Many people outside of Michigan know this city as the home of former President Gerald R. Ford. His presidential museum is located beside the Grand River near the middle of the downtown business district here.
But there’s another name that appears on many buildings in and around the city: DeVos (pronounced “deh-VOSS”). It might not have the national significance of a former president’s, but locally, the name of the family that founded the Amway business empire is every bit as familiar. There’s DeVos Place, a convention center that houses the DeVos Performance Hall; the Richard M. DeVos Center and the Cook-DeVos Center for Health Sciences at Grand Valley State University; and the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital, among many others.
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Many people outside of Michigan know this city as the home of former President Gerald R. Ford. His presidential museum is located beside the Grand River near the middle of the downtown business district here.
But there’s another name that appears on many buildings in and around the city: DeVos (pronounced “deh-VOSS”). It might not have the national significance of a former president’s, but locally, the name of the family that founded the Amway business empire is every bit as familiar. There’s DeVos Place, a convention center that houses the DeVos Performance Hall; the Richard M. DeVos Center and the Cook-DeVos Center for Health Sciences at Grand Valley State University; and the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital, among many others.
It is also the name of the woman nominated to be secretary of education under President-elect Donald J. Trump: Elisabeth D. (Betsy) DeVos, 59, the daughter-in-law of the Amway founder and billionaire Richard M. DeVos Sr.
Hearings on Ms. DeVos’s nomination are scheduled to begin this week in the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. The senators are likely to probe the nominee’s ideas about a broad range of federal education policies and ask how she envisions leading a governmental agency. But Ms. DeVos’s background reveals a long history of wielding influence outside of government and behind the scenes using her and her family’s wealth.
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A spokeswoman for the president-elect’s transition team said that Ms. DeVos was not granting any interviews before the hearings.
Ms. DeVos is actually part of two families that have dominated the Grand Rapids area’s economic development in this part of western Michigan through their business activity as well as their philanthropy, including significant contributions to both public and private colleges in the region.
The approach of Ms. DeVos and others from the Dutch-American community in western Michigan is similar to that of the Mormons, who have built their communities through high rates of philanthropy, said Kevin R. den Dulk, a professor of political science at Calvin College.
Sitting in a large atrium in the DeVos Communication Center at Calvin, Mr. den Dulk said that by supporting a broad range of organizations, Ms. DeVos shows her belief in developing civil society through the contributions of individual citizens rather than government.
But in Lansing, the seat of state government, Ms. DeVos is known for spending her time and money on something quite different: pushing a conservative vision of education reform. In part because of her efforts, Michigan passed in 1993 one of the nation’s least-restrictive laws governing charter schools.
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Ms. DeVos and other advocates have described school choice as a way to give disadvantaged students access to a better education. “If you don’t live in an area with good public schools, you can move to a different place, if you have the financial means to do so,” she said in a 2015 speech at the South by Southwest festival. “If you don’t, you’re screwed.”
But teachers’ unions and many Democrats, in particular, see school choice as a policy that undermines public schools because it allows tax dollars to flow to private and, in Michigan, for-profit schools.
Despite her gifts to public colleges, Ms. DeVos hasn’t shown “much concern in improving public education” in the state, only in expanding the number of charter schools available to students, said Donald E. Heller, a former dean of the College of Education at Michigan State University, who is now the provost and vice president of academic affairs at the University of San Francisco.
Katie Carey, press secretary for the Democratic caucus in the Michigan House of Representatives, says that Ms. DeVos and her family have also used their influence to support other traditionally conservative and pro-business measures, including a 2011 law expanding the state’s authority to take over troubled local governments with an emergency manager. The DeVoses also helped defeat a 2012 measure, backed by unions, to put collective-bargaining rights in the state constitution and were behind a subsequent right-to-work law.
What Ms. DeVos’s political positions mean for her higher-education policy is still unknown, but former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said that Ms. DeVos was likely to focus on policies that meshed with her belief in free-market principles and reducing federal oversight in favor of letting consumers vote with their feet.
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Ms. DeVos’s worldview is firmly rooted in the “empowerment of the individual as opposed to the institution,” said Ms. Spellings, who worked with Ms. DeVos on education issues while Ms. Spellings was president of the George W. Bush Presidential Center.
“Government really sucks,” Ms. DeVos said in her 2015 speech, “and it doesn’t matter which party is in power.”
“Government prefers control and tightly-defined systems. It fears entrepreneurs, open systems, and crowdsourcing,” she said. “All of which they find threatening.”
The Formation of a Reformer
Ms. DeVos was born and raised in Holland, Mich., where her father, the late Edgar Prince, owned an auto-parts manufacturing company, one of the region’s largest employers. The company was sold after Mr. Prince’s death in 1995.
Ms. DeVos graduated from Holland Christian High School, where she was on the swim team and played percussion in the orchestra. In 1979 she earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and business at Calvin College, which is affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church, a branch of the former Dutch Reformed Church that follows the theology of the Protestant reformer John Calvin. During her senior year, she married Richard (Dick) DeVos Jr.
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At the time, the college enrolled about 3,000 students, mostly from the region and overwhelmingly from Dutch-American families who were members of local Reformed churches, said Richard Harms, a historian and curator of the archives at the library at Calvin College. “When I went here, there was not much difference between college and the Christian high school,” said Mr. Harms, who got his bachelor’s degree from Calvin in 1973.
You don’t mess with Betsy.
The liberal-arts curriculum encouraged students to think independently, but the social climate on campus was quite conservative, Mr. Harms said. While there had been a strong anti-war sentiment about the nation’s military involvement in Vietnam, there were also tensions about students going to the movies, which was discouraged by the church at the time, he said.
Ms. DeVos’s political positions were never in question, however. She became active in the 1976 presidential campaign as one of President Ford’s “scatterblitzers,” said Peter F. Secchia, a longtime Republican insider in Michigan who assisted with the Ford campaign. The group would travel across the country to assist at rallies and Mr. Ford’s appearances, said Mr. Secchia, who later served as U.S. ambassador to Italy under President George H.W. Bush.
Mr. Secchia said he encouraged Ms. DeVos to pursue her political interests. She served as chair of the Kent County Republicans from 1984 to 1988 and, later, as chair of the state GOP from 1996 to 2000 and again from 2003 to 2005. Her husband ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2006.
As a young political volunteer, Ms. DeVos was shy, Mr. Secchia said. But she has developed into a strong leader who “does her homework,” he said, adding: “You don’t mess with Betsy.”
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That straightforward nature comes from her father, who insisted on doing things his own way, said Mr. Secchia.
Matt Frendewey, the national communication director for the American Federation for Children, a project of the DeVoses’ foundation, said that Ms. DeVos wasn’t afraid to be direct with lawmakers and governors about where she thinks they’re wrong. “She’s respectful, but stern,” said Mr. Frendewey, and would rather have an honest conversation with someone who disagrees with her rather than be placated with empty rhetoric.
A Dedication to Philanthropy
Like her siblings and in-laws, Ms. DeVos and her husband have carried out their charitable giving through their own private foundation, which focuses on the couple’s philanthropic priorities, including the arts, children’s health care, and a public charter high school for aviation. (Mr. DeVos is an accomplished pilot and started the school, with encouragement from his wife, to prepare students for possible careers in that industry, according to a 2013 interview with Ms. DeVos in Philanthropy magazine.)
Ms. DeVos’s commitment to improving her local community through philanthropy also came from her father, said Birgit M. Klohs, who worked for the Prince Corporation before Mr. Prince died.
He led the redevelopment efforts for the business district in Holland, and donated $250,000 to help build heated sidewalks that would say clear during cold and snowy winters, said Ms. Klohs, who now heads a regional economic-development organization in Grand Rapids. Mr. Prince also donated $1 million to help build a senior center and covered the center’s utilities for three years, according to an oral history of the project compiled by Hope College.
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On a personal level, Ms. DeVos mentors individual students from disadvantaged families, said Mr. Frendewey, though she rarely discusses it.
Mr. Frendewey said he was working with Ms. DeVos on a project when a student called her cellphone. “She’s very busy,” he said, but took her time to talk with the young woman.
Ms. DeVos and her husband have also spent their money helping colleges, including gifts to Calvin College and Northwood University, the private college Mr. DeVos attended.
Northwood received money from the couple to support a new program in entrepreneurship, said Northwood’s president, Keith A. Pretty. Although the original gift has been spent, the program is so successful that the college plans to continue to offer it, he said.
Without the DeVos family, we would not be the university we are.
Several public colleges have also received money from the DeVoses, including Ferris State University and Grand Valley State University.
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Mr. den Dulk and others said that Ms. DeVos and her husband are consistently engaged in using private money to support public institutions, and are “quite open to supporting institutions without a faith-based identity.”
Thomas J. Haas, president of Grand Valley State, said that “without the DeVos family, we would not be the university we are.”
The DeVos family has helped develop Grand Valley’s downtown campus, about 20 miles from its main location. And Ms. DeVos and her husband have given between $250,000 and $500,000, according to Mr. Haas, to support such programs as the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies, which is meant to promote ethical and effective leadership.
The wide range in that figure is due to the university’s policy — the institution does not “disclose specific gift amounts for any donor,” said Karen Loth, vice president for development at Grand Valley State.
The DeVoses’ gifts have come without any strings attached, Mr. Haas said. “There’s no attention to programmatic designs,” Mr. Haas said, “they’re trusting us to be good stewards.”
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Mr. Heller, the former education dean at Michigan State, said the contributions to public colleges run counter to much that has been written about Ms. DeVos’s desire to undermine such institutions.
But he cautioned that these gifts shouldn’t necessarily be seen as an endorsement of public higher education. The public colleges in Michigan have an unusual amount of autonomy, he said, and are more easily viewed as operating separately from the state.
Instead, Mr. Heller said, Ms. DeVos’s contributions to Grand Valley State and similar institutions are primarily a way to support the region’s civic and economic development.
Focus on Education
Although Ms. DeVos has no experience as a teacher or school administrator, her positions on elementary and secondary education are well known.
The Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation established the American Federation for Children, which works nationally to promote and support school-choice issues. Ms. DeVos also helped create the Great Lakes Education Project, a lobbying and advocacy group that pushes for school choice, among other issues, in Michigan state government.
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She and her husband were key supporters of the 1993 state law allowing charter schools in Michigan and a 2011 law that lifted the cap on the number of such schools in the state. Ms. DeVos and her husband also led a failed attempt in 2000 to allow state-funded vouchers to provide public money for private and religious schools.
Charter schools get some public money, but can operate independently of the local school districts. In Michigan, these schools can also be run by for-profit entities, and the Detroit Free Press has uncovered numerous instances of fraud and mismanagement among charter operators — and little evidence that they improve educational outcomes.
Ms. DeVos’s nomination has been roundly blasted by teachers’ unions as a sign that President Trump will seek to erode support for public elementary and secondary schools.
Ms. DeVos’s guiding principles include the tenet that parents know what’s best for their children, said Mr. Frendewey, and that states must have autonomy to enact policies and programs that best serve their residents’ needs.
While Ms. DeVos has a vision, she is not the kind of leader to get into the weeds, said Mr. Frendewey and others. “She is good at laying out a big, bold picture,” he said, and then “driving a team” of experts.
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If consumers are informed and empowered with information that is reliable, her gut is: That’s enough.
In the 2013 interview in Philanthropy magazine, Ms. DeVos said her vision of success in the school-choice movement was that “all parents, regardless of their zip code, have had the opportunity to choose the best educational setting for their children. And that all students have had the opportunity to fulfill their God-given potential.”
The government’s job, then, is to get out of the way. “If consumers are informed and empowered with information that is reliable,” Ms. Spellings said, “her gut is: That’s enough.”
Far less is known about what Ms. DeVos might mean for higher education. How will she translate her ideas on K-12 schooling to colleges? How much will she be able to shape higher-education policy in a Trump administration, especially when congressional leaders already hold strong ideas about key issues?
One possible area where her approach could extend to higher ed is federal Pell Grants for low-income students, which are essentially vouchers, since they are portable. Michigan also provides a tuition grant for students at the state’s private colleges. But despite her support for vouchers, Ms. DeVos has not pushed for any increase in student aid for the state’s college students, said Daniel J. Hurley, chief executive of the Michigan Association of State Universities.
One higher-education policy where Ms. DeVos has taken a position is affirmative action in admissions. As chairman of the state Republican Party, in 2003, she worked to prevent a measure opposing affirmative action from making it onto the ballot. Three years later, she and her husband, then a gubernatorial candidate, opposed a similar ballot measure that passed with a wide margin, putting them on the opposite side of a popular issue.
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Civil rights could come up in another context for Ms. DeVos, who is likely to face the prospect of undoing the Obama administration’s guidance on how colleges should handle sexual assault and the protection of students who identify as transgender.
The Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for gay rights, is among several groups that have aired concerns, based in part on donations made by Ms. DeVos and her family, that Ms. DeVos would weaken and oppose protections for students who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer.
Her mother, Elsa Broekhuizen, and her husband’s parents have made significant contributions to organizations like the Family Research Council that have opposed gay rights, as well as to the 2004 campaign to bar same-sex marriage in Michigan.
But her supporters — and even some skeptics — have said that Ms. DeVos is not a fundamentalist warrior.
“Personally, her record on LGBTQ issues is one of compassion … with respect no matter their sexual orientation,” said Mr. Frendewey.
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Greg McNeilly, a longtime political adviser to Ms. DeVos who is openly gay, said that she is someone who “believes in the equality and dignity of every human being.”
Ms. DeVos and her husband have not contributed to the Family Research Council for nearly 20 years, he said, and gave nothing for the 2004 amendment banning gay marriage.
Mr. McNeilly and his partner were among the first couples wed after gay marriage was legalized in Michigan in 2014. He said that Ms. DeVos has been supportive of his marriage and that she also attended the 2013 wedding of Michael M. Kaiser, who was then the president of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Late in 2014, Mr. Kaiser became chairman of the University of Maryland’s DeVos Institute of Arts Management, an entity that he created during his tenure at the Kennedy Center.
It’s a mistake to think of her as a shill for the religious right.
While attending a same-sex wedding might not reveal absolute support of marriage equality, it has become something of a litmus test for conservative politicians in recent years.
Some left-leaning publications like the Daily Kos have raised the prospect that Ms. DeVos will use the school-choice issue to erode the separation of church and state. Ms. DeVos has, in the past, acknowledged that she is deeply motivated by her Christian faith. In an audio recording of a 2001 speech to a group of Christian philanthropists called “The Gathering,” Ms. DeVos described her work promoting school choice as a kind of religious battle to “advance God’s kingdom.”
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Mr. den Dulk, the Calvin professor, said that “it’s a mistake to think of her as a shill for the religious right.”
For example, Ms. DeVos no longer attends a Christian Reformed Church, which has not as a denomination accepted same-sex relationships, he said.
Ms. DeVos is now a member of the nondenominational Mars Hill Bible Church, which is viewed as having more progressive views on a range of issues.
Mr. Heller said he does not assume that Ms. DeVos’s policy positions or even her personal views align strongly with her faith background.
But he wonders how much Ms. DeVos will be able to set her own agenda under President Trump. Although Ms. DeVos was not a supporter of the president-elect during the Republican primary, her job as education secretary is to follow the administration’s priorities, he said.
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“Given that Betsy DeVos has never had a track record in governing,” Mr. Heller said, “I think her agenda will be Donald Trump’s agenda.”
Eric Kelderman writes about money and accountability in higher education, including such areas as state policy, accreditation, and legal affairs. You can find him on Twitter @etkeld, or email him at eric.kelderman@chronicle.com.
Correction (1/9/2017, 11:30 a.m.): The original version of this story mischaracterized the aviation high school that Dick DeVos founded. It is a public charter school, not a private school.
Eric Kelderman covers issues of power, politics, and purse strings in higher education. You can email him at eric.kelderman@chronicle.com, or find him on Twitter @etkeld.