Federal statutes require the United States Department of Education (ED) to fund race discrimination at postsecondary institutions through laws such as § 1059e. Predominantly Black Institutions, § 1059g. Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institutions, and §§ 1101 – 1101d. Hispanic-Serving Institutions. ED’s Office for Civil Rights has chosen to abuse its power by redefining gender ideology and race discrimination as civil rights that colleges and universities must enforce at pain of lawsuit and losing eligibility for federal grants and loans—and by using administrative devices such as Dear Colleague Letters and case resolutions to allow ED to act as if it had the power to make law. The entire Biden administration ED acted with blatant illegality to “forgive” college-student loans.
ED has done great damage to American higher education by these means. At the same time, ED remains immensely popular with the American public for its core higher-education spending: Pell Grants for disadvantaged college students and William D. Ford Federal Direct Loans for just about every college student who applies for one. The Trump administration already has issued a flurry of executive orders to reform all parts of the federal government, including ED, but it’s not yet clear what strategy it will use to align ED’s postsecondary-education policies with these executive orders.
Reformers should simplify and depoliticize the education department’s higher-ed spending and regulations.
The National Association of Scholars (NAS) recommends in Waste Land: The Education Department’s Profligacy, Mediocrity, and Radicalism that education reformers enact comprehensive reform to simplify and depoliticize ED’s higher-education spending and regulations. This strategy will make ED transparent and accountable to the public and to policymakers. Reformers shouldn’t jeopardize real reform by a hasty attempt to eliminate ED entirely—which might be ineffective and certainly would alienate large swathes of the American public. Education reformers instead should build on comprehensive reform that makes it possible for the American public to get a clear look at ED’s core spending programs, then make the case for further reform.
Much education department spending on postsecondary education should go.
Yet much ED spending on postsecondary education should go. ED spends billions annually on subsidies for race discrimination, “mental-health” initiatives that fund the therapeutic-managerial complex in American postsecondary education, and a myriad of discretionary-spending programs that ED bureaucrats can use to supercharge radicalizing bureaucracies at American colleges and universities. Above all, it spends billions on the TRIO programs to “prepare” students for college—though the money really bribes colleges to lower their academic standards for unprepared students. Congress should rescind every one of the dozens of federal statutes that authorize spending for this labyrinth of programs. Congress should be willing to compensate for zeroing out this funding with compensatory funding increases for Pell Grants and Ford Loans. Revenue-neutral reform that eliminates every radicalizing or useless program would be a great bargain.
Education reformers should make an exception for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs). America has historic relationships to HBCUs, American Indian tribes, Alaska Native entities, and Hawaiian Native entities. These programs should be housed in a new office explicitly devoted to these historic relationships. Reformers will be better able to fulfill the Trump administration’s mandate to eliminate race discrimination and gender ideology from ED postsecondary funding and regulation, and with broader support from the American people, if they retain funding for HBCUs and TCCUs.
Education reformers also should transfer the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education and all programs for vocational and career education to the Labor Department, where they should be integrated with the Labor Department’s other workforce-training programs. ED can then focus on non-vocational postsecondary education: Pell Grants, Ford Loans, and virtually nothing else. Congress then should enact ironclad legislation to remove the power of any future administration to imitate the Biden administration and illegally “forgive” student loans.
Policymakers also should adjust the conditions by which ED disburses grants and loans to students. Congress should limit total Title IV loans to $75,000 per borrower. It also should require that borrowers have family incomes below 150 percent of the poverty level, maintain a 2.5 grade point average, and have received federal loans and/or grants for no more than four previous years. Congress finally should make colleges and universities jointly responsible with individual borrowers for student-loan defaults. These reforms will direct federal monies to students with a reasonable chance of succeeding academically at college and give colleges and universities a financial incentive not to admit unprepared students.
Reformers should work to ensure that the education department explicitly renounces the theory of “disparate impact.”
This programmatic reform must be accompanied by reforms of the ED’s regulatory structure, which ED has used to radicalize education. Above all, ED’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) must be prevented from ever again imposing a radical political agenda on colleges and universities in the name of civil rights. The Trump administration’s first executive orders must be carried out, to ensure universities do not engage in race discrimination, promote gender ideology, or abrogate due-process protections. Education reformers also should work to ensure that ED declares that it explicitly renounces the theory of “disparate impact,” that civil-rights laws concerning sex do not concern sexual orientation, and that civil-rights laws concerning sexual discrimination do not concern sexual harassment or sexual violence. Much mischief has followed this confusion.
The education department should act more aggressively in defense of liberty and national interest.
Education reformers also should reform the accrediting organizations for postsecondary institutions—both the seven regional accreditors and all disciplinary accrediting organizations. These now operate in a limbo between federal and state authority and impose politicized, bloated bureaucracies on colleges and universities, with no public accountability. ED should act to bring the accrediting organizations under control.
ED also should act more aggressively in defense of liberty and national interest. We should remove the ability of dictatorial regimes in China and the Islamic world to turn American colleges and universities into fifth columns that host spies, lobbyists, and Jew-hating mobs—and we should defund any college that insists on acting as a “sanctuary” for illegal aliens or that unconstitutionally suppresses freedom of speech, freedom of religion, or freedom of association. These initiatives will be far easier to undertake when ED’s programmatic structure has been reformed and OCR and the accrediting organizations defanged.
Education reformers should engage in comprehensive reform by rescinding the statutory basis for a host of individual ED programs and by revoking an equally large host of ED and accrediting regulations. The public and policymakers then will be equipped to exert oversight on ED’s core programs, Pell Grants and Ford Loans, and ensure that ED postsecondary spending and regulation are depoliticized, transparent, and accountable.
This policy agenda should not be the end of federal postsecondary-education policy reform. But these practical goals will establish a solid foundation for even more ambitious education reform in the future.
David Randall is executive director of the Civics Alliance and director of research at the National Association of Scholars.
This article was originally published at jamesgmartin.center
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