DeVos Keeps Higher Ed — and Reporters — at Arm’s Length

Betsy DeVos is not fond of the national media.

Since being confirmed as education secretary, she has rarely given interviews. But that changes when she gets outside of the Washington, D.C., bubble, where she sits down for local television news, chats with columnists, and appears at gaggles with reporters. Journalists outside of the northeast corridor are “more balanced and fair,” she told The Detroit News last month.

She has, on occasion, granted interviews to national outlets — CBS News, the Associated Press, and Fox News, among them — but for higher-ed observers looking for details on the daily administration of federal policy, few are to be found. This has created a problem for colleges eager to understand her philosophy on higher education. “I can’t get a feel for what she’s thinking about,” E. Gordon Gee, president of West Virginia University, told The Chronicle in July. Even inside the department, some staffers told me they have trouble knowing where the secretary stands.

I’ve tried asking, but getting answers isn’t easy.

The Chronicle requested interviews on a handful of occasions in Washington, D.C., once in Daytona Beach, Fla., and again on Mackinac Island, in Michigan. Those attempts came to naught. I attended a news conference in July at the Education Department where I was told that my questions would be answered. The news conference lasted for 15 minutes. I wasn’t called on.

Of course, every reporter has stories of spurned interview requests. And airing that dirty laundry can verge on pettiness. But my unanswered questions, and the rest of the media’s, have fallen into the yawning gulf that separates the enigmatic Ms. DeVos from college leaders’ perceptions of her beliefs on higher ed.

Then, on September 11, an email landed in my inbox. Ms. DeVos would be visiting several institutions as part of a back-to-school tour across the heartland of the United States. “Most stops across the tour will be open press,” read the announcement, “with the opportunity for several interviews with Secretary DeVos.”

This was an opportunity to interview the secretary. I booked a ticket.

There were a few things I wanted her to clear up. Days before embarking on the tour, Ms. DeVos announced that the department would be rescinding Obama-era guidance on campus sexual violence and subjecting the policy to a process known as notice-and-comment.

But that announcement failed to answer important questions about what would happen to the Obama policy, and when. Had the guidance been rescinded? Would it be rolled back at a different date? Would interim guidance be issued?

Then there were the questions about the department’s relationship with for-profit colleges. Some critics had accused Ms. DeVos of being too cozy with the for-profit sector, which the Obama administration had viewed with deep suspicion. What did the secretary have to say about that?

Beyond that, there was a bigger question: Where did Ms. DeVos believe the government fit in to higher education?

In Omaha, a classroom full of students — members of the Midland University Code Academy — were working, and waiting for their honored guest. They were joined by scores of journalists with cameras trained on the door.

Ms. DeVos was running late. Omaha was the fifth stop on her “Rethink School” tour, designed to “showcase creative ways in which education leaders are meeting the needs of students in K-12 and higher education.” She was coming from Colorado Springs, where she had visited the Air Force Academy and was delayed by weather. Our one-on-one interview request that day had been denied. Still, Ms. DeVos was expected to take questions from reporters.

When the secretary finally arrived, she met with students and chatted with the instructor for a half hour. Then the reporters were ushered from the room.

Reporters set up their microphones on a makeshift podium of stacked chairs. Cameras flashed. Ms. DeVos made courteous remarks about the tour and Midland, then fielded questions for five minutes.

What, I asked, did she believe her role in higher education was?

Ms. DeVos answered:

I had heard a version of that pitch before. And its generalities may reflect the fact that Ms. DeVos does not have much grounding in higher ed, nor does she claim to. Janet Napolitano, president of the University of California system, told reporters in September that the secretary faces a steep learning curve — perhaps more so than previous education secretaries.

I had more questions for Ms. DeVos: How did this change in focus translate to policy? And what would be her role in encouraging a more “holistic view” of higher education?

But she was moving on to the next event.

President Trump’s election win in November sparked immediate concern that several Obama-era policies would be rolled back. In particular, experts thought two consumer regulations might be in danger: the gainful-employment and borrower defense-to-repayment rules.

The gainful-employment rule was designed to crack down on programs that saddled students with unmanageable debt. Meanwhile, borrower defense was created to offer students an easy way to have redress when a school was found to have defrauded them. The regulations had been criticized by for-profit colleges, career-focused programs, and historically black colleges, among others.

The first shoe dropped in March. Ms. DeVos announced that the Education Department would be giving colleges more time to submit appeals under the controversial gainful-employment rule. The department wanted to “further review the GE regulations and their implementation,” according to Lynn Mahaffie, acting assistant secretary for postsecondary education.

For-profit groups cheered the move. Student advocates, on the other hand, saw it as a crushing blow — especially given that the news came amid questions about potential conflicts of interest with several of Ms. DeVos’s advisers, including Robert S. Eitel, formerly an executive with Bridgepoint Education, a for-profit group.

By June it had become clear that the department would get rid of the Obama-era regulation.

And then the big move: The department revealed on June 14 that it would hit “reset” on the gainful-employment regulation and borrower-defense rule. “Fraud, especially fraud committed by a school, is simply unacceptable,” Ms. DeVos said in a news release. “Unfortunately, last year’s rulemaking effort missed an opportunity to get it right.”

Ms. DeVos held firm to the idea that the move was to make things fair for all colleges, regardless of institutional type. “It is the Department’s aim, and this Administration’s commitment, to protect students from predatory practices while also providing clear, fair and balanced rules for colleges and universities to follow,” she said.

A department spokeswoman told The Chronicle that Ms. DeVos has consistently expressed that the department would “stop requiring educators to seek permission slips to serve students.” At the same time, “the department will continue to ensure that students are protected and treated fairly. Freedom and flexibility can be coupled with rigorous enforcement. Those things are not mutually exclusive,” the spokeswoman said.

Months after the June announcement, during a speech on Mackinac Island, in Michigan, Ms. DeVos would explain to a group of Republican leaders that the regulation was one part of an “ineffective and inefficient” approach to education policy on the Obama administration’s part.

“The time of ‘Washington knows best’ is over,” she said. “This approach didn’t work, it has not worked, and it will never work.

“President Trump and I know our jobs: It’s to get out of the way.”

Day 3 of Ms. DeVos’s tour kicked off at the crack of dawn. She visited Nelson Mandela Elementary school in Omaha before making an hourlong drive down Interstate 80 to Lincoln, Neb. A large sign on a barn along the drive proclaimed “TRUMP” in bold lettering.

Her first stop was to St. Mary’s Catholic School, directly across from the Nebraska State Capitol. Then her motorcade made a stop at the local zoo, home to a public-school program focused on science. A peacock strutted through a pavilion where Ms. DeVos was slated to speak. Protesters, critical of Ms. DeVos’s perceived skepticism of public schools, were stationed at several locations outside of the park.

Rumors had been swirling all day that the department might rescind the Obama-era guidance on Title IX, which many sexual-assault survivors feared would undo progress in mitigating campus rape. Several people believed the news would come that afternoon. A spokesman for the department threw cold water on the rumors, quipping that no one wanted to overshadow the secretary’s tour.

On the pavilion, I asked Ms. DeVos about Title IX. Did the secretary believe the Obama-era guidance on campus sexual assault did more harm than good?

Ms. DeVos complimented the Obama administration for taking on Title IX enforcement. However, she added, the rules they provided on campus sexual assault failed to get it right.

It was a familiar answer.

Early last month, the Education Department announced a “major policy address” on Title IX enforcement the following day. Everyone knew what was coming: The landscape of campus sexual-assault policy was about to change.

Ms. DeVos had met with survivors of sexual violence, as well as those accused of sexual assault, in July during a “listening session.” Afterward, she told reporters that it was “clear” that the stories of the accused were being given short shrift.

Her sympathy for alleged perpetrators of sexual assault drew protests. Many agreed that rules guiding campus sexual assault should be codified through a streamlined process, but survivors’ advocates argued that the pendulum could swing too far in the opposite direction.

On September 7, a week before her middle-America tour, the secretary delivered an extensive address at George Mason’s law school. She proudly announced that the Education Department’s sexual-assault guidance would be put through a review process known as “notice-and-comment.”

“The era of rule-by-letter is over,” Ms. DeVos exclaimed, nodding to the 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter that outlined how colleges might rework their sexual-assault policies if they wanted to avoid a federal investigation.

And still, as the smoke cleared from Ms. DeVos’s speech, there were questions. Was the Obama administration’s sexual-assault policy a dead letter? It seemed no one outside of the secretary’s inner circle could be sure. That troubled advocates and lawmakers — and also colleges, which no longer knew exactly what the department expected of them.

Congressional aides said they called the Education Department inquiring about the status of the 2011 Dear Colleague letter. Information trickled out, but the department staffers themselves seemed unsure of whether the Obama-era guidance still applied. (The department has since formally rescinded the Obama-era guidance on Title IX and issued interim guidance while the policy goes through a notice-and-comment process.)

This was not the first time a major policy announcement from Ms. DeVos’s department had left key stakeholders scratching their heads. After the department announced that the gainful-employment rule would be re-regulated, nobody seemed to know if officials there would continue to enforce the existing rule.

Reporters had often bemoaned the Obama administration’s lack of communication, and its tendency to issue news on Fridays. Still, major rollouts were often streamlined. For example, when the borrower-defense regulation was announced, Obama’s Education Department prepared a press release, a fact-sheet, and arranged a press call with John King, the education secretary at the time, and Ted Mitchell, the undersecretary. A recording of the call was posted online for reference.

Ms. DeVos’s department did have a press call when the Title IX guidance was formally rescinded, but the confusion had already set in. The secretary has seemed less interested in employing the media to help people understand the details of her department’s work. Officials who spoke to The Chronicle on the condition of anonymity so they could speak candidly about their work in the department said the communication structure at the department has fundamentally changed. Career officials who previously had substantial input on policy decisions are no longer consulted in the way they had been in the previous administration, they said. And then there were all the vacant posts. The Education Department has more vacancies for top staff than any department in the administration, according to one news outlet’s analysis. Once those positions were filled, the officials said, communication might improve.

An Education Department spokeswoman said that it would be a “logical fallacy,” however, to generalize those thoughts to everyone at the department. “Those who have self-selected to speak to the media are not representatives of the entire career civil-servant population at the department,” she said.

In the meantime, Ms. DeVos’s style of communication has frustrated even some within the department. During one meeting, in the aftermath of the violence in Charlottesville, Va., junior staff members voiced their consternation over the secretary’s silence and wondered why she had not made a forceful condemnation of the events sooner, multiple sources told The Chronicle. (In an email to staffers nearly a week after white supremacists marched through the University of Virginia, Ms. DeVos called the demonstrators “cowardly, hateful, and just plain wrong.”)

The secretary left the zoo in Lincoln, Neb., and boarded a plane for Kansas City, Mo., 200 miles to the southeast. I didn’t have a plane ticket, but I still had questions. They ran through my head as I sped south, hoping for one more chance at clarity from Ms. DeVos. She has explained her stance on the issues that her department has acted on: among them, the immediate futures of gainful employment, Title IX, and the borrower-defense rule. But some questions in the policy weeds, about the nuts and bolts of higher ed and federal policy, remain unanswered:

• What was Ms. DeVos going to do about the student-aid enforcement unit, a group meant to police fraud at colleges, which had just seen a leadership change?

• How would the administration financially support black colleges — a sector it had identified early on as a priority?

• When would the administration begin processing borrower-defense claims?

My phone kept buzzing with notifications from local reporters who were tweeting about what was happening at Johnson County Community College, which Ms. DeVos was touring. Under normal circumstances, a Washington-based reporter tries to untangle education policy from a cubicle, or from a bar on Capitol Hill. I was now racing down a freeway in a rental car somewhere east of Kansas trying to catch the education secretary.

I pulled up to the college at 5:15 p.m. and dashed across campus to the steel-and-glass building that houses JCCC’s culinary academy. A police officer pointed me to a large group of people. There she was, standing near an assortment of barbecue prepared by the culinary staff.

The news conference had already happened. I was too late. I sent a message to a department official asking if Ms. DeVos would do a sit-down interview when we got back Washington. No response.

At 6 p.m., Ms. DeVos headed toward the exit with her staff and security detail, where three cars waited to take them to their hotel. The secretary walked with a small group of students who held “Rethink School” paraphernalia, speaking too softly for anyone else to hear.

Before publishing this article, I asked Ms. DeVos, through a spokeswoman, to respond to the argument that the secretary had not provided clarity on issues that affect colleges every day — for instance, the questions I had in mind that day at the community college.

“The Secretary believes we need to take a fresh look at how to best serve students and ensure each student has access to multiple pathways to higher education that will meet their individual needs,” the spokeswoman’s statement read. “That means taking a fresh look at the HEA, stepping back from the DC acronym soup and truly figuring out which programs and statutes actually help students gain an education applicable to life in the 21st Century. It also requires streamlining and simplifying the myriad laws, regulations, programs and mandates from Washington.

“That work is already underway at the Department and across the Administration.”

Adam Harris is a breaking-news reporter. Follow him on Twitter @AdamHSays or email him at adam.harris@chronicle.com.

Correction (10/04/2017, 9:10 a.m.): This article initially misidentified West Virginia University as the University of West Virginia. The article has been updated to reflect this correction.