Leadership Demonstration

A few days ago I wrote about one higher education leader who has advised his colleagues to listen to the Secretary of Education. Part of the discussion in the meeting I just attended was whether we should accept a large number of new reporting requirements in the reauthorization of the federal Higher Education Act. A good part of the leadership of the higher education community in Washington argued that the bill had been improved as much as it could be and that it was impossible to stop the moving train of legislation. Congress has worked on this bill for most of the decade and even though the legislation is fundamentally negative, it was described as the best we could get. There are two rules of legislative process that were in conflict on this measure - the first, "never amend a bad bill" and the second, "live to fight another day." From the original version of the measure, the bill was improved but it still contains a raft of new and burdensome regulations which will raise costs in higher education.

Senator Lamar Alexander, of Tennessee, voted against the bill. He came to a different conclusion than some leaders of higher education. In his floor statement opposing the bill the Senator said “After four years of work, the Senate has spewed forth a well-intentioned contraption of unnecessary rules and regulations that waste time and money that ought to be spent on students and improving quality. It confirms my belief that the greatest threat to the quality of American higher education is not underfunding. It is overregulation. The current stack of federal rules for higher education institutions is nearly as tall as I am, and this bill more than doubles it, creating 24 new categories and 100 new reporting requirements.”

Alexander is not simply pandering to higher education. In a speech to the Council on Higher Education Accreditation he told a group that higher education "hasn't bothered to explain (the need for autonomy, excellence and choice) to members of congress in plain English." In the same speech he said Congress has every right to ask how the money they appropriate is being spent and it is the duty of the higher education establishment to provide clear responses. Alexander warned that if higher education did not do a better job that Congress would likely increase their levels of regulation.

One other commentator on the recently passed higher education act described the bill in the following terms "it is a visionless, unwieldy, sprawling mishmash of new programs and intrusive regulation into areas (such as illegal file sharing and vaccines) that are inappropriate terrain for a bill supposedly about student aid." Higher education did a poor job in following up to Congress in providing clear information. That should not excuse Congress' work on this important legislation.