Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be the next
secretary of education, appeared yesterday before the Senate Health,
Education, Labor and Pensions Committee for her confirmation hearing,
the focus of which was primarily her stance on K-12 education,
especially the use of vouchers and her support for charter schools.
The nearly four-hour hearing
was contentious at times, with Democrats complaining frequently about
the five-minute limit per senator for a single round of questions and
the fact that the Office of Government Ethics had not finished its
review of DeVos’s financial investments for any possible conflicts of
interest.
While DeVos, a billionaire philanthropist from Michigan, offered
little clarity around her views on higher education, her responses to
several questions did hint at what the agency’s higher education agenda
might look like in the future, should she be confirmed.
DeVos raised the issue of college costs and affordability in her prepared remarks,
but the only solution she offered was for more students to choose less
expensive forms of postsecondary education, including career colleges,
trade and vocational schools, and community colleges.
The other primary concern related to higher education that arose was
government regulation. DeVos’s views in this area seem in line with the
Republican majority, although she demurred when asked for specifics
during the hearing. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) asked DeVos about
enforcing the gainful employment rule—the
effort to ensure that individuals who enroll in career training
programs will earn enough money to repay their student loans—but DeVos
would only say that she would review the rule to make sure it was
achieving its intended goal.
Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) asked DeVos if she would uphold the current
federal guidelines used to fight sexual assault on college campuses, but
she also avoided answering “yes” or “no” to this question. She said
there were "a lot of conflicting ideas" about how to enforce the rules
under Title IX, which prohibits gender discrimination in education, and
that she looked forward to working with the committee to understand
those conflicts and find resolutions.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who chairs the committee, said it would
meet early next week to consider DeVos’s nomination, provided her ethics
agreement is in place.