Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. I appreciate your leadership and your willingness to engage seriously with the hard questions surrounding higher education and workforce development in the United States. These issues touch nearly every American family and shape our nation’s economic future.

I am an economist who has spent much of her career studying how federal higher education policy affects students, taxpayers, and institutions. I am also someone who believes deeply in the promise of postsecondary education as a critical vehicle for social mobility in the American economy. My testimony today will focus on three points: first,
the problems we are facing in higher education and workforce development; second, what was achieved through the recent reconciliation legislation and why those changes
were necessary; and third, what work remains unfinished and what Congress could consider in a second reconciliation package.

Read and watch the full testimony here (testimony begins at 16:50).