10 Mar Dr. Dowden to Testify Friday on Capital Hill

G. Blair Dowden, president of Huntington University, has been invited to Washington, D.C. to provide expert testimony on Capitol Hill on Friday, March 11, 2011, regarding new regulations for higher education institutions.

The hearing will be held at 10 a.m. and will be streamed live at http://edworkforce.house.gov/Calendar/EventSingle.aspx?EventID=227134.

Dowden will be one of four witnesses at the Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training’s hearing on “Education Regulations: Federal Overreach into Academic Affairs.” His testimony will center on a new federal definition of a credit hour and increased requirements for state authorization of colleges and universities, including faith-based institutions. These regulations are set to go into effect in July.

“As a president of a private college, I am concerned about many specific facets of these regulations, but I am also concerned generally about the wide-sweeping regulatory overreach that these regulations signal,” Dowden said. “The American higher education system is the best in the world largely because of its independence, innovation, and creativity. I believe that these regulations work to undermine those characteristics.”

Dowden will testify alongside:

• Ralph Wolff, president of Western Association of Schools and Colleges in Alameda, Calif.
• John Ebersole, president of Excelsior College in Albany, N.Y.
• The Honorable Kathleen Tighe, inspector general for the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C.