As the United States heads toward another major election year, some higher education scholars predict that ivory tower-related issues will inevitably take center stage.
Timely issues such as student debt and the current onslaught against various progressive social and cultural ideals, such as issues such as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), race/ethnicity, and identity, , will be a topic of discussion for President Joe Biden. He is likely to face off again against former President Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee.
student loan
Dr. Robert Kerchen
Mr. Biden may try to take credit for the pardoning efforts he has pushed forward and explain that the major shortcomings he has faced on that front are the result of failures by Republicans, said Dr. says Dr. Andra Gillespie. He majored in political science at Emory University.
Since the Supreme Court struck down the Biden administration's debt forgiveness plan in 2023, which canceled up to $20,000 in loans to borrowers, Biden and U.S. Education Department officials have been trying to find alternative ways to achieve debt forgiveness. I've been searching for.
One such initiative, the SAVE Plan, is a new adjusted income-driven repayment (IDR) plan that determines monthly payments based on a borrower's income and family size, and is an improvement over the previous revised Pay As Launched in August 2023 to replace You Earn (REPAYE). ) plan. By increasing the deduction so that less income is available for personal discretion, borrowers may see lower or even $0 monthly payments. The plan also aims to speed up debt forgiveness for registered small borrowers. As of Jan. 11, 6.9 million borrowers were enrolled in the SAVE plan, touted by the Department of Education (ED) as “the administration's most affordable repayment plan.”
The Biden-Harris administration's efforts also come as ED works to correct and adjust past errors in the loan system in tracking forgiveness progress for those eligible for EDR and Public Service Loan Forgiveness. brought in an additional $1 billion in relief. The government is also pursuing potential relief through rulemaking negotiations with a variety of student debt stakeholders, including state officials, higher education leaders, civil rights organizations, the military, and borrowers. Originally scheduled to hold three sessions in late 2023 for these non-federal constituencies, the ED planned to hold a further session in February.
Under Biden and Harris, the government had approved $136.6 billion in loan forgiveness for more than 3.7 million Americans as of January, according to the ED.
“The Biden administration wants to highlight what they have done for student loan forgiveness even though the Supreme Court rejected their best efforts,” said the director of the Department of Educational Policy and Policy. says Dr. Robert Kerchen. He studied at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
“While it may help in the general election, it’s not necessarily a good thing because progressives don’t think Biden has done enough. A significant number of young progressives want to cancel universal lending.” There is.”
Dr. Ann Marcus
Dr. Ann Marcus, director of the Steinhardt Institute for Higher Education Policy at New York University, was less convinced, calling student debt a divisive issue and “difficult to understand.” She said while debt forgiveness may be well-received by those who benefit from it, she is not sure it is still a popular issue in people's minds. she added.
Somewhat related to this is the continued delay and complexity of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and its associated ED in this college application cycle, but this is not necessarily a “sexy” topic. Marcus says.
“I can't imagine a candidate wanting to bring that up. First of all, they need to understand it, and it's not easy to understand,” she says. “And secondly, everyone would want the FAFSA to work, but it's not a very sexy issue where the government is trying to argue that it should work properly.”
Kerchen said Republicans are generally more unified in their opposition to mass student loan forgiveness. But they're also focused on discussing social and cultural issues surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), free speech on college campuses, and “way-ism.” He says he thinks these themes have cast a shadow over student debt ever since.
DEI and academia
DEI and higher education initiatives overall could be a key target for Republican candidates and politicians, academics told Diverse.
Over time, especially in places like Florida and Texas, those on the political right have begun to target practices they deem “woke” through policy and condemnation. One recent attack in recent memory was the banning of diversity offices at state universities in Texas.
Tillery, for his part, hopes to see more bans on DEI policies, as well as more attempts to ban books and curriculum related to racial and ethnic studies and LGBTQ+ topics. He expects such attacks will face legal challenges from groups such as the ACLU and NAACP.
According to a November 2023 report from PEN America, more than 100 new educational gag orders restricting education on specific topics will be introduced in 2023, with the most notable targets being gender identity, sexual orientation, It was a seed.
Tillery noted how Democrats' response to these attacks has been “weak,” even though polls show that DEI programs are extremely popular among all Americans, especially among Democratic voters. ''He said he was shocked by what was going on.
“Frankly, their inability to make it a campaign issue just shows further incompetence at a level of messaging that seems ripe for the taking,” Tillery said. To tell.
Dr. Andra Gillespie
“Certain things related to education, including those adjacent to higher education, are going to be triggered during the presidential campaign,” Gillespie said. “For example, the word 'woke' would be used figuratively. Yes, this has been introduced in K-12 education, but it has also been introduced in higher education. I've seen it there.
“So I'm hoping [Donald Trump] – Assuming he’s the candidate – he’s still going to talk about woke ideology and “woke left” and all sorts of other things. And this involves higher education, in part because of the idea that many of these ideas were born on college campuses among academics, social sciences, law, and humanities. ”
Attempts to change the education landscape may not be as prominent a campaign issue with President Trump as anti-DEI activist Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who withdrew from the Republican primary in late January. , but that doesn't mean it's true. Gillespie said the topic likely won't come up, especially if DeSantis or New York's rising Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik are chosen as running mates.
Mr. DeSantis, in particular, has extensive experience in fighting and dismantling higher education in the state, having acquired New College of Florida in 2023, where he introduced a conservative-leaning leadership structure and reformed the school. was rebuilt from within.
Meanwhile, Stefanik's efforts received a lot of attention a few months ago. In December, it went viral that she questioned presidents of several prominent institutions about Israeli-Palestinian sentiment on college campuses, including University of Pennsylvania President M. Elizabeth McGill and Harvard University President Claudine Gay. led to his resignation. Gaye was Harvard's first black leader.
“I think people like [Republican Congresswoman Virginia Foxx of North Carolina] and Elise Stefanik believe that these are winnable issues for Republicans, and we hope that further investigation will shine more of a spotlight on this issue,” Tillery said. “They're just going to try to maintain.” [on] Riding the anti-Semitic horse, bring more elite university presidents onto that committee, making statements that can be used to shut them down or generate politically advantageous citations. I'll try to let you. I think more of that will happen. ”
Tillery said he expects Republicans to continue their attacks on academic freedom, further reinforcing their claims that the ivory tower has created indoctrination and “awakened culture.”
“There's actually been a debate going on for years about how to measure expertise,” Gillespie said. “When Donald Trump spends his entire political career talking about draining the swamp, he is talking about taking power away from traditional elites. It is a fort.”
Gillespie said rising tensions on college campuses and topics related to December's Congressional hearings on free speech, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia have led to Republicans challenging the legitimacy of higher education as an institution. It is said that it will be mentioned in the context of trying to chant. Higher education may also be unsafe at the state level, where governors, state senators, and representatives are vying for re-election. More than national elections, state elections may be about what students should be taught.
“In states with statewide university systems or regent systems, the governor has a lot of power. It's the governor who often makes those appointments,” she says. “So higher education is definitely going to come up as an issue of concern, and it could be an issue where they want to take a stand and make some kind of campaign promise.”
Despite strong right-wing sentiments about DEI, Marcus notes that the public may not be thinking about it much. After all, even DeSantis, whose fight against the “woke” was an unmistakable hallmark, called off his candidacy for president.
according to new york timesonly 24% of Republican voters nationwide preferred a hypothetical Republican candidate focused on defeating “woke” ideology rather than a candidate focused on “restoring law and order on our streets and borders.” I replied that I would vote for.
“If you're in a state like Texas or a state where DEI attacks are likely to resonate with the public, you're going to make DEI attacks a sexy issue and eliminate all DEI offices and wipe out the curriculum,” Marcus says. . “But I don't know. I think DeSantis' failure as a candidate is probably a sign that people are tired of it.
“They may agree with some of it, but are they going to see it as a pressing issue?”
Marcus said the average voter does not consider higher education to be a central campaign theme and is open to scrutiny of universities on issues such as free speech, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and plagiarism. This suggests that they may not be interested. As it stands, higher education is a sensitive but controversial issue to bring up, she says.
There is also growing public sentiment about the overall value of a college education.
“Honestly, I don't know,” she says. “Right now, with all the controversy around anti-Semitism, Palestinians, free speech, and cancellations and firings, I think a lot of candidates want to stay away from higher education. I will go away.”
