With her scant background in education policy, Betsy DeVos’s views on higher education have been something of a mystery. But if one word can capture the essence of postsecondary policy under the current administration, it’s deregulation.
DeVos, the U.S. secretary of education, has for decades been a champion of school choice. She has backed efforts in several states to allow a greater number and variety of public charter schools, including those run by for-profit companies.
More than a year into her tenure, the secretary has yet to focus so intently on any single policy for higher education. Instead she has sought to undo or rewrite many of the most stringent regulations and executive actions enacted under President Obama. Those have included guidance on how colleges should handle sexual assault, protections for gay and transgender students, and two regulations that were expected to have a deep impact on for-profit colleges.
While the Trump administration is certain to seek further restrictions on the government’s reach, several hurdles could frustrate those efforts. So far the Education Department’s moves have gotten mixed reactions, even from some colleges that chafed at the stricter regulations and from conservative groups that traditionally support deregulation.
In addition, the department remains without key political appointees who might put forward more regulatory changes. Those being made final now are almost certain to be challenged in court; and the real vehicle for changing federal higher-education policy — the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act — will very likely stall in Congress this year.
DeVos’s legacy as secretary will be primarily her “reducing or eliminating the higher-education sanctions proposed by the Obama administration,” says Robert Kelchen, an assistant professor of higher education at Seton Hall University.
“The other thing she will be known for is lawsuits,” he says, predicting that consumer groups and state attorneys general will file suit to delay many changes.
DeVos’s drive to loosen the reins of federal oversight is hardly a surprise. She has described her support for school choice, in part, as a means to free the education system to engage in new and creative methods.
“Government prefers control and tightly defined systems. It fears entrepreneurs, open systems, and crowdsourcing, all of which they find threatening,” DeVos said at the 2015 SXSW EDU conference.
And there is an appetite among colleges for some deregulation. Some members of the higher-education establishment have complained for years about what they describe as the Obama administration’s overreach, including the College Scorecard website, which reveals graduation rates and student-debt levels, and the “credit hour” rule, which ties college credit to time in the classroom rather than to learning results.
But DeVos’s first action to roll back federal oversight was to wade into the culture wars and rescind the Obama guidance requiring public schools to allow transgender students to use the bathroom matching their gender identity.
A few months later, the Trump administration began to undo two rules strongly opposed by for-profit colleges. The gainful-employment rule proposes penalties on programs whose graduates’ loan payments exceeded a set portion of their earnings. The other measure, called borrower defense to repayment, aims to help student-loan borrowers who had been defrauded by their colleges.
In the fall, DeVos announced that the department was rescinding the 2011 and 2014 “Dear Colleague” letters that laid out guidance on how colleges should investigate and punish sexual assault on campus under Title IX, the federal law against gender discrimination at colleges.
What’s more, President Trump decided that the administration would end the program that allowed some immigrants to stay in the country after being brought here as children without legal status.
“A lot of it has seemed reflexively ‘anti-Obama,’ " says Clare McCann, deputy director for federal higher-education policy at New America, a think tank.
The strongest reactions to the deregulation trend have been from Democrats in Congress, who have repeatedly criticized DeVos and the for-profit colleges that are among the few undisputed winners under the new policies.
But traditional colleges, despite their reservations and more than a little confusion about the Education Department’s actions, have also found reasons to cheer. College lawyers, especially, have praised the secretary’s new approach to Title IX, saying that the department’s more limited role will free them from costly and onerous federal interventions.
Some community colleges and minority-serving institutions, too, have been relieved by the department’s new view of issues related to gainful employment and borrower defense.
Kelchen, of Seton Hall, applauds the department’s efforts to offer more information about earnings outcomes for college graduates. “If you had asked a lot of people last year,” he says, “they would not have expected that to continue.”
The lack of a clearly articulated set of goals for higher education, however, remains a serious challenge for the department, says Preston Cooper, a higher-education researcher at the American Enterprise Institute. “It’s difficult to get a consistent theme from the department on what is their vision for higher education,” he says. “I think they might win more support if they were to present a vision.”
Cooper also warns that the department could make missteps in eliminating rules that safeguard taxpayer dollars. “Obama went a little far in one direction,” he says. “DeVos seems to be going too far the other way.”
What might be left for the department to undo in the second year of the Trump presidency? McCann says it could take a look at the credit-hour rule, which has been universally criticized in higher education. “Institutions think this is holding them back from innovations,” she says.
Much of the heavy lifting for deregulation, however, will require changes in the Higher Education Act. A bill to reauthorize that law has been introduced in the House of Representatives but has attracted critics on both the right and the left. An analysis by Cooper and his colleague Jason Delisle, at the American Enterprise Institute, says the bill lacks proper balance between deregulation and accountability.
Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, says the House bill would raise students’ costs and prevent more low-income students from attending college.
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions is expected to release its own proposal this year, without many of the most controversial measures.
Over all, the prospects for reauthorization are not bright. Democrats may feel that it is better to delay action to see if they gain a majority in Congress in the midterm elections. And so the Education Department may press ahead with its deregulation agenda even in a limited capacity, says Kelchen.
“Reauthorization,” he says, “is going to take a while.”
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.
