What a GOP-Led Congress Means for Higher Ed
With victories in several key Senate races last night, Republicans will take control of both chambers of Congress heading into the final two years of the Obama presidency — a balance of power that sets up a much-changed dynamic for federal higher education policy making in the coming months. Reported by Inside Higher Ed.
The change will likely be something of a double-edged sword for colleges and universities, higher education advocates said. On the one hand, colleges will find more help from Republicans in their longstanding efforts to roll back federal requirements they view as burdensome. At the same time, higher education may be in store for tougher battles on federal funding for academic research and student aid programs, as GOP majorities embrace more austere budget caps.
Republican leadership of the Senate is also likely to complicate the Obama administration’s agenda for executive action, namely its regulations clamping down on the for-profit college industry as well as its desire to put into effect its full proposal for a college ratings system.
Policy priorities led by Senate Democrats that affect higher education are also expected to take a back seat under Republican leadership. Some of those proposals, such as allowing existing student loan borrowers to lower their interest rates, were featured prominently in Democratic campaign ads this year. Senate Democrats had also pushed new policies that sought to hold colleges more accountable for loan defaults and clamp down further on for-profit institutions.
The shift in power is likely to result in continued deadlock on higher education and other issues, especially since Republicans will not enjoy veto-proof margins in either chamber. As a result, they’ll be unlikely to enact into law policies that the administration completely would reject (such as blocking of gainful employment).
New Committee Leadership
The next Congress will bring fairly significant changes to the lawmakers in charge of shepherding higher education legislation through the House and Senate; Last night’s Republican victories are expected to catapult Senator Lamar Alexander to chairman of the Senate education committee from his current post as ranking member.
Alexander, a former U.S. education secretary and university president, has said that his higher education priority will be reducing federal regulation of college and universities. He has also pushed strongly a simplification of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as the FAFSA, as well as some student loan and grant programs.
Alexander has said he wants to “start from scratch” on rewriting the Higher Education Act in an attempt to de-clutter the massive statute that governs federal student aid.
But beyond removing federal requirements viewed as burdensome and streamlining student aid programs, Alexander has not said publicly what else he wants to see in a new Higher Education Act.
One question for the next Congress will be the extent to which Alexander embraces some of the other “more imaginative” higher education policy ideas that have been offered in recent years by other Republicans, said Andrew Kelly, who directs higher education research at the American Enterprise Institute.
Several of those ideas, which have been put forward bySenators Mike Lee and Marco Rubio and Representative Paul Ryan, revolve around making it easier for nontraditional programs to get access to federal aid through new accreditation entities.
“Alexander doesn’t seem as skeptical of the accreditation system as some other Republican lawmakers, so I don’t know that those would be at the top of his list,” Kelly said. “But it’s a big question mark.”
Kelly said that he sees an opportunity for a Republican-led Congress to embrace “some of the more imaginative ideas out there” by those Republicans, “who see student debt and college affordability as a campaign issue that families, their constituents are going to care about for a long time coming.”
In the House, Representative John Kline, Republican of Minnesota, is expected to continue as the chairman of the education committee. Kline won his re-election bid last night in spite of a high-profile effort by the comedian Bill Maher to unseat the seven-term Congressman, in part, because of his support of for-profit colleges.
Democrats, meanwhile, are losing two longtime education policy makers to retirement, as Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa and Representative George Miller of California leave Congress.
Senator Patty Murray of Washington, who currently chairs the budget committee, is expected to become the top Democrat on the Senate education committee. In the House, Representative Bobby Scott of Virginia is in line to take Miller’s place as the top Democrat on that chamber’s education panel.
Several other Democrats who had played prominent roles on higher ed issues lost their re-election battles. In the House, Reps. Tim Bishop (N.Y.) and John Tierney (Mass.) were both aggressive advocates for colleges and students — Tierney more of a partisan bulldog, Bishop having developed his expertise as a longtime college administrator, at Long Island’s Southampton College.
Sen. Kay Hagan, a North Carolina Democrat, also lost her re-election bid; she has been a member of the Senate’s education panel.