A. Lee Fritschler tries to make the most of a position that critics say has been ‘emasculated’
When the Department of Education’s college-policy unit moved into its new digs recently, the offices weren’t exactly what you’d call ready for business:
ALSO SEE:
Biographical information on A. Lee Fritschler
Telephone voice mail hadn’t been hooked up, and plumbers were still putting some bathrooms in working order.
The business of the Office of Postsecondary Education itself is evolving as well. As the Clinton administration enters its final year, the office has a new leader, A. Lee Fritschler, but uncertain authority over areas it has traditionally controlled, such as student aid.
Several college leaders and lobbyists worry that the postsecondary unit is no longer a center of power within the Education Department, a change symbolized by the office’s transfer out of the department’s headquarters and into new downtown offices.
College associations hope that Mr. Fritschler can win back some muscle for the office, which they consider the most publicly accountable part of the department for higher-education affairs. But they note that the rise of the department’s “performance-based organization” (P.B.O.) -- a new unit created by federal lawmakers to run the $42-billion student-aid programs -- has limited both the influence and the portfolio of the postsecondary-education office.
“Since the creation of the P.B.O., the responsibilities of the assistant secretary for postsecondary education have eroded to the point where the job is an emasculated one, that doesn’t have anywhere near the clout or decision-making authority over public policy that it once had,” says Edward M. Elmendorf, vice president for governmental relations at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.
College lobbyists also question how much of an impact Mr. Fritschler can have as a new player working in a lame-duck administration. But Mr. Fritschler, who became the assistant secretary after serving for 12 years as president of Dickinson College, is confident that he can make an impact.
Indeed, he said last week that department leaders have indicated that control of student-aid policy will be returned to his office soon. With that authority, the office would be in charge of drafting future financial-aid rules.
He has sought to strengthen his position by taking advantage of the department’s reorganization to explore broader issues of importance to colleges. His predecessors, he says, could not tackle those pressing issues, because they were consumed with the task of keeping the student-aid trains running on time.
“This office has the opportunity to focus on things we have not been able to focus on in the past. Of course, we will remain deeply involved in financial-aid policy,” Mr. Fritschler says.
“But I think the more important news is that we now have the time to think much more seriously about the role the federal government should play in higher education.”
Mr. Fritschler plans to meet with groups of college leaders, faculty members, and students around the country beginning this month to hear what they think the department can do to “be more helpful and more effective for higher education.” He calls this effort the “Agenda Project,” because he believes that the sessions will help him set a course for his tenure.
Among the issues he wants to explore are ways to entice more foreign students to study at American universities; to promote access to distance-education programs at high-quality institutions; and to relieve colleges of unnecessary and burdensome regulations.
Mr. Fritschler’s arrival in Washington brought cheers from college lobbyists and leaders, who like the idea of a former college president serving as assistant secretary, because of his familiarity with issues important to them.
He has had a close working relationship with higher-education associations, having served on the board of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. In 1991, he helped to found the Annapolis Group, a coalition of 110 presidents of leading liberal-arts colleges formed to confront issues of concern to the institutions.
While college lobbyists support many of his ideas, though, they don’t expect him to have much opportunity to demonstrate strength in terms of policy.
“Coming into the job in the last year of an administration presents special challenges,” says Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the American Council on Education.
“The department is unlikely to make any major changes in postsecondary education, so his power will probably be pretty limited,” he adds.
But Mr. Hartle’s assocation and others urged Congress to confirm Mr. Fritschler’s nomination in November. They believe that he can set the college-policy office back on course by retaking control of student-aid policy making at the department.
The devolution of the assistant secretary’s authority began in 1998, when Congress, responding to several major glitches in student-aid delivery, ordered the Education Department to hire a non-political appointee with expertise in financial management to lead a new unit to run the delivery systems and modernize them.
In creating the P.B.O., the lawmakers stressed that it should focus on the operations of the student-aid programs, and not on policy making.
Under tremendous pressure to get the new unit up and running, department officials concluded that the quickest way to make the transition was to shift the entire Office of Student Financial Assistance -- and its 1,200 employees -- into the P.B.O. The department hired Greg Woods, a former adviser to Vice President Gore, to be the P.B.O.'s chief operating officer.
Among the entities included in the new division were the Policy, Training, and Analysis Service, which writes the department’s student-aid regulations; the Institutional Participation and Oversight Service, which polices the management of aid funds at colleges and trade schools; and the Accreditation Office, which is instrumental in determining which institutions can participate in the federal student-aid programs.
College lobbyists criticized the department for leaving basic policy decisions to officials who, as non-political appointees, were outside the chain of command and therefore not accountable.
“It is essential to a democracy that those who set policy and execute the laws should be ultimately responsible to elected officials,” says Sarah Flanagan, vice president for government relations at the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.
“We don’t want to have nonpolitical appointees making decisions about who gets aid, where they can use it, how much they get, and what type it is. These are basic policy decisions.”
Department officials have consistently defended the division of duties. Mr. Woods has argued that he needs policy experts to help him with the day-to-day management of the student-aid programs. The P.B.O. advises Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley on aid policy, Mr. Woods has explained, while Mr. Riley sets the policy.
“The same old folks in the department make policy,” Mr. Woods said at a recent meeting of the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance. “We inform the decision process. For example, we will talk about the operational impacts of proposed legislative or regulatory changes. But ultimately, all decisions are made by the secretary.”
With the introduction of the P.B.O., all that was left for the assistant secretary for postsecondary education to run was a small set of programs, like the federal TRIO programs -- which had previously been under the control of the assistant secretary’s deputies -- and a handful of new Clinton-administration programs that promote early intervention, better teacher training, and more distance-education opportunities.
Mr. Fritschler’s predecessor, David A. Longanecker, saw the change as an opportunity rather than as an impediment. He wanted to focus on college issues beyond student aid, but managing the aid programs had become an almost all-consuming job. Without that constant demand, he believed, the assistant secretary could concentrate on fundamental issues affecting higher education.
At the same time, Mr. Longanecker knew that the time had come for him to leave. He had “burned bridges,” he said, and believed that someone with “more credibility with the higher-education community” was needed to make the most of the reconfigured office. He left the department in June.
For his part, Mr. Fritschler says he is happy that his time will not be dominated managing the various student-assistance programs.
“I thought, and still think, that the P.B.O. is a great idea. So I wasn’t about to come here wanting to run financial aid. Being able to focus on larger issues was part of what made the job attractive to me in the first place,” he says.
But he has fought hard to regain the powers of the position. Soon after being nominated, he began meeting with the department’s top leaders and Mr. Woods to see what offices should be moved back under his jurisdiction.
At his swearing-in ceremony last month, Mr. Fritschler announced that the accreditation unit would return to his office’s authority.
In addition, Marshall S. Smith, the outgoing acting deputy secretary, has signed off on a plan that would give the assistant secretary control over student-aid policy making once more. Under the plan, many of those in the P.B.O.'s Policy, Training, and Analysis Service who concentrate on policy will be moved back to the Office of Postsecondary Education.
“This is something that I have felt very strongly about,” Mr. Fritschler says. “I think that the P.B.O. has to be free to manage the student-aid programs, but there are major policy issues in student aid that we will need to address.”
Mr. Smith says he had considered moving the student-aid policy branch to the deputy secretary’s office, where many key policy decisions have been made over the last year. However, he decided that such a move would be “disruptive” and would not take advantage of the strengths that Mr. Fritschler has brought to the department.
“Lee is someone who has an interest in policy, has experience with it, and has given a lot of thought to these issues,” says Mr. Smith.
In the near term, that shift will put Mr. Fritschler’s office in charge of a new round of negotiations, to begin next month, among department officials, college groups, and lenders over how best to carry out provisions that Congress added to the Higher Education Act in 1998. The acting deputy secretary’s office held the most recent round of negotiations.
The postsecondary-education office will also coordinate the activities of a Congressionally mandated panel that will begin meeting this year to determine whether market forces can be better integrated into the student-loan programs.
And Mr. Fritschler will be in charge of drafting the department’s recommendations to Congress about making technical changes to the federal Higher Education Act.
College lobbyists and leaders are giving Mr. Fritschler high marks for the progress he has made so far in strengthening his office.
But they see other areas that the assistant secretary should control, such as institutional oversight and policies on the government’s loan programs.
“If Lee is able to help sort out what the P.B.O. should be doing and what it shouldn’t be doing, that would be a great gain,” says Ms. Flanagan, of the independent-colleges association. “That’s really the most important question for higher education at the Education Department, in the long run.”
BORN:
May 5, 1937, in Schenectady, N.Y.
EDUCATION: B.A. in economics, Union College, 1959; M.A. in public administration, Syracuse University, 1960; Ph.D. in political science, Syracuse University, 1965.
CAREER: Assistant secretary of education for postsecondary education, 1999-present; president, Dickinson College, 1987-99; director, Center for Public Policy Education, Brookings Institution, 1981-87; chairman, U.S. Postal Rate Commission, 1977-81; dean of the College of Public and International Affairs, American University, 1975-77; dean of the School of Government and Public Administration, American University, 1970-75; professor of government and public administration, American University, 1964-77.
PERSONAL: Married, with three children. He enjoys opera, golf, and tennis. He describes his wife as a “star” tennis player, and himself as “middling” at the game. He “pleads the fifth” when asked his handicap on the links. An avid reader, he especially enjoys biographies. Recent picks include Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., by Ron Chernow. “I like to see how people have prepared themselves for their careers and what leads them to success,” he says. “But I haven’t found a pattern yet.”
SOURCE: CHRONICLE REPORTING
http://chronicle.com Section: Government & Politics Page: A32