The Top Five Obama Administration Education Policy Hits

The Higher Ed Watch blog from the New America Foundation recently posted what they consider to be the biggest hits of the Obama administration related to higher education.  Since Education Department secretary Arne Duncan has suggested that he plans to stay in his position and to help keep the Education Department on the same course as it has been for the past four years (see our blog post about this here: https://coreeducationllc.com/blog2/arne-duncan-charts-course-for-next-four-years/), these comments will be of particular use as we look forward to the next four years of the Obama administration.

Highlights from the hits include the following:

1. Reforming Student Loans: President Obama achieved his single most significant higher education victory in March 2010 when he signed into law legislation ending the wasteful practice of subsidizing private lenders to make federal student loans. Overcoming the fierce opposition of the student loan industry, the Obama administration and Democratic Congressional leaders eliminated the Federal Family Education Loan program, which had long been racked by corruption, and shifted to 100 percent direct lending, which delivered the same federal loans to students at a much lower cost for taxpayers and without all the scandals.

2. Reining in For-Profit Higher Education:  For much of the last decade, federal officials turned a blind eye to widespread allegations that some of the largest for-profit higher education companies were putting low-income students in harm’s way – loading them up with unmanageable levels of debt for training from which they were unlikely to benefit. But nearly from the start, the Obama administration made clear that those days were over. Most significantly, the U.S. Department of Education eliminated loopholes that the Bush administration put in place to help these for-profit schools skirt a long-standing federal law that prohibits colleges from compensating recruiters based on their success in enrolling students.

3. Making Private Loans Safer for Students: Under the Obama administration, there is, for the first time, a single federal bureau in charge of regulating private student loans, rather than the patchwork of agencies that did little to stop predatory lending practices.  As part of legislation to reform Wall Street, the administration championed the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to oversee the private student loan marketplace and give private loan borrowers somewhere to turn when they get into disputes with their lenders.

4. Boosting the Pell Grant Program: From the start, President Obama has shown steadfast support for the Pell Grant program, the primary source of federal financial aid for low-income students. In the federal stimulus legislation and student loan reform bill, the administration worked with Congress to significantly boost the maximum Pell Grant. And in the budget wars that followed, the White House successfully fought back House Republican proposals to cut the maximum award and thereby significantly reduce the grants’ purchasing power.

5. Promoting Smarter, More Useable, and More Transparent Data: Right out of the gate, the Obama administration has led in this area. Administration officials simplified the FAFSA and took the radical step of creating efficiency in government (!) by allowing existing data housed in different government agencies to talk to one another. Thanks to a partnership between the Department of Education and the IRS, students can now click a button that will prepopulate their FAFSA or their Income-Based Repayment applications with required tax information.  

For more, please see: http://higheredwatch.newamerica.net/blogposts/2012/president_obama_s_greatest_higher_ed_hits-73566