WASHINGTON — From his death bed, independent former U.S. Rep. Paul Mitchell was thinking about the higher education bill he never got passed while in Congress and, in typical Mitchell style, decided to do something about it.
On the day his family thought would be his last, Mitchell's wife Sherry helped him draft a letter from his hospice bed to the leaders of the education committees in the House and Senate, urging them to take up the College Transparency Act and pass it this year.
"That's literally the last signature of his I have," Sherry said. "He wasn't as much someone who was concerned about legacies the way that many people are. But it mattered to him that much."
Mitchell died three days later at age 64, just months after his diagnosis with stage IV renal cancer.
If passed, the bill would be his legacy in the U.S. House of Representatives, from which he retired in January after two terms. It was a major driving force behind why Mitchell went to Congress after working for decades in workforce development and owning a group of career schools, Sherry said.
"He wanted to make the country a place where everyone who wanted to could succeed," Sherry said. "And he lived firsthand the barriers of what it means to grow up poor and have to really struggle to go to college."
Mitchell's pitch was that the legislation would create a federal system to help students and their families make more informed choices about postsecondary education by providing better, more transparent data about student outcomes such as enrollment, completion, and post-college earnings across colleges and majors.
Advocates say such a system would aid prospective students in identifying the programs and colleges that would give them the best return on investment for their time and money. They say it would remedy gaps and flaws in the current college reporting system that provides relatively little practical data and is burdensome for institutions.
"One can find more information these days on the reliability of a washing machine than one about the likelihood attaining a degree resulting in a meaningful career," Mitchell wrote in the Aug. 12 letter.
"Passing this bill is common sense, long overdue and extremely timely as our nation works to recover from an economic crisis and Americans return to school to get the skills they need to rejoin the workforce."
While I will never see the benefits that CTA will have on working families in America, I pray that you will do the right thing and get this bill signed into law. One thing I have learned this year is life is short, and there is no time to waste."
Colleges would also benefit from the data to assess how their programs are doing, especially those targeted at sub-populations like veterans, because when students leave their programs they can't see what happens to them, said Amy Laitinen, director for higher education at think tank New America.
"While we're awash in all sorts of 'information' about colleges — from cafeteria food to dry-cleaning to the 'hottest coeds' — there is not good comparable information about some of the most critical questions that students want to know when they go to college," said Laitinen, whose family is from Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
"Am I going to earn enough to pay down my debts? What is my debt going to be relative to my earnings?"
She said the data from the current reporting system doesn't count all students and are misleading.
Mitchell's legislation has been embraced by hundreds of his colleagues from both sides of the aisle, from the liberal Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to the conservative Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina. It is also backed by groups ranging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the Center for American Progress.
Last term, the bill had 234 co-sponsors in the House (152 Democrats and 82 Republicans), including nine members from Michigan. It had 36 co-sponsors in the Senate, including Warren and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-South Carolina.
The bill also has the endorsement of the prominent Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan group in the House, as well as the associations representing public universities, community colleges, college counselors and student financial aid administrators, among others.
But the bill never got through either chamber, despite the work of Mitchell and his Democratic partner on the legislation, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois. There was even an effort to attach it last year to one of the pandemic aid packages, but that failed, Sherry said.
Advocates say the bill hasn't passed because of opposition by U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, who blocked Mitchell's efforts to advance the legislation in the House Labor and Education Committee, where she is the top Republican and former chair.
Foxx, a former community college president, has cited student privacy concerns to explain her position. She wrote the 2008 provision in higher education law that the College Transparency Act would overturn.
"Yes, it is basically as simple as Virginia Foxx," Laitinen said. "She's really dug in and dug in deep on this."
Foxx's office did not respond to a request for comment, but she is one of the recipients of Mitchell's letter. Sherry said Friday she doesn't expect to hear back from Foxx.
Sherry pointed to her husband's vocal exit from the Republican Party last year after the GOP stood behind former President Donald Trump's unsubstantiated claims of a rigged election. That angered party leadership, she said.
"Anyone who can't see beyond party politics on something like this is just a placeholder in the office, and America deserves a hell of a lot better than that," she said.
The clash with Foxx over the College Transparency Act led Mitchell to part ways with the Education and Labor Committee and join the Armed Services panel in his second term, according to former colleagues.
But Laitinen said Mitchell's standing up to Foxx over the bill is what led to such substantial bipartisan support for it, noting the GOP co-sponsors who signed on.
"What Mitchell did was change the conversation, because people were not willing to go up against her," Laitinen said of Foxx. "And now you have 235 members of Congress — many, many, many Republicans — who are saying this is too important, and this has to move forward."
Sherry said after Mitchell left Congress, he continued to "whip" the votes on the bill, calling his colleagues right up until it became obvious he was declining. "Paul didn't stop," she said.
Krishnamoorthi said he was among the lawmakers Mitchell was texting and calling.
"You can count on me to do everything in my power to do right by Paul and to continue to fight until this landmark legislation is signed into law," Krishnamoorthi said, noting that the bill has the support of more than half the House and 200 groups in the areas of education, civil rights, workforce, youth and veterans.
"I think we are really close, to be honest."
