George H.W. Bush, who died on Friday, is not generally regarded as having had a major influence on higher education. But in his single term as the 41st U.S. president, from 1989 to 1993, Bush’s role proved significant for the academy. Here are a few of his administration’s more noteworthy effects on colleges and students:
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The reauthorization of the Higher Education Act in 1992. Among the key provisions were the creation of a direct-loan pilot program, a toughening of the path for student borrowers seeking to discharge their loans in bankruptcy, and the enactment of the 85/15 rule (which would later become the 90/10 rule), which specified that colleges could receive no more than 85 percent of their revenue from federal student aid. (Efforts by the first Bush administration — spearheaded by the education secretary, Lamar Alexander, now a U.S. senator from Tennessee — to rein in for-profit colleges are largely forgotten in higher-ed lore.)
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The crackdown on the Overlap Group. The Justice Department investigated a group of admissions officers at elite colleges who gathered annually to compare and adjust financial-aid awards for prospective students with the intention of making aid dollars go further.
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Supreme Court nominations. The Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings heralded the #MeToo movement, and David Souter proved to be a key advocate of academic and intellectual freedom.
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The subdued reaction to the Tiananmen Square massacre. China’s student-led pro-democracy movement electrified the world. Then came the slaughter of an untold number of protesters. Bush, who had embraced China’s people as the chief U.S. envoy in the mid-1970s, made diplomatic overtures to the country even as the rest of the Western world was seeking to isolate it.
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Enactment of the Americans With Disabilities Act. In Bush’s most enduring legacy for higher education, he signed legislation expanding protections for college applicants and students with disabilities.
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