Washington — On the same day that President-elect Donald Trump visited his soon-to-be predecessor at the White House, speculation continued over how a Trump administration will tackle an array of higher education issues that range from student loan debt to campus sexual assaults.
Experts assembled for a panel discussion at the American Enterprise Institute Thursday agreed that, while it’s too early to say precisely how things will shake out for education policywise, a few things — including a diminished regulatory role for the U.S. Department of Education — are all but certain.
“I think it’s unclear how his advisory shuffle is going to work itself out, but there are a couple of things that are almost inevitable,” said Frederick M. Hess, resident scholar and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
Such near certainties include a scaling back of any loose pieces of regulatory framework that are not federal law.
“Trump is going to say, ‘Well, geez, here’s a lot of stuff that’s not law of the land that we’re going to unwind,” Hess said.
Andy Smarick, also a resident fellow at AEI, said the rollback of the federal role in education may be piecemeal and low-key.
“If you have a secretary of education who thinks things can be done in the states and he staffs the department with people who are not freelancing, there might not be a headline of ‘Trump does X, Y, Z,’” Smarick said. Rather, he said, there might be a multitude of different things happening by the federal government “backing up” and allowing things to happen at the state and community level.
