The 112th United States Congress will be a very different place for higher education issues.
With Republicans making significant gains in the House, Jennifer Epstein in Inside Higher Education points out, many colleges will face (more) funding cuts:
In September, a group of House Republican leaders including Representative John Boehner (Ohio), the party’s apparent choice for Speaker of the House, issued “A Pledge to America,” a document that offered broad strokes of what Republicans would do with a majority. Most important for higher education is the group’s vow to cut non-security discretionary spending to 2008 levels and to impose tougher oversight of programs already in place. If they keep that promise, many of the education and research programs that offer funding to students and colleges could face cuts.
This means less money for things like Pell grants, education loans, and research funding. Great.
While student lending reform was very important to the current congress, according to the article, Minority Leader John Boehner, “has close ties to student lenders and has consistently opposed Democrats’ efforts to reform the industry.”
The congressional interest in reforming for-profit colleges, however, is likely to continue. As long as Democrats retain control of the Senate Iowa’s Tom Harkin will probably continue in his efforts to expose and reform the proprietary college industry. [Image via]
