Community Conversations: Terry Hartle on Federal Higher Education Policy [video]

Terry Hartle
Vice President, Government Relations
American Council on Education

John O'Brien
President and CEO
EDUCAUSE

John O'Brien: Welcome to our Community Conversation. I'm excited to have with us today the senior vice president for government relations at the American Council on Education, Terry Hartle. No more introduction needed because you're widely known in our community. And well, it's an interesting time to talk about legislative action, Terry. So let's jump in and let me just ask you initially what you expect between now and January. And let's focus on that period initially and then we'll broaden it out later, but what do you expect on them on the issues of the day that matter most to higher education? And maybe a great place to start is whether you think there's any realistic prospects for a COVID-19 bill between now and January.

Terry Hartle: So we're going to continue to spin our wheels a little bit until we get clarity about how the election actually ended. In terms of next steps, Congress is going to come back in session. They have to do a lame duck session. It's widely believed that as part of that, the government might pass a supplemental spending bill to help deal with what is obviously a worsening pandemic. Congress has been trying to pass what would be the fifth supplemental spending bill for about four months. They didn't really in effect get too close before the election. One issue was money, how much would be spent. The Senate Democrats wanted $500 billion. The House Democrats wanted $2.4 trillion. The White House was willing to go to 1.8 trillion or maybe 1.9 trillion. So huge amount of money difference, but there were also some policy differences in there. About how much money to go to state and local governments, about whether pandemic liability protections would be included. So Congress may pass another supplemental spending bill.

O'Brien: It seems, given the picture you've painted, it seems hard to count on a major bill that includes everything we need in it for higher education. So you talked about one thing in passing which is the liability question, which weighs heavily on colleges and universities. And the other is just the amount of a bill comes through either in January or after. What do you expect the bottom line to be for colleges and universities? I know you worked to put 120 billion into the ask for higher ed. And one could imagine the bill has gotten higher since then, but what do you think will be in the bill whenever it comes through?

Hartle: Well, that's obviously almost a $64 billion question. Right now, if you look at the numbers that appeared in the Senate bills, and if you look at the numbers that appeared in the House bills, and if you look at the legislation introduced by Senator Schumer and Senator Murray, you would see higher education is between roughly $30 billion in the Senate Republican bills, roughly $40 billion in the House Democratic bill, and about $120 billion in the legislation introduced by Senators Murray and Schumer. In all likelihood, if they were to finalize it today, we would be somewhere between 30 and $40 billion. But that's only because that seems to be the numbers where the figures have been clustering. We're engaged in an effort with our association colleagues to try and better document the expenses that colleges and universities have encountered as a result of the pandemic. They are extraordinarily large, much larger than people anticipated. And we are going to put together a document that compiles the estimates of revenue lost as well as increased expenses. And we're going to use that to anchor a renewed push to boost the amount of money going to colleges and universities.

O'Brien: What do you think the prospects are for higher ed reauthorization? The old question that we've been asking for several years.

Hartle: So is higher education reauthorization going to happen? No, I really don't think we're going to talk about higher education reauthorization in a meaningful way for some time. Having said that Vice President Biden, during the campaign, laid out a comprehensive agenda for investment in human capital. In higher education in particular, as they think about a legislative agenda, the Biden administration has four broad areas that are particularly of interest to higher education. First, they promised to significantly increase funding for historically black colleges and universities. They've proposed other changes in laws and policies to further help these institutions. Providing more money is relatively easy as long as Congress goes along. Congress can simply appropriate more funds. It's distributed through the existing channels. That's not terribly difficult. The second thing that the Biden administration will probably do is move to double Pell Grant funding. One of their pledges during the campaign was to double the amount of money spent on the Pell Grant program. This would have an enormous benefit on low and lower middle income families right away. Remember, 90% of Pell Grant funding goes to students from families with incomes less than $40,000. So I think that they will move in that direction pretty aggressively. Again, no legislation to create a program is required. This simply requires more money. The other things that the Biden has talked about doing, other major things, are slightly more complicated. First they've talked about widespread student loan forgiveness. The progressive wing of the Democratic party in particular wants to see substantial reductions in outstanding debt for every borrower who owes money. The minimum price that the progressive Democrats have put on this is roughly $10,000 for everyone who holds a student loan. It's not clear if the administration has legal authority to do that without getting approval from Congress. Fourth thing the Biden administration has talked about is some form of free community college or free public higher education. Initially Vice President Biden was calling for free community college. As a result of negotiations with Democratic progressives in putting the platform together, they've called for free public higher education for people from families with incomes below $125,000. That clearly requires a lot of money. That clearly requires new legislative authority. And it will be politically very controversial because there are a lot of private colleges and universities, particularly in demographically challenged regions of the country. Think New England, upstate New York, the rust belt, great plains, the upper plains, who see some sort of a free public higher education strategy as something that quite simply could bankrupt them. Four year public colleges will be unhappy if any such program is confined to two-year public community colleges. So this particular idea strikes me as the hardest one to put in place because A, it's expensive. And B, it's going to be very politically controversial.

O'Brien: So thank you Terry, for your insight, illumination. it's been great talking to you.

Hartle: Thanks, John. Anytime you want I'm available.