The sweeping college-affordability proposals President Obama unveiled last week bear the imprint of many people and foundations that have been working for years to hold colleges accountable for escalating costs and stubbornly low completion rates.
One notable figure among them is James R. Kvaal, the 39-year-old deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council, which coordinates domestic-policy making in the White House. Mr. Kvaal has spent more than 15 years tackling higher-education issues in the halls of Congress, the U.S. Department of Education, and the White House under both President Obama and President Bill Clinton.
He declined to be interviewed this week about his role in formulating the president’s plan, which proposes rating colleges based on measures of access, affordability, and student outcomes, such as alumni earnings. Under the plan, which drew mixed reactions, students attending higher-rated colleges could obtain larger Pell Grants and more-affordable loans.
Those who have worked with Mr. Kvaal say the president’s proposals are in sync with Mr. Kvaal’s own priorities.
Finding ways to make higher education more affordable and colleges more accountable for costs and results have been hallmarks of his policy-advising career, said David A. Bergeron, a longtime Education Department official who is now vice president for postsecondary education at the Center for American Progress.
The two worked together on the “gainful employment” rule aimed at cracking down on abuses by for-profit colleges. That approach was a form of ratings, based on students’ debt-to-income ratios and loan-repayment rates, Mr. Bergeron said. Like the president’s newly proposed ratings, the gainful-employment test was designed to create incentives for colleges to perform better.
Mr. Kvaal’s work on higher education, including efforts to strengthen the federal Pell Grant program, reflects his commitment to social justice, which led him to work as an aide to Sen. John Edwards, Mr. Bergeron added.
While Mr. Kvaal feels passionately about improving access to higher education, those who have worked with him said, he isn’t known for sharing personal anecdotes or revealing much about himself.
“He’s very quiet,” Mr. Bergeron said. “He spends a tremendous amount of time listening to other people and trying to discern areas of agreement.”
Carrots and Sticks
Born in Lexington, Mass., Mr. Kvaal earned a bachelor’s degree in public policy from Stanford University and a law degree from Harvard University. He went on to work in the House of Representatives and the Senate, and as a senior policy adviser to President Clinton. He also served as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
During Mr. Obama’s first term, Mr. Kvaal was a special assistant to the president on the White House’s National Economic Council, focusing on higher-education and labor-market policy. That work included simplifying the process for applying for federal financial aid and limiting student-loan repayments to 10 percent of a borrower’s income, through an income-based repayment program.
The president would now like to expand that option, known as “Pay as You Earn,” to many more borrowers.
In 2010, Mr. Kvaal replaced Robert M. Shireman as the Education Department’s top political appointee on higher education. There, his mandate included finding ways to reach the president’s goal of leading the world in college-credential attainment by 2020. In an interview with The Chronicle in 2010, Mr. Kvaal said he supported strategies such as performance-based scholarships and rewards for colleges that helped students succeed.
In his leadership role at the Education Department, he continued Mr. Shireman’s crackdown on for-profit colleges, which included a plan to cut off federal student aid to programs whose graduates had high debt burdens, low incomes, and poor odds of repaying their loans. The resulting “gainful employment” rule, however, was overturned in court last summer, and the Education Department has named negotiators to a panel that will rewrite the rule.
But before that happened, Mr. Kvaal left his post, in 2011, to help the president in his bid for re-election.
‘Good Political Instincts’
While Mr. Kvaal’s input into the president’s plan shouldn’t be overstated, said Becky H. Timmons, assistant vice president for government relations at the American Council on Education, his “good political instincts and deep knowledge of higher education” probably made him a key player. That’s a good thing, she added.
“Going forward, since there’s some architecture in the plan but not a lot of detail, it will be helpful to have someone who’s good at reaching out and listening and developing relationships,” Ms. Timmons said. Among the contentious details yet to be worked out, she said, are the specific measures for rating colleges and how they will be grouped for comparison.
Making education more effective and affordable seems central to the new proposals, said Julie Peller, strategy director for federal policy at the Lumina Foundation, who worked with Mr. Kvaal as a top aide to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
“One thing that stands out about the president’s plan is the focus on quality in higher education and striving for good outcomes for students,” Ms. Peller said. “Looking at the proposals supported by the administration while James was at the Department of Education, that seems to be a recurring theme.”