Notes on Higher Education Governance
The federal higher-education apparatus that’s so familiar today was far more modest under Reagan or George H.W. Bush. While the federal role expanded significantly during the 1990s, with new lending programs, tax credits, and Clintonite initiatives, the George W. Bush administration focused its education efforts on K-12. (Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings’ second-term Commission on the Future of Higher Education was laudable but didn’t ultimately amount to much.)
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has inherited a deep roster and an aggressive game plan.The modern era of turbocharged federal involvement in higher education really commenced during the Obama years. The Obama team ran wild: weaponizing Title IX, devising onerous new “gainful employment” regulations for for-profit (and only for-profit) colleges, making Washington the nation’s sole source of college lending, and unilaterally rewriting the terms of the brand-new Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.
During Trump’s first term, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos chose not to respond in kind. Instead, she mostly sought to restore the traditional order. A principled Reagan conservative focused on expanding K-12 school choice, DeVos didn’t have much of a playbook or mandate for higher education, other than trying to undo some of the Obama-era excesses.
