Susan Davis: “I rise in support of the Mink amendment. I am a strong supporter of extending educational opportunities for…”

“I rise in support of the Mink amendment. I am a strong supporter of extending educational opportunities for nontraditional students through distance learning. Academic institutions that meet current requirements are dramatically extending their options, and that is a good thing, and I strongly support that. So why am I rising on this amendment? Well, it is really a question of consumer protection. We need to make sure that the students who are paying tuition are getting a quality academic program, because when they do not, when they do not get that quality academic program, they default on their education loans; and we have a responsibility to guarantee academic integrity so that we limit those defaults. We must avoid fraud, and it has been mentioned here there are some ways that the bill is dealing with that. But we need to avoid that fraud. Right now we do not really have any definition of what that is. We need to avoid abuse by reducing the requirement to one log-on a week, and we have to develop a consensus on how we change this standard.”