Rep. Foxx hints at her priorities for higher education subcommittee in interview

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Ms. Foxx has criticized legislation that endedthe bank-based program for supplying federal student loans in favor of 100-percent direct lending, in which students obtain their loans from the Department of Education. She said on Tuesday that the bill “eliminated choice, competition, and innovations from student lending,” and promised hearings aimed at making “improvements to a very flawed law.”

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Among college lobbyists, Ms. Foxx is best known for her support of community colleges and her oppositionto the creation of a unit-record systemfor tracking individual students’ educational progress. She was also the only member of the House education committee to vote againstfinal legislationto reauthorize the Higher Education Actin 2008. Ms. Foxx said on Tuesday that she couldn’t remember why she voted against the bill.

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Among its provisions, the law creates dozens of grant programs for colleges and students while imposing hundreds of new reporting requirements on institutions. It cracks down on conflicts of interest in student-loan programs, presses institutions and states to rein in tuition, and makes it easier for for-profit colleges to become, or to remain, eligible to award federal student aid.

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It also seeks to prevent students from taking out private loans unnecessarily, and it prohibits the secretary of education from dictating how colleges measure student learning for purposes of accreditation.

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When questioned about whether she supported the president’s ambitious graduation goal for community colleges, she said she was “curious to find out what the basis is for the claim that we have to graduate five million more people.”

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“I don’t think the measure of success of a community college is always graduation,” she said. “Many times, all people need to learn is a skill and perhaps get certification in an area.”