Less than a month before Election Day, the Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump introduced some ideas for reforming higher education.
But the measures, which include a new formula for income-based repayment of student loans, have surprised political and policy analysts for their substance and for their late timing, compared with Mr. Trump’s political rivals.
While the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, explained her own plans to offer tuition-free college long ago, the Trump campaign had been promising for months to provide details on how the candidate would make college more affordable for students. Even two of Mr. Trump’s Republican rivals, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Jeb Bush, a former governor of that state, laid out more extensive higher-education proposals early in the primary campaign.
The campaign season has been a “lost opportunity” for Republicans to offer any novel or substantive solutions on an issue both parties were heavily debating before the season began, said Beth Akers, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a free-market think tank.
“We didn’t have a chance for pushback,” on the current Democratic proposal, which many conservatives oppose because it doesn’t focus the money on the students who most need it, she said.
Carlo Salerno, an independent higher-education-policy researcher and former analyst for the U.S. Government Accountability Office, said Republicans don’t have any solutions at the moment: “It looks like they’ve lost their way,” he said.
“The failure has been to come up with something inspiring to offset the Democratic proposal,” said Mr. Salerno, who considers himself a libertarian, and opined in a recent blog entry that Mr. Trump’s plan was “overwhelmingly underwhelming.”
The failure has been to come up with something inspiring to offset the Democratic proposal.
In fact, higher education has been a major issue for both parties for several years as politicians and the public seek ways to deal with rising tuition and student debt.
What Mr. Trump proposed at a rally in Ohio this month seems to have come largely from ideas that Republicans in Congress have floated, including streamlining regulations for higher education, ending the federal role in making student loans, and regulating how colleges manage and spend their endowments.
What’s less clear is where and how Mr. Trump came up with another of his policy proposals: changing the terms of income-based repayment of student loans.
‘No Idea Where This Came From’
Under President Obama, students who have federal loans can repay those debts through one of several plans based on their incomes. Such plans are based on repayment periods of 20 to 25 years, after which borrowers are offered forgiveness on their outstanding debt.
Mr. Trump’s plan would rely on a single, more generous plan that would require students to repay their loans using 12.5 percent of their income over a period of 15 years.
Read more about Donald Trump’s candidacy, his election, and how he relates to academe in this collection of Chronicle articles and essays, including news and commentary about the Trump administration.
Alexander Holt, a higher-education policy analyst for left-leaning New America, a think tank focused on reviving American politics in the digital age, said it’s very unusual for a Republican candidate to suggest shortening the repayment period, which could increase the amount of loan that the government has to forgive.
“I have no idea where this came from, and I have not been able to talk to anyone who knows where this came from,” said Mr. Holt.
As much as she is disappointed in the Trump proposals, Ms. Akers said she is also relieved that the candidate did not spend even more time on higher education and “inject more bad ideas into the public debate.”
What Ms. Akers and others would have liked to see is something closer to the higher-education proposals of Mr. Bush, the former Florida governor, who abandoned his bid for the GOP presidential nomination in February.
In January, Mr. Bush laid out a plan to overhaul the entire federal student financial-aid system in favor of what was basically a $50,000 line of credit for students to pay for college.
Mr. Bush’s plan was “incredibly clever,” said Ms. Akers, who noted that she also praised some of the ideas in Mrs. Clinton’s original proposal for “debt free” tuition. Though she dislikes the latest version of that plan, which has been modified to include ideas from her rival in the Democratic primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Mr. Bush’s and even Mr. Rubio’s ideas for higher education are not likely to resurface, Ms. Akers said, even if Republicans maintain control of the U.S. Congress. “My guess is they are gone for good,” she said. “The didn’t make much of a splash. I wish they would have.”
Mr. Salerno said that Mrs. Clinton’s more recent proposal offering tuition-free college may not go far, but it will still have an impact on other policy areas.
Mr. Holt, of New America, also lamented the lack of a bipartisan debate on higher-education policy and the dismissal of the Bush proposal.
“It was exciting because it was so different,” he said. “It was the first and only legitimate Republican response to Democrats’ proposal for free college,” he said.
“We had this moment where we could have had this incredible debate if Republicans had followed through.”
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.
