Political Quotes

“I thank my friend from Texas. This bill creates a new Department of Education Web site that includes data allowing prospective students to better understand the cost of specific institutions, and I thank the chairman and the ranking member for working with me to improve this bill before it came to the floor. The current Department of Education Web site is incomplete and misleading. The current Web site does not include the net price to a student according to that student's income level, which could cause, and does cause, lower and middle class students to reject schools that they, in fact, could afford. They or their parents would see average net price, calculated for all students, and immediately assume it is unaffordable for them. The changes that I have included in this bill allow a parent or a prospective student to find, upfront, on the home page, the average net price of attending, based on the family's income level. And this information may lead students to consider institutions they would have otherwise excluded. The difference between the average cost, calculated for all students, and the cost to a student, say, from a $40,000 income level, may be many thousands of dollars. Now, I should add, in conclusion, that while this bill that we take up today makes some progress, this and the other bills we will be considering fall short of what is really needed: a comprehensive effort to help more students afford college.…”