Betsy DeVos, a wealthy Republican advocate and donor to K-12 charter
schools and voucher programs, was confirmed by the Senate yesterday as
the new secretary of education.
Two Republicans—Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of
Alaska—joined Democrats to tie the vote at 50-50. The historic
tiebreaking vote was cast by Vice President Pence. It was the first time
a vice president had been required to break a tie on a cabinet
nomination.
The focus of DeVos’s record and potential agenda since her nomination
in December has been on K-12 schools. She has no record in the higher
education sector and said little about it during her confirmation hearing
last month. But the consensus seems to be the one area where DeVos may
act—with the support of congressional Republicans—is the federal
regulation of colleges and universities.
“I think we’re going to be entering a period of uncertainty and
change with respect to federal regulation of colleges and universities,”
ACE’s Terry Hartle told Diverse: Issues In Higher Education
in an interview yesterday. “What I don’t know is how quickly we will
see those changes simply because the political appointees are not all in
place at the Department of Education.”
Hartle added that the rocky rollout of the Trump administration’s travel ban
on refugees would make the Education Department more circumspect about
implementing any changes to streamline federal regulations.
The careful consideration of how to reshape the regulatory process
for higher education was among the topics addressed at a House Committee
on Education and the Workforce hearing yesterday on the “Challenges and Opportunities in Higher Education.”
William E. "Brit" Kirwan, chancellor emeritus of the University System of Maryland, discussed the findings (353 KB PDF) of the Senate Task Force on Federal Regulation of Higher Education
(13 MB PDF) as a witness at the hearing, stressing the need to reduce federal
regulatory burden on colleges and universities while maintaining
important protections for students, families and taxpayers. Kirwan
served as co-chair of the task force, along with Vanderbilt University
(TN) President Nicholas Zeppos.
In related news, the Obama administration’s rule on teacher preparation programs was one of two education-related regulations overturned yesterday by the House of Representatives. ACE had outlined a number of concerns with the rule throughout the rulemaking process and supported (159 KB PDF) the action to overturn it. The bill now goes to the Senate.