US college leaders fear getting lost amid Biden’s crises

After an election that threw a high-profile spotlight on higher education, US college leaders have admitted a creeping concern about the Biden administration’s intent to build a sustained focus on the sector and its needs.

In its first week in office, the administration chose school leaders for the top two Education Department posts, with no higher education specialists among its initial slate of senior staff.

The administration also announced its determination to quickly reopen schools in the face of heavy political pushback, with specific advice on strategies, while promising further study of that question for higher education.

Such early evidence from just one week in office may prove minor over the long term, advocates conceded, reflecting to some degree the political primacy of schools, which have triple the enrolment of colleges.

Still, with Mr Biden naming many other policy chiefs across the government – and declaring his highest overall attention for tackling the coronavirus pandemic, the economy, climate and political polarisation – the omission of higher education was feeding anxieties.

It “might raise the spectre of a lesser priority” for colleges and universities, said Lezli Baskerville, president of the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education, which represents black-majority institutions.

“We’ve got to take a deep breath,” said Mildred García, president of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, admitting her own uncertainty. “I’m going to continue to be an optimist.”

Higher education was a frequent topic during the US presidential campaign, with Mr Biden joining all major Democratic contenders in promising to make college free for the first two years. Mr Biden remains committed to that goal, even if political experts anticipate Congress narrowing his initiative to lower-income students.

But higher education advocates have been pursuing a much broader agenda for years. Much of their ambition centres on a long-awaited reauthorisation of the Higher Education Act, the main law defining the relationship between the federal government, colleges and students.

Running to about 1,000 pages, the act defines student and institutional aid, accreditation, data collection, civil rights protections, student safety and more. Across those topics, advocates said, some of the most urgently needed upgrades involve programmes that help low-income students and the colleges that serve them.

The issue of Education Department staffing by itself is not the main worry, Ms Baskerville said. “The more important sense,” she said, “is that it could signal a lack of intent to complete HEA reauthorisation. That would be problematic.”

Dr García said that she aimed to put departmental roster-filling in perspective, believing that Mr Biden ultimately would find people who “understand us, know our issues, and will work for us”.

More pressing, she said, was the need to ensure campuses can safely reopen soon, which will require more federal aid to help all institutions provide the level of extensive Covid testing that only wealthier campuses so far have managed to afford.

While Mr Biden recently ordered federal agencies to study ways of helping colleges teach in-person classes, Dr García suggested moving swiftly past that step. “It’s about time where something needs to be done,” she said.

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com