years. But were really aspiring to make sure that a student that h graduates from penn stateas hasn Exceptional Education experience and is very successful in the wrld. And this is one of the reasonsh i think, why business magazines always list us as one of the top places to recruit. And we just had a job career fairad. And we had over 500 companies there at the job fair. And more than 9,000 students that were participating in an ot awful lot of students getting jobs. So this is our objective. We a q and were not going to sacrifice that quality that we know helps make our graduates successful t for the rest of their life. Were not going torest sacrific that quality because of a se. Capability, i guess, to go have people teach by the course. That doesnt mean that it doesnt happen. There are many times we pull in expertise for particular reasons. But i think that 171 student ou faculty ratidlo speaks very louy about our commitment. Univer but,si truth be told, a lot of universities under considerable budget stress and not knowing dt whether the next years budget would continue to go down and they became risk averse. And moved to a mode of temporary faculty because they couldnt provide the commitment to keep them longterm. Id lon quite independent state for the class of 2013. Of for those seeking employment, that was about 70 of those pent state grads secured employment fullti fulltime. 17 went on for more education. Good morning. Good morning. Everyone week we keep hearing callers call about the massive student debt and the amount of c studentos loans. But i dont really hear anyone asking about the cost. My son went to madison, and the rates used to go up one year it went up 19 . Co you know, and the cost of living is going up, i dont know, 3 , 4 a year. Why is the cost of college goinn up double digits every year . Thats my question. And president barron, if i h canos add, can technology remov some of those . Perhaps a student taking a Course Online versus having to attend . Are there other ways you spoke o about innovation earlier. I wonder if technology can help drive down cost. Rk yeah, certainly, we work at that. Deg residential students, it makes life more flexible. And online degree coming out of penn state is significantly reduced tuition compared to a full residential education, especially at penn state. But the issue is really a tricky one because a lot of institutions and publics in ba particular have significant cuts in support. To you go back to the time where soldiers are coming out of the conflict of world war ii. And as a nation, we committed ourselves to supporting Public Education as a way of making sure that individuals were more. Successful and we gave them opportunity. And we had a considerable pact, i would say, between state government, federal government and public universities to provide an educationhe l at the lowest possible cost that we could. And in many states, that was actuallye lo the words they use the lowest possible cost for the citizens of the state. O that has changed as budgets have gotten tight. And i dont fault the legislators. They had a tough problem. A lot of people with wit needs, not a lot of money. And their own budgets were declining. And they realized even though even though tuition was going p up, the outcomes of that degree in terms of the salaries you made were very high. A that did not cover all of the increases in the benefits that we have by contract. Those students got the best an u possible education. Reasin and those tuition increases where you say, how can you be increasing that amount . That tuition increase does not cover the increases in costs. S o thats why we look for other places a to cut the budget. Its not a happy place to be. We do know if youre delivering quality, and i will complement the university of wisconsin, gre is a great university. And the students that graduate g fromra it go off and do great y things. And so we dont want to sacrifice that quality. And thats oneo ofma the reaso why so many of us are focusing f on that population that really g struggle to get that degree. We know how valuable it is at the end. So we dont s want themur to be struggling. We want to makeever sure we cank every Single Person in the eye e and say, i dont care what you look like, i dont care what ame your background is like, i dont care what your economics are like, we want you to graduate at the same high rate. Nging its a challenge under these ire budgetnt environments, but i ate really think we can accomplish it if we work at it. Eri penn state president eric barron joining us on washington journal this morning. Well hear from an alum from los angeles, california. This is andrew, hi. Yes. Hello, good morning. I was calling because i wanted to find out why tuition is so high at penn state. And we spent so much time, you know, studying at the university trying to get our degree. Bei and not being able to enjoy things we like. We have to pay the tuition. Can you explain why . And president barron, since you kind of addressed these things go ahead i can adjust one more thing n this is the wayd to think about it. Take your tuition and fees and add it to what your state, as ad Public Institution provides per student. Add those together, and thats the resources that you have to delivere re for the educational process for those students. Penn state has a high tuition and fee. Among sadly, seconald among all publi. But i add those two together and im below average for the big ten. Yet, were delivering a ranking that is above average for the big ten. So this tells you , one, were actually efficient in deliverinr quality compared to our peer set. It takes a resource in order to deliver highquality education. And you dont have a lot of avenues to get those funds. Tioni if the state support is low, your tuition is high. And you can watch t that over ak over again if youve taken analysis of universities that are highquality universities, significant rank. You will see over and over d again, add those two numbers together, and you get a surprise. T and takes a certain amount to it deliver an education. And penn state is actually inal efficient in delivering high quality. How much do alumniom give ba to the university . Okay. So this is one of the things im the most proud of because we just finished a capital campaign, 2. 2 billion. And 170,000 alumni gave back during that process. This is a phenomenal number, we think its an alltime record. And so, seven years, 2. 2 billion gives you an idea of what the rate at which peoplc are giving back. And thats an astounding number, which suggests how alu our alum really feel about this institution because people who had a transformative experienceg people who care about an institution, theyre the ones that give back. To have 170,000 people give back is astounding. Ndin a lot of good signs like that. Record research dollars, despite a recession and sequestration on a federal level. We actuallyeq h had 126,000 stus apply s to come to penn state. 20,000 more than we had the year before. Care a this is an institution that people care about deeply, and it shows on the applications and ia shows in our alumni giving back. Lets hear from jim in scranton, pennsylvania. You hello. Yes, first id like to compliment you and the Penn State University on handling the coach paterno situation. A i know coach paterno graduated a lot of athletes. I know he had a fantastic out hi program. And he genuinely cared about hiu players and his coaches. This was unfortunate, and i know there are probably thousands of incidents that happened like this that have not been reported. So, first, my hat is off to you on this. My comments are is, i dont think your tuition is that high. I know down in florida, florida state, university of florida, i think, under 10,000 per year, tuition wise. Have i i know the cost of living in pennsylvania is much higher. The problem i have is capitalism. Were wanting to take the Public Schools and turn them private, v wanting to go with vouchers and so forth. Th were taking average 18yearold graduating from high school, basically has two choices. They can go into the military and possibly get the g. I. Bill or go fight a war for war they contracts. Obviously reasons we dont need to go. D and im noteb going to get into that. Or they can ge intot go major d so youre looking at going to g, your00 university roughly probay 65, 70,000 for a fouryear degree. Put the interest on that, i then mean, youre starting the kid out of school, then they buy a house. Were putting debt on a 22, dent 23yearold. I dont think the system is working correctly. And i certainly trust president obama. I trust someee politicians a he of a lot more than i trust wall street and bankers. I have no trust for them. Yoursl i would like your comments on that and what other College President s such as yourself can do toan get this in order. Weve got to get this in check in my opinion. Hank thank you for your time. And keep up the good work, sir. Thank you. I rarely enter into the political side of the equation in terms of taking sides. I onlyever, and i do it every me of every day, i represent penn state. So i want to drive those student debt numbers down. We actually have the same were percentage of students, 66 that borrowed ten years ago compared to today. The amount theyre borrowing is higher. Our average is 35,000. The students that borrow, not everybody, the 66 have an is t average of 35,000 as a debt when they leave. Nt it its too high. We dont want it to be that way. A stronger opportunity for suppor t. Our tuition is not as high, uitn students are going to take on more debt. But if we can get them to graduate in four or 3 1 2, class of 200607, save them in debt. Oe if we work hard with the needbased students to make surv theyre not working too hard and not spending too much time in from a college, well drive down their debt considerably. So i think weve u from a university viewpoint, we have to work at the root of the problem. And we have to we have to resell ourselves in terms of our value to commonwealth of pennsylvania and to every othert state in the nation about how critical it isns to provide thi education to all citizens that are ableth. And thats the part we have to work out. President barron, we talked about technology, do you think , that the future of the university is in trouble becausl of the growth of online educa education . And will there always be a needa for a brick and mortar type of situation for education . R a well, i think there will brk always be aa need for brick an mortar. This is a transformative opportunity for students. Conten. A coming of age as well as getting content. And we know that if we can engage students in activities like oneononerc research nters creativehi activity with facult members and internships and opportunities for leadership and study abroad opportunities and all these things that enrich an education that allow someone to drive what i calldu penn state blue and white sports car, put it through its paces. These are all things that are transformative. And right now, thats very difficult to deliver online. Online is an opportunity right now for a particular segment of the population. And were realizing that its notac reaching all the masses y because even if you look at these massive online courses that get 100,000, 200,000 people who sign up have very low completion rates. And the people that complete are already educated. So this tells me we have a long way to go. On the other hand, Online Education provides a great opportunity for people that are not mobile or employed and wantt to go a little bit further in lr life. It provides a great opportunity to add flexibility s for studen schedule. A great opportunity o that for us to flip the classroom. So that we have an expectation online that you get a particular content, and then the faculty an member really gets tod pr focus those Critical Thinking and ely. Problemsolvings. Those skill sets we know translate into the job market really, really effectively. And so, Online Education is great for all of those reasons. We have a long way to go before it replaces bricks and mortar. On and i actually kind of kid people. Because if you only had Online Education and not the why opportunity for a residential t education, why wouldla your 17yearold ever leave home . They can come and do their laundry and raid the refrigerator. I suppose that im trying to bel cute here,ot if you think about it, and sit at the computer and take a class. Host we offer a lot more as a university than content. S woul thats the idea. So as far as the future of penn state. What specific things would you t like to see at the university ww done under your tenure aside from cost and things along that . What would you like to do with the university . T wh okay. T so that ones important to me. I want people to drive that blue and white sports car and out it through its paces. Students we need to provide more opportunity for students becaus we know that an engaged student, they have a better peer group, theyre less likely to get into trouble because theyre managinn their time. Group i their peer group is supporting them. There was a lot of evidence that they get better grades, and theyre grades and building a resume with worthwhile experience and they get better jobs. We know this fori fact. Every we need to enable students to go in that direction. I think that every university has, especially the public has r an obligation to make sure we are educating the residents of a our stateti and the nation and e diversity of that population is changing. So we have to make sure were always awelcoming and inclusive environment for everybody if wei are going to makety sure that were a university thats part of the future. Ake you got to make sure that Technology Model works in the future. Itse to expensive to keep redo technology and being at the iven cutting edge. G but we see so many opportunitiee in delivering curriculum better that were going to continue to push along those lines. Ut our and i also think that we need to stop talking about our economicn impact and Start Talking about the degree to which we can be an economic driver but pushing oura intellectual property into the a marketplace, creating companies and then having our students being educated at the cutting edge moving right into those jobs that as a university we are creating, to be deliver rat about the process of Economic Development and student career success. So i have quite a list. Si president eric barron of penn state. Hes joining us as part of the big 10 bus tour. Joining us on the bus. Mr. President , thank you. Tomorrow a Panel Discussion with an editorial team, mr. Greenbla greenblatt, Louis Jacobson and zach patton. Live coverage on cspan2. Here are a few of the comments we have received from viewers. Calling to tell you how much i enjoy q and a. At 5 00 on sunday on the west coast, everything stops in my house. I turn off my phone. I get my cup of coffee and its the most enjoyable hour on television. The guest today was very informative. Good opinions. I enjoyed listening to him and the comments today. Me myself living in the midd middlest, he was accurate and on point. He was not using his own personal innuendo. And i greatly enjoyed it. And i hope you have more guests like that. But he was right on target this morning. Im calling to say that i think, like many people, cspan is wonderful. But as to criticisms, i almost have none. And im a very partisan kind of person. But the reason i almost have none is i think you all do a tremendous job of showing just about every side of everything the way people look at things in d. C. And elsewhere. I take my hat off to you. Thank you very much. Continue to let us know what you think about the programs you are watching. The 2015 student cam video competition is under way. Open to all middle and High School Students to create a five to seven minute documentary on the theme the three branchs and you. Showing how a policy, law or action by the executive, legislative or Judicial Branch has affected you or your community. 200 cash prizes for students and teachers totaling 100,000. For rules and how to get started, go to studentcam. Org. More from interviews with University President s in the big 10 conference. This is Robert Barchi from rutgers. Its about 40 minutes. Cspan bus big 10 tour wraps up today. Today, cspan is on the campus of Rutgers University in new jersey. Joining us from rutgers is the University President there, dr. Robert barchi. He will take your questions, your comments about Higher Education. Let me give the lines out here for our viewers. Students, 2025853880. Parents, 2025852881. Educators, 2025853882. New jersey residents, 2025853883. You dont have to have ties to rutgers. We want to hear comments, questions about Higher Education. Dr. Barchi, let me begin with what keeps you up at night about Higher Education, the challenges with it. Well, that is a huge question. I guess it depends on the day of the week. Theres something every day that keeps me up at night. I guess the biggest issues for me revolve around how we provide a quality education to all of the students in this state who can benefit from it at a price that they can afford. A condition where support for the university is decreasing financially from the state and expenses at the University Level continue to rise. Its a huge challenge for us. What about college aid, Financial Aid for students . How does it work at Rutgers University . What are your concerns with that . The federal government assistance for kids to attend college. Well, as you know, at rutgers we have a particularly High Percentage of pell grant recipie recipients. 37 of our students are pell grant recipients. They are families who are less than two times the minimum poverty level. So we have a very needy student population that we want to educate. We depend heavily on sources of support for those students both internally, from our own resources, and externally from the state and from the federal government. We simply couldnt educate our students with all the expenses of doing so without help from the government, from the state and from our private supporters. I want to show you a column in the New York Times and show it to our viewers as well. They write this that why aid for college is missing the mark. In 1987, when he was ronl reagans education secretary, William Bennett wrote, a famous essay denouncing federal aid for Higher Education because it allowed colleges likely to raise their tuition at little benefit to students. Nearly two decades laters, it seems he was right. He didnt know the half of it. Dr. Barchi, have colleges raised their tuition in line with more college aid being provided by the government . I would first call your attention to the very last paragraph of that essay which states that College Education is a tremendous value to the student, to the individual and a tremendous value to society. That was his conclusion when he wrote the article. I believe it is still true today. The issue really is how you control the flow of Financial Aid and you make sure that Financial Aid is being appropriately used by universities across the country. If you have seen one university, you have seen one. You cant lump them all together. If you are going to criticize the coupling between Financial Aid and tuition at a forprofit university or a private university and a Public University, they are totally different sets facts. So you have to ask the question more specifically with regard to the university you are talking about. I can tell you here at rutgers that we make every possible effort to keep that down. We are moving to a process which is more visible to anyone who wants to look and see what the costs are. We are perfectly willing to be accountable for what it costs to educate a student here. I want to talk about your background a little bit. You are a medical doctor. You have an m. D. , and research universities, what role does Rutgers University play in Healthcare Research . What benefit do you think that gives or adds to the healthcare in this country . Sure. I am an mcht d. And a ph. D. It depends which day of the week and what the topic is. For a Great Research university and rutgers is a Great Research university. Its one of the top Public Research universities in the country. A major part of our portfolio by definition involves things related to human health and wellness, to disease, to human biology. And having all the components of that on our campus. The basic research, the clinical research, the Clinical Care components as well as the arts and sciences and humanities necessary for any wellrounded individual who is going to participate in Clinical Care or research is critical to our mission. One thing that you brought up and one thing that you have focused on personally is diseases. Im wondering with the ebola situation, the outbreak in west africa, the ebola disease, how do you think this country is handling that . And not only this country but the world. Well, i think if you look at it from the perspective of the world, its a response that has multiple levels. How do you deal with the disease as a disease . How do you treat the individual patient . Do you have in your location the Healthcare System that can handle providing that treatment . Is there the simple basic sanitation and care in place to deal with it . That differs from country to country. How countries are prepared or able to deal with ebola is tremendously different if you are dealing with a country in, for example, locations in africa or if you are dealing with something that happens in france or in england or the United States. I think the cdc has been working very, very hard to lay out the guidelines for dealing with a suspected ebola case. In disseminating that information to hospitals and to clinical practices. I think the one case that we have recently dealt with in texas and the number of cases, including several here that we suspected initially of being ebola, have given us an opportunity to run through that protocol and make sure we understand what were doing and that we understand what we would do if we had a documented case in our vicinity. I think that here in this country, we are prepared. Fortunately, we have that kind of infrastructure. We have the preparation. We have the Clinical Care facilities and the public facilities to handle the response. You have had some suspected cases there. Whats the process like for when you have a suspected case . Are you happy with those drills that you have done . Well, let me say that i am not an Infectious Disease specialist. Im going to comment as an informed layperson. I think i am pleased with the rigor of the cdcs approach. Im very pleased with the serious approach that our clinicians and our hospitals take to implementing that. I think that was evidenced by the way they handled the two cases this past weekend where ebola was raised as a possibility. The protocol involves how you hanel the patient, the establishment of isolation around the patient, the documentation of contacts and the contacts that those people might have contacted so that you can very rapidly trace back any risk to a broader population and then moving to document whether the disease is present or not and at that point bifurcating to treatment of ebola or treatment of some other disease that might be present and falling back to a lower level of threat. Before we get to phone calls, tell our viewers what sort of medical research is being done at rutgers and what sort of grants do you get from the federal government for that research and the amount. Sure. We are doing something in excess of 700 million worth of sponsored Research Expenditures here at rutgers every year. It covers the spectrum from research thats involved with protecting our coastlines to Atmospheric Sciences to research that deals with drones and their implementation and safety that surrounds that to research that involves biomedical topics of all sorts from Infectious Diseases like the ones that you have been talking about to cancer to neurologic diseases. And fundamental research that has to do with what goes on in the human body and makes us tick, how we can produce better chemicals, how we can improve the processes of engineering. Our chemistry and Chemical Biology Department is number one in the nation in terms of Research Expenditures. Our Research Covers the spectrum. Thats part of our job. We are here to educate. We are here to push back the frontiers of knowledge through our research. Were here to translate that new knowledge to the benefit of the community by building new companies, by working with companies in the community and by translating that technology out to the economy. Dr. Barchi, whats it like to try to compete for these federal dollars for contracts . Whats the process like as well . Well, first, most of these are not contracts, per se. Grants. They are Research Grants initiated by the investigator. Over the last ten years, after the ramp up of government funding for nih in the 2000 1990 to 2000, funding from the government has been decreasing. Competition is very intense among investigators. Only the very best Research Projects are funded. And often not at the level that we would like to see. Im not so concerned about our investigators, per se. Im concerned about the Research Capacity of the nation. We built this wonderful Research Engine since 1950, 1960. It has made us a leader in the world in terms of research and development and our economy and being the ones who put out there the new discoveries in medicine and technology and engineering. Over the last ten years, we have been slipping. We have been slipping in part because we dont spend on research the percentage of our Gross National product that most of our competitors do. I think thats short sighted. I think its an issue where some of the best and brightest who we bring in to science and technology in our educational institutions dont see a future there and wind up taking careers elsewhere. Which is going to be a problem for the country five years, ten years, 20 years from now. Lets go to lori who is our first phone call in illinois, a parent there. You are on the air. Go ahead. Caller thanks for taking my call. Im calling because id like to know why colleges arent doing more to Lobby Congress for help. They have been focusing on bringing down the Interest Rates on college loans. My husband and i have 90,000 in loans. By the time were done paying that off, we will have literally paid about over 30,000 in interest. Also, the economy is doing better, but families arent feeling it. I think truly part of the reason for that is families are so theyre drowning with the financial debt from colleges. Also, i wanted to mention that maybe what we need to do is reduce the amount of years it takes to get a bachelors degree. At least that could possibly bring things a little bit more in line to what families can afford. I thank you very much. Thanks for those questions. You raise a number of interesting points. As i said earlier in the segment, we are very, very concerned about the cost of education for our students. Were trying to do everything we can to keep it under control. There are some strictures where a Public University so in terms of what we can do in terms of lobbies. Theres some things we can do and some we cant. We try all the time to make our state and federal legislators aware of the challenges we face and more importantly the challenges that our students face and to see if we cant get them to help us with those things. We have had some response there. I must say that academics are not always as well coordinated in making their voice heard as some of our commercial neighbors out there in the business community. We could take some lessons from them. You also raise the issue of the cost and its impact on families. We recognize that. I have four children who went through college. The last is recently graduated and still in graduate school. I fully appreciate the expenses myself. Im not sure how many families can possibly sustain the debt burden that they are facing to bring their children forward. There is no doubt that at College Education has benefit for the individual, for the student in society as well as for society. We have the obligation to make sure that it remains affordable, that we can see our way to doing that and making sure everybody has that opportunity. Dr. Barchi, she mentioned reducing the number of years it takes to get a b. A. Yes. Thank you. Thats another issue that were looking at. I think we all are concerned about accountability at the College Level. We tend to look too much at the inputs to college, whats the average grade point average and the s. A. T. Scores. In fact, we need to focus on the output. Are we graduating students . Are those students graduating in a reasonable period of time . Somehow we have to figure out whether they are succeeded. We dont have a good measure of that yet. Why is that . Well, because there isnt any well accepted measure of what success means. Do you measure it five years after graduation . The number of students employed in their field, the number of students who wind up being ceos . Lets focus on the graduation time. Most of us went to college and graduated in four years. Nowadays its very common for students not to graduate for five years. Thats the typical time. Why . I can tell you that most of our students here at rutgers are working and working many times two jobs. So they dont have the luxury of taking full course loads and summer courses to get out in the usual period of time. Many others are taking semesters abroad to broaden their education or are doing Research Projects that take a semester. There are a variety of reasons why five years might be a better measure than four. One of my biggest concerns is to be sure that students who come to college are prepared for college work. We cant have students entering Higher Education at the College Level who havent be prepared in high school for College Level work. The amount of work time we are spending remediating our incoming students to what we think is a level thats able to benefit from College Level courses adds to the time that they are in our institution. Its not just college. Its the k12 system that needs to be fixed as well. We can talk more about that. Lets hear from brent in california. Caller yes. This has been the first time ive had a chance to break through. I have a general question to the doctor. I think its unfair that the doctor is a doctor one way or the other regardless of what day it is. Is there still a big push for graduate students to publish . I know my exwife got her masters and later her ph. D. And shes now teaching at unlv. She managed to get herself published. I was urged by her to continue to go after my masters, even though i just retired at 30 years of working as an investigator. Is the push really strong for people to publish . If so, doesnt this kind of give when the idea is to publish within your field or within your field of study, theres so many sub fields that people can get into. Isnt there a lot of competition and often a lot of differing views . Thats an excellent question. Its a series of questions there. Let me say that i can sympathize with your approach. My wife returned to academics and got her masters after 30 years of running businesses in other areas. The adult scholar is an interesting approach in education these days. What were talking about is not the individual who has gotten a masters degree in a professional area or an individual who has gotten a professional doctorate but the individual who got a ph. D. And is going into academics. Those degrees are designed to train individuals who are going to produce scholarship as we traditionally know it. We measure scholarship in a variety of ways. Its not just publication. If you generate new ideas and you get them out there for others to benefit from, then you are going to be publishing. If you are not publishing at all, then i would have to question whether you are doing what you were trained to be doing. Now in my mind, having sat on the committees that make these decisions for tenure, its not how many publications youve had. Its the quality of the publications, their impact, are people reading them, are they citing them, are they important contributions to the field. Its not a numbers game, although, it is sometimes portrayed that way. However, part of the business of being a ph. D. Who is educating and doing research is getting your new idea and your new concept, your new information out to the rest of the world. We will go to california, mary, a student there. Hi. You are on the air. Caller how are you . Morning. Caller i just have a quick question for dr. Barchi. He spoke on it earlier about for his university there about the connection between future leaders, future students and the type of environment that they will have to be employed in in keeping our country moving forward and being the leader. He laid out a good example for his university. But i dont see this i dont see this across other universities as prevalent as it should be. In fact, i actually see other people from other countries which is not a problem. But people from other countries coming in and occupying those jobs that our citizens people that are in this country should be have the available opportunity to have. Okay. Dr. Barchi, do you share that concern . Well, you raise a good question and a good point. I cant comment on how other universities do it. These are very i had yo sin consideratic things. I can tell you what we do here. We are serious about assessing Manpower Needs in the state because one of our primary jobs is to create an educated work force for the state of new jersey. But keep in mind that its not a one to one time tie that if you look at College Graduates 30 years out, 25 years out, you find that well over half of them have changed fields two or three times. They are doing jobs that are not necessarily what they majored in. Education at the College Level, the University Level is all about training people to problem solve, training people to assess information, to communicate, to solve problems in a multiple ways and in a variety of disciplines to be able to change and adapt with the needs of the time. And also, when were educating our students, we are looking at two or three different tracks. In one way were looking at training the leaders, the ones who are going to start the new companies, who are going to be the leaders in their fields. Thats not everyone. On the other hand, we do want to make sure that all of our students are capable of succeeding in their field of interest and moving ahead and contributing not only to themselves and their families but to the society in which they live. Here is a question on twitter from dee dee who says firms always say they cant find workers with the skills they need. Are universities training to skills employers require . Do you think thats more the role of a technical school, not a university . Again, this is great to ask the question. It depends who was making that statement. If its an industry that needs a worker thats skilled in a particular kind of welding or assembly, thats not what we do at universities like rutgers. If its a company that needs a student who has the intellectual and analytical skills to assess a problem and suggestions and carry through on that with a team of colleagues, we do train individuals to do that. I would hold ourselves fully accountable for that. We need to be able to provide our students not just with esoteric knowledge or humanistic knowledge that makes us all citizens but also with the analytical skills that allows us to succeed in the environments that we want to earn a living in. Our next phone call is from lorna in michigan or maryland. Is that right . Caller in maryland. Go ahead. Caller yes. I wanted to talk about first off, i am happy that in 2009, president redid how federal student loan payments were coming through Third Party Banking institutions, which were double dipping money from the students and, you know, causing students to go into more debt. The banks were being paid by the students and the banks were being paid by the federal government. That was a policy instituted in it the early 90s under the reagan administration. Since that time, the republicans have on a federal level depleted funds that budgets from funds from the budget that should have gone into Public Education and into universities throughout the United States causing the universities to become skeletonized which no institution can function, teach without the resources and the Financial Resources that they need to educate their students. On the state side, having republicans lawmakers coming to the states in the early 1980s again, coming in, depleting our Public Schools of the funds and budget from the budget, the funds and resources that they needed to function, skeletonizing them until they broke them and made them so that our kids today cant possibly receive the same education that they received before the republicans came in in the early 80s. A lot there. Dr. Barchi, do you have something you want to weigh in on . You have raised a lot of points there. Im not going to comment on the political aspects and who was in office when. You made one very important point that underlies most of the issues in Higher Education in the public universities and you cant provide a quality education if you cant afford to provide the infrastructure for the students. When you use the phrase skeletonized the universities let me put this in perspective. We receive funds from the state at a level now in real dollars corrected for inflation that is the same as we received back in the early 90s, in spite of the fact that we educate more than 14,000 students in addition to what we had then with no Additional Support for that. Rutgers used to receive 70 of its operating budget from the state. Now its around 20 . We are not unique. Thats the state of play for all the big public universities. Theres a limit to which you can go here. You cannot provide a quality education without someone helping to pick up the bills. As public universities, we dont have huge endowments, we dont have huge private sources of revenue. Education is a benefit, not just for the student but also for the state and for the society. Its a critical factor. If it is such a benefit and we know it is, training the citizens who are going to be part of the Civil Society, we have to agree that the society has to help to support it. Thats the part that bothers me the most. Keep cutting the budgets and yet turning back to the state universities and say, dont raise tuition and what . Where is the money going to come from to educate students the way we need to do it . Its a huge problem. What do you think the outcome is if we continue on this track . Well, i can tell you what were doing here, and that is we are working very, very hard to think of how we can diversify the Revenue Sources that support a university and doing it as quickly as we can. We are looking at ways that we can build partnerships that with win win for the Public Sector companies and for the university financially. We are looking at ramping up contributions from our many alumni and supporters once they realize how critical this issue is. We are looking at increasing the amount of federal grant activity we do, which can help offset some of the costs here. But mainly, we are looking very hard at how we reduce the costs in the university. How we take all of our Corporate Services and we bring them into the 21st century in terms of the most effective, most efficient way of providing the service at the least possible cost so that we have the responsibility of reducing cost at the say time were asking people to provide us revenue. We are talking with the president of Rutgers University, dr. Robert barchi, part of our bus big 10 college tour. We are on the campus of rutgers this morning. Dr. Barchi, i want to ask you about the Eagleton Institute of politics. Whats its role and mission . Its a wonderful gem on campus. When this particular one is focused on the interface between our students and people in public life, the legislatures, senators, folks who work in our legislature, bringing them together to Exchange Ideas to educate our students to think about Public Policy and help really build the bridge between the university and the public government sector. Margaret in maryland, you are up. Caller yeah. Im in the process of looking at colleges for any daughter. Im comparing how much it costs 30 years ago when i was applying to universities and it was 5,000 for tuition and 5,000 for room and board. Now you look at some institutions and its over 40,000 for tuition and 15,000 for room and board, which just shows how fast in terms of the cost of education is really outpaced the rate of inflation. It seems to me that we need some really Bold Solutions to address this problem. You were mentioning, dr. Barchi, a couple of ideas. It seems to me were just kind of going around the edges of the problem and not really tackling it in the way that it needs to be tackled to permit families to not incur so much debt and to still allow colleges to be for prosperity for lower income people. Yeah. Let me say that my mother was the first in her family to go to college. She went to the university of pennsylvania. I have kept on my desk in a little glass holder one of the cards that was her admission card to class that was her tuition for a semester. 200. 200 a semester. Just to keep reminding me what that cost was. Of course, for her family, that was a lot of money then, too. One of the big issues you are raising here is juxtaposing the cost of education to the cost of education for a student and their family. There have to be seen as two different things. Tuition, what it costs to come to a university, is one of the Revenue Sources. But a University Like rutgers with a budget of 3. 7 billion a year is a very large enterprise. You have to manage costs all across the board. You cant expect tuition to be the alternative Revenue Source when everybody else isnt providing their share, whether the state or the federal government or the private philanthropy or whatever. We cant put that burden on students anymore. Part of the question is, how can we reduce the cost to students . Thats question number one. Question number two is, how can we reduce the cost of education at large . In many ways, i think that means resigning the traditional university. It means providing education more effectively and efficiently using distance education for even students who are in residence. For example, at rutgers, students who are living on campus fulltime are often taking one or more of their courses at least in part online by computer. So the time they spend in the classroom with our faculty is a Higher Quality time. Recognized that more than 60 of our budget is personnel. Faculty are very expensive. Support staff are a major part of what we need to do. We have 26 million square feet of spare that we have to maintain in the university. Anything we can do to reduce the cost while we improve the effectiveness of delivering education is something that needs to be done. Thats independent of tuition. If we can do that, we can keep tuition cost down. Dr. Barchi, i want to ask you about players and coaches at Rutgers University. Many know ray rice. Here is a headline. Rutgers erases ray rice at one time rice wasrutgers. He was the face of the fran cheese, t chise. Some credit former rutgers Football Player rice the reason they were able to move to the big 10. Was the decision made to they say erase ray rice from rutgers . How was that decision made . How difficult was it . First, let me back you up a little bit. I think we take a very, very firm line on the ethics of our d1 athletics program. Frankly, all of our athletics program. Its been one of my primary concerns since i came here. I have a zero tolerance for any activities in our athletics programs which i do not think meet our standards of ethics. We train student athletes. 95 of our student athletes do not play professional sports. They need to be trained for a College Degree that leads to an educational opportunity. Im proud to say that the academic performance rating and the Graduation Rates rank in the ten 10 of the very top of the big ten. We do what we say we are doing. Anybody that doesnt live up to those standards is going to be quickly out of our program. We have no tolerance for that. In regard to mr. Rice, when he was at rutgers he was only here for three years. He is not one of our graduates. That was over seven years ago. He was a star player. We have had many star players since then. We have star players on our Football Team right now. But we dont hold up for public accolade in our arenas individuals who we dont think represent the highest ethics that the university portrays right now. Thats a decision that i make all the time. In this case, that i did make. And i continue to stand behind that decision. Its permanent then your decision to take down his image and videos from the stadium . Again, its not about ray rice. Its about who we choose to use as the exemparticular for our students and athletes. The entire cast could change next year or next week. Its not about an individual or mr. Rice. Its about who we want to use as the best examples of that particular individual, whether its number 52 up on the stadium sidelines there or its one of our student athletes who does turn pro and is having a pro career. At this point, mr. Rice is not a pro Football Player. It would be an anomaly to have that video and include him. But thats not the point. The point is that we want to emphasize who we believe are outstanding examples of our product as student athletes. Role models . Exactly. We will go to lake charles, louisiana, a student there. Go ahead. Caller yes. I am divonte. Im a former student president of my campus which is 10,010,0. My question is something that louisiana has been doing a lot thats concerning me. You mentioned it, which is tieing Higher Education to work force needs. And while i think its very important that states also look at the work force, im also concerned as to the move of Higher Education to make sure that most of the degrees they are producing are only with the work force of the area. I come from louisiana, which is a very Industrial Area of oil and natural gas. So theres been a big move to make more of us engineers and kind of cut back on our degrees in political science, theater, history. So what is the balance that higher institutions should take when it comes to looking at the work force need of their state or their region but also not forgetting the true purpose of Higher Education, which is to create a well rounded, well educated critical thinker that can expand society . Because i think its more important to create the next innovator, to create the new apple or imb rather than to create a worker for a major company. Whats the balance between work force and Higher Education . That was a very educated question, which virtually gives the answer that i would give. Very well expressed. Let me put, if i can, another slant on it. Because i agree wholeheartedly with virtually everything that you just said. I dont think i could say it better. But when you look at the educational institutions in the state, you often have the Major University Flagship University. You have a series of state universities and a series of state colleges and a series of twoyear colleges. The coupling between the Educational Mission of each of those levels and the immediate needs of the state work force is different. So that question has to be answered very differently for a twoyear college or a Fouryear College or the Flagship University of the state. I think the Flagship University should be concerning themselves with the future needs of the nation. Exactly the kinds of ways that you talked about. Adaptable and educatable educate work force that can be the citizen of tomorrows Civil Society and can be the innovator and the problem solver. It may be that a twoyear college must be more sensitive to the immediate needs of the business in its region. I am not in favor of tieing tightly the Educational Programs of a university a fouryear University Like ours to the work force needs as determined by some sort of a survey. Remember that those surveys reflect peoples opinions two, three, four years ago. And they finally get to a university that might change its programs for students that are going to graduate two, three, four years in the future. Frankly, nobody can predict what the hot fields are going to be. That coupling doesnt make any logical sense at all. We need to be training individuals who are going to be adaptable for the needs of tomorrow and the businesses of tomorrow. More importantly, we need to be training individuals who can help to govern our society and can be participating in the government and really determine how we make decisions tomorrow. Thats really critical. I think actually were saying that the same thing. I my saw, my congratulations to mike fitts who has taken over as your new president. He was a colleague in my former university. You have yourself a great president down there. Dr. Robert barchi, president of Rutgers University, we are out of time. Want to thank you and the university for allowing us to come there today and for you to talk with our viewers about Higher Education. Appreciate it. Its been a pleasure. On news makers, vermont senator bernie sanders. He talks about efforts to revamp the v. A. By robert mcdonald. The lameduck congress and what he expects in the next congress and campaign 2016. Sunday at 10 00 a. M. And 6 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. The 2015 c span student cam video competition is under way. Create a five to seven minute documentary on the theme the three brafrms and you showing how a policy law or action by the exec he cannive, legislative has affected your community. Next a Senate Aging Committee hearing on phone scams targeting seniors. Witnesses talked about a particular scam where someone pretended to be a Family Member or loved one to get a victim to wire them money. Americans lost more than 73 million to phone scams last year. This is about 50 minutes. Good afternoon. Ive asked all of you to join the table instead of two panels, because we have a vote that is being called around 2 20. So i want to take the advantage of going ahead and getting all of your testimony. This hearing is the latest in a series of investigations the committee has conducted on the devastating impact that fraud and scams have on Senior Citizens over the last two years. We have explored the rise of jamaican lottery scams, tax refund schemes and Social Security and medicare fraud. So today we are going to examine a what is now making a comeback in the scam world. And its called the grandparent or emergency scam. Its quite despicable. It preys on a Senior Citizens willingness to do anything to help a Family Member in trouble. For example, a scammer convinces the victim over the telephone that his or her grandchild or another relative is in jail, is in the hospital or stuck in a foreign country and needs money to get out of the predicament. And since the beginning of 2012, the federal trade commission has received more than 30,000 complaints about scammers who claim to be a friend or a Family Member in distress. And its costing americans more than 42 million. Just since the beginning of 12. Now, this doesnt tell the whole story. Since a majority of these crimes go unreported. What we do know is that the ftc reports that imposter scams have double doubled between 2009 and 2013. And so today were going to hear from a distinguished panel on what authorities are doing to detect and prosecute such crimes and how seniors can protect themselves. We are also going to hear about private industrys role in combating these scams. The bottom line is that the government alone cannot prevent these types of scams. Private companies that sell prepaid debit products or offer Wire Services are the last line of defense for consumers before their money is sent and then its lost forever. Now, fortunately, some of these large retailers are beginning to take proactive steps to protect their customers. In addition to issuing consumer warnings about scams, Many Companies are now training their employees to identify and warn potential victims. And we have some good news today from the green dot corporation. It makes a product that has been one of the cards of the choice for fraud people in many of the schemes. We heard about it in the jamaican lottery scan. Green dot announced plans to retire the money pack card from store shelves nationwide. They have seen how this product has been used by the scammers and have decided to do the right thing, and thats to pull it. Green dot, walmart and cvs submitted statements for todays hearing which will be a part of the record. And going forward, we will have these Companies Come and join in this committee to hear about their experience and their progress. Were going to continue to encourage other Debit Card Companies and retailers to do the same pro active thing. So little by little, we are trying to give visibility to this fraud thats being perpetrated, particularly on our Senior Citizens. Senator collins . Thank you, mr. Chairman. I apologize for being a few minutes late. Like you, im trying to balance a lot of different commitments today. I want to thank you for calling this hearing to explore once again the dangers posed by con artists looking to swindle Older Americans out of their life savings. This is our seventh hearing on such scams. And i appreciate you are maintaining the committees focus on this incredibly important topic. In fact, a great deal of what we have learned about these scams is a result of reports and complaints made to the committees fraud hotline. Todays hearing explores a form of impercent nation scam that we call the grandparent scam. A scammer calls a potential victim and claims to be someone he is not who needs cash immediately because of an emergency. The scammer plays on the victims emotions by claiming to be a grandchild or another loved one. He says that he needs money because he has been in an accident, his car is broken down or he is stranded in a foreign country. I myself have received an email version of this scam from someone purporting to be my neph nephew. It sounded just like him. He was overseaed supposedly and had been robbed and needed money to fly back home. Perhaps unsympathetically, i told him to go to the American Embassy for help. I then started thinking about it and called his father to see what was going on and found out that he was not, in fact, overseas. In many cases, the scam mer ask the victim to send money in the fastest way possible which involves going to a local retailer, purchasing a Prepaid Debit Card and giving the scammer the code on the back to allow him to transfer its value. Once that money is transferred, it is very difficult if not impossible to trace. One main grandparent was called by a scammer impersonating his grandson. The so thecalled grandson told my constituent he had gotten into a car accident in nicaragua and needed 1,800 to pay the rental car company or he wouldnt be allowed to leave the country. After my constituent withdrew the money from his savings and wired it to his socalled grandson, he got another call. This time the scammer said that the government was pursuing criminal charges against him because someone had been injured in the accident and he needed 4,000 to hire a lawyer right away. Since my constituent thought that his grandson was traveling abroad for a wedding, he went to his bank again and withdrew 4,000 more from his savings. When the scammer pressed his luck and called back a third time asking for even more money, my constituent became suspicious and thought to ask him some simple questions that he wished that he had asked from the start such as where were you born and who is your mother. It was only when the scammer couldnt answer those questions that this loving and trusting grandfather realized that he had been duped. Fortunately, he was able to limit his losses because he hadnt yet released the code to transfer the money to nicaragua. Another constituent, got a call last fall from someone who claimed to be her son. He said he had been in a car accident, that it was his fault and he didnt have insurance. He asked for 1,500 to pay off the other party and she unfortunately did so using Western Union to wire the money. Here is the point. When she realized that she had been scammed, she contacted everyone she could think of to report her case and to get help. Local and state law enforcement, the fbi. But she was told there was nothing that they could do for her. As we have learned, these scammers are not only unscrupulous and aggressive, often calling potential victims dozens of times, but they are also techno logically savvy. They know how to route their calls using voice over internet protocol, which is very hard to trace. And they know how to spoof caller i. D. To make it appear that they are calling from a trusted source. Another version of this impercent nation scam might be called the tax man scam. In this version, the con artist used a spoof caller i. D. That represents a legitimate washington, d. C. Phone number to contact taxpayers and they claim to be calling from the criminal Investigative Division of the irs. The scammer identifies himself as the investigation chief and tells the taxpayer that he or she owes more than 5,000 in back taxes. Well, to make a long story short, my staff actually spoke to a tax man scam artist as part of the committees investigation. We suspect that the scammer who called himself steve parker was located outside the United States. But this scam is so elaborate that the scammer was able to claim he was calling from the federal Investigative Department at the irs, was able to give the correct address for irs headquarters here in washington and actually included a room number but not surprisingly that room number does not exist within the irs building. Mr. Chairman, these scammers are a plague for all americans but especially to our seniors. I thank you for continuing to shine a light on their appalling practices and i look forward to hearing from our witnesses. You notice a pattern here of all of these hearings that we have been having on scams that are perpetrated against Senior Citizens. Absolutely. This is just another version. Its a particularly disrespectful one. First, we have a victim of a grandparent scam, and we arent using his full name because he doesnt want the scammers to try to reconnect him. And we will call him mr. W. He is accompanied today by one of his grandsons. Next kevin rupy, the Vice President of policy and law at the u. S. Telecom association. And then lewis greisman, associate commissioner of marketing practices in the bureau of consumer protection. And then joseph campbell, the assistant director of the fbis criminal Investigative Division. Mr. Campbell, your written statement should be very specific on the grandparent scheme and other imposter phone scams. The fbis website has more information on these type of scams compared to the statement that you have submitted. So i would like in the questioning for you to provide additional details. Now, because of the fact that we have got a vote coming up and its at 2 10, im going to hold you to five minutes so that we can get through everybody and get on in the questions. All right. Mr. W. , you are up. If you would turn on your microphone. Thank you, chairman nelson and Ranking Member collins for the opportunity to tell my story before the Senate Special committee on aging. I am an 81yearold grandparent from ohio. Last december, i answered a phone call that sent my life into a tailspin and conned me out of 7,000. What i now know was a phone scam. The caller had a young voice and said, grandpa, this is your favorite grandson. To which i replied, i have six grandsons and theyre all my favorites. His reply was, well, this is your oldest grandson. To which i replied, hi, how are you . I cant remember exactly his reply but it was Something Like, im in jail and i need your help to get me out of jail and i dont want mom and dad to know about this. Talk to this Police Officer. I cant remember the officers name but he said he stopped a car for speeding. The car contained four young men who were on their way to a football game. In a search of the vehicle, narcotics were found. All four of the young men were arrested on narcotics charges. All four denied knowledge of who the owner of the narcotics was. But he had been the most cooperative and all he needed was 3,000 cash to get out of jail. I told the Police Officer that i needed to go to i was told by the Police Officer that i needed to go to walmart or cvs and load a total of 3,000 into green dot money pack cards in 1,000 denominations and i needed cash to purchase the cards. I cashed a check for 3,000 at my bank and went to walmart and bought three money back cards each loaded with 1,000. I returned home and called the Police Officer at the number with a 438 area code. The area code for canada and gave him the scratch off numbers on the money pack cards. Later the Police Officer called again and said they needed an additional 4,000. My Checking Account would not cover that amount. My wife went to the bank and withdrew 4,000 from per savings account and went to walmart and loaded four money pack cards with 1,000 each. I told the officer the scratch off numbers. Subsequently i received another call from him saying they needed another 2,500. At this point my wife suggested we call tis twin brother to see if he had seen him that day. He said he saw him before he went to work that morning. I called tys cell phone and he answered. He was at work. It became obvious that grandpa and grandma were victims of a scam. Looking at the money pack card, theres a warning that says in small print i repeat, in small print it says, if anyone else asks you for money your money pack number, your information from your receipt, its a scam and green dot is not responsible for paying you back. I believe putting that warning in such small print is unconnecticut shenable and green dot has some liability inasmuch as they profited from the transacti transactions. I believe that walmart has some responsibility in that they it facilitated and profited from the scam with their sale of these money pack cards. I reported this scam to the Cincinnati Police who did not seem interested. I contacted the federal bureau of investigations who referred me to the federal trade commission. Im not sure what they have been able do about it. I have some suggestions about what prepaid Debit Card Companies could do to protect consumers which i hope to get into later on. Thank you for listen to me and giving me this opportunity to testify. Thank you. You are very courageous to come and share this with us. Mr. Rupy . Chairman nelson, Ranking Member collins, members of the committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to appear before you today. My name is kevin rupy and i serve as Vice President of law and policy at u. S. Telecom. U. S. Telecom and our Member Companies share the committees concern about the problems associated with phonebased imposter scams targeted at seniors. Calls using voice overinternet protocol or Voip Technology when combined with caller formal working group focused on creating a secure caller i. D. For v. O. I. P. Calls. The secure telephone identity revisited group has been working since then to achieve this goal. Despite challenges, stake holders believe a krit toe graphic approach can provide a stronger and less spoofable assurance of identity than the legacy Telephone Network provides today. Members include representatives from industry including many u. S. Telecom members and government, including the fccs chief technologist. In may, the group developed high level requirements for solutions and less than two weeks ago it released a document outlining a mechanism for securely identifying originators of the phone calls. Any solutions developed by this group will become most effective upon a full transition to i. P. Based communications networks, a process that is well under way. Second, u. S. Telecom Member Companies and independent Application Developers offer Services Today that can help Older Americans reduce unknown and potentially fraudulent calls. For example, consumers subscribing to Verizon Digital Voice Service can utilize a do not disturb feature which prevents some or all incoming calls from ringing a customers phone, sending them to voicemail or a general announcement. Of it can be activated for set periods or left on and also lets consumers establish an accepted caller list for up to ten numbers that will bypass the safeguards and allow the call to ring through. Similar offering are available for century link, at t and others. In addition, Third Party Services such as the ftcs row bow call challenge winner may also be available to consumers. Finally, our industry has ramped up a concerted broad based Public Private effort focused on abuse within the existing framework of the mobile anti abuse working group. Participants in the working group include the fcc, the ftc, the fbi, the department of Homeland Security and a broad range of industry members. The voice and telephone abuse sole focus is addressing abuse occurring over Telephone Networks. It was created to help protect te Telephone Services from abuse by developing best practices technologies and methods for mitigating phonebased attacks and scams. In closing, let me thank again the committee for holding this timely hearing. We share the committees concerns. We look forward to our continued Work Together to address this constantly evolving challenge. Double your efforts, mr