News Reporter
President Tim Foster traveled to Washington, D.C. last week to testify at a congressional subcommittee on how CMU maintains affordability. The hearing, chaired by U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, explored methods used by higher education institutions to reduce costs.
CMU was one of two universities invited to testify before the committee, partially because Foster spent time in Washington last summer during the Colorado Capitol Conference. That conference was designed to give Coloradoans access to leaders in Washington and Foster spent time speaking with education committee staff in both houses of Congress.
“It’s always funny,” Foster said. “You go to try to have a conversation with somebody and they’re rushing out and rushing in, notes are coming in, and you finally just want to say, ‘Guys, this is just so distracting. I can’t tell if you’ve heard anything I’ve said.’ But apparently they did because this topic came up and they thought of us. They called and said, ‘Hey, we think you have something to add.’”
Foster was initially wary of the plan to testify in Washington, worried that there was no upside for CMU’s participation.
“I told these guys, ‘I can think of about five things that might happen if we testify in front of Congress. Four of them are bad and one of them is we just walk out of there unscathed,’” Foster said. “But at the end of the day, I think we had to take it as a compliment to the university, in all seriousness.”
Foster said the topic is poignant for students, administrators and Congress. Initially, Foster was concerned there wouldn’t be much participation in the hearing, but all but one committee member were present.
“You watch on CSPAN and there’s always the awkward moment where somebody knocks the camera and you find out it’s one guy talking to an empty room, but I think it’s a topic that resonates with people,” Foster said. “They all took their full allotment of minutes to ask questions. I thought we’d be in and out of there in about 30 minutes. We were there for almost two hours.”
Foster’s testimony emphasized the measures CMU has taken to increase affordability, including eliminating deans, instituting MavWorks, and overall efficiency among faculty and staff. When tuition increases occurred, he said, it was with the understanding and support of students and parents.
“In my experience, our students understand,” Foster said. “In the seven years I’ve been here, I don’t think we’ve ever had a tuition increase that our student government and student body didn’t support, which is counter-intuitive for people, but the reality is that they understand where we are, what we’re doing, where the money’s going. With Houston, for example, the tuition increase came at students’ behest.”
Foster said that to him, student engagement is what makes CMU stand out. He has open office hours every Monday afternoon, and recently participated in a series of question and answer sessions across campus that demonstrated how involved students can be. He emphasized this during the hearing.
“I said, ‘Guys, trust me. If we had a big tuition increase, I would have a line out my door of students and parents letting me know how unhappy they are about that. And if I didn’t, you know what? It’s because they’d understand why we had to do that,’” Foster said.
He told the committee he strongly believes that the best way to keep higher education costs down is to avoid government involvement and was glad to note that Representative Foxx, who has been a community college dean, was sympathetic.
“I don’t think they understand how competitive higher ed is in this day and age and how many choices all of you have,” Foster said. “Part of my premise was that this is a very competitive arena which does not need the hand print of Congress to make it better. That really tends to drive up costs, rather than help things. I gave two or three examples, some of which they didn’t like very much.”
Though Foster doesn’t expect Congress to make any changes for higher ed soon, he said he thinks the committee members took something away from a discussion that’s significant to many.
“It’s an important issue,” he said. “How do we maintain affordability, and try to make sure that students don’t leave here with $50 to $100,000 worth of student debt? And that they get that degree that’s meaningful and something you can do something with? I think that plays to our strength, quite frankly. We’re very focused on being exactly that sort of institution.”
ssummar@mavs.coloradomesa.edu
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