Young, Hatch set out to boost innovation among America’s higher ed students

To meet the nation’s growing need for innovation in higher education, U.S. Sens. Todd Young (R-IN) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) last week introduced the Innovation Zone Act.

The bipartisan S. 3596, sponsored by Sen. Young on Oct. 11, would promote effective, evidence-based innovation in higher education and better prepare students for the workforce, according to a summary provided by the senator’s office. U.S. Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) joined Sen. Hatch as original cosponsors of S. 3596.

“The Innovation Zone Act will lead to more innovation within our higher education system and will result in greater access to educational opportunity for our students,” Sen. Young said on Oct. 15.

If enacted, S. 3596 would replace the U.S. Education Department’s Experimental Sites Initiative, which has been in place in various forms since the mid-1980s. Under the initiative, the Education Department to date has launched some 30 so-called experiments, many focused on testing new rules for federal student aid programs, according to New America, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank.

“The initiative is designed to allow the Department to grant flexibility to institutions of higher education — colleges and universities — to test and evaluate potential federal policy changes, such as providing Pell Grants to high school students to assess whether that increases their college-going rates,” according to New America. “The opportunity it provides policymakers to “try before you buy” is valuable: with $130 billion going to institutions each year through the federal financial aid programs, even small changes to student aid policy can affect millions of students. Moreover, beyond student aid, the initiative creates the potential for small-scale experimentation and evidence-building for future policy changes.”

However, Sen. Young said a lack of evaluation and transparent data collection from the initiative has prevented Congress from gaining useful insight toward making such informed policy changes.

“By making needed reforms to the Experimental Sites Initiative, we can better understand the lessons learned from these experiments and use them to ensure students are prepared for the jobs of today and tomorrow,” said Sen. Young.

S. 3596 would authorize voluntary experiments under which the U.S. Education Secretary and institutions of higher education (IHEs) would be permitted to test the effectiveness of statutory and regulatory flexibility that aims to increase student success, according to the text of the bill.

Student success under S. 3596 would be defined as one or more of the following: a reduction in student loan debt; an increase in student retention and program completion at IHEs, especially for historically underrepresented students; a decrease in student time to program completion; closing of gaps in enrollment and completion between historically and not historically underrepresented students; an increase in student employment outcomes upon graduation; an improved financial aid disbursement and service to students; and an increase in student safety, wellness, or food and housing security, according to the bill’s text.

“Ensuring that students have access to the tools and support that they need to reach their full potential is critical to their success and the success of our economy,” Sen. Hassan said. “This bipartisan measure will allow more higher education institutions to have flexibility under federal law to pursue innovative pilot programs, while ensuring that they meet the needs of all students, especially those who have been historically underrepresented in the traditional higher education system.”

Sen. Hatch said that while S. 3596 includes much-needed reforms to the previous initiative, the measure preserves the spirit of that original program by “letting schools focus on serving students.”

“By providing institutions with greater flexibility to innovate, I am confident we will see better outcomes for students, more efficient uses of federal funding, and better data and evaluation of higher-education programs,” said Sen. Hatch.  

S.3596 also would rename experimental sites as “innovation zones” to better reflect the mission of the initiative, according to Sen. Young’s staff, and would require the Education Secretary to establish a methodology for capturing data before an experiment begins to set clarity for reporting data.

According to a summary provided by Young’s office, S. 3596 also would permit colleges to submit suggestions for future experiments, among several other provisions.

S. 3596 has garnered support from New America, the Education Trust, the Knowledge Alliance, Results 4 America, several higher education institutions, KnowledgeWorks, the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships, and the National Skills Coalition, among several others.

S. 3596 is under consideration by the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.