Republicans are poised to step up efforts to hold universities accountable after winning majorities in the House and Senate.

With President-elect Donald Trump in the White House, the stage is set for the Republican Party to make significant progress on a higher education wish list that includes providing federal aid to nontraditional programs, l increased taxes on wealthy colleges, crackdowns on campus anti-Semitism and repression. the current accreditation model, experts say.

Unlike Trump’s first term, when the Republican Party also controlled the House and Senate, Congress will likely be more beholden to the president’s agenda as several key Republican lawmakers who opposed him in the first term have left office or have died. Elected officials in recent years have aligned themselves more with Trump.

The margins on the Hill are slim, which could make passing legislation more difficult, but not impossible. Currently, Senate Republicans hold a majority of 52 seats. House Republicans won all 218 seats needed Wednesday night, although there are still several elections considered too close to call and the GOP majority is likely to grow. But Trump appointed several Home members in cabinet and foreign service positions, cutting into the Republican majority. One of those representatives, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, resigned from Congress, effective immediately, after Trump named him attorney general.

Current Republicans, particularly those on the House Education and Workforce Committee, have been preparing for this moment, laying out their higher education agenda through hearings and legislation over the past two years. They want to overhaul student loans, protect free speech on campus for conservative students and faculty members, and restrict the use of diversity, equity and inclusion policies in higher education. Although they have yet to pass any significant laws related to higher education, they have used their platforms to harshly criticize universities, especially elite and wealthy universities.

With control of Congress, Republicans will be better able to exert their forceful power to pass laws that could have a significant impact on institutions and administrators. The use of rhetorical grilling as a form of soft power to pressure universities and shape narratives around higher education will almost certainly continue, experts say.

“If you have control of a single party, it becomes much less predictable, and the possibility of disruptions, especially significant disruptions, increases significantly,” said Jon Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations and national commitment to American Airlines. Board of Education. “A change in government control is significant. This is significant and has a real impact on the daily results of institutions.

Dr. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, is expected to chair the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. As a ranking member of the committee, he has sharply criticized how colleges have responded to anti-Semitism on campus as well as the Biden administration’s handling of the new free application for federal student aid.

In the House, longtime committee leader and North Carolina Republican Virginia Foxx relinquishes the gavel. Reps. Tim Walberg of Michigan and Burgess Owens of Utah are vying to replace her as panel chair. On the Democratic side, Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia is expected to remain a ranking member. He has served as chair or ranking member of the committee since 2015.

The GOP higher education agenda

Since 2023, when Republicans took control of the House, they have regularly put the Department of Education and individual colleges and universities on the spot.

Surveys and hearings have highlighted concerns on everything from workforce development and relations with China to the cost of education and job outcomes. Comments from the hearings ultimately led to a fragmentary attempt to reauthorize the Higher Education Act of 1965, which has not been renewed since 2008.

The centerpiece of this effort was the College Cost Reduction ActA radical bill introduced earlier this year. This legislation would have required colleges to pay outstanding student loans, required institutions to be transparent about program costs, doubled the maximum Pell Grant amount for students in specific majors, and created a new pathway for accreditors to obtain federal recognition, among other provisions.

Even if the invoice committee progressit has yet to receive a vote in the House. Still, experts say its introduction alone represents a significant shift from Republicans’ traditional laissez-faire approach toward one of greater federal involvement.

“Republicans are willing to do things they wouldn’t have been willing to do before,” said Amy Laitinen, senior director of higher education at New America, a left-leaning think tank. “With tuition skyrocketing and reports of poor student outcomes, they just realized they couldn’t stand idly by anymore.”

Laitinen noted, however, that while both sides agree there is a problem, they are proposing different solutions. “A lot of the themes would be the same among Democrats and Republicans, but the flavor would be really different,” she said.

Republicans have also stepped up efforts to hold universities accountable for protecting conservative free speech and defending Jewish minorities from discrimination after Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel and the subsequent war. What followed sparked a wave of protests on college campuses and an increase in anti-Semitic incidents. .

In early December, the commission summoned three university presidents for a combative hearing that led to resignations, further investigation and more questioning of administrators. Some higher education experts say the grilling marked a “watershed moment” and signifies a dangerous risk. new era of congressional control.

“These efforts have less to do with real accountability or an appropriate response…and (are) more of an effort to exert influence on campuses, to try to force them to go in directions that meet a group’s political goals or another,” Fansmith said.

Political analysts expect the focus on culture war issues to continue, further stoking negative public perception and creating more leverage for congressional oversight.

“You have Rep. Elise Stefanik (a New York Republican) saying the day of reckoning is coming for higher education,” Bryan Cook, director of higher education policy at the Urban Institute, said just before on election day. “So, under a Republican-led Congress, the path could certainly be rocky for higher education. »

(Stefanik has since been named U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.)

The GOP’s record

But even as Republicans appear poised to reshape higher education, their record in the 2017-2019 Congress, when they last controlled the House and Senate, shows that power doesn’t always translate into action.

When Trump was first elected in 2016, some feared that the party would push to invest in new, non-traditional alternatives like short-term, credit-free boot camps without providing guarantees for students.

But for the most part, Republicans have focused on roll back policies adopted under the Obama administrationincluding aggressive accountability measures toward for-profit colleges, borrower protection efforts, increased attention to campus sexual assault, and efforts to strengthen faculty and staff unions. If the party has achieved most of its goals, it is through executive action, not legislation.

The main measure that the Republican Congress got across the finish line was a tax on college endowments. Pass As part of the sweeping Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the tariff imposes a 1.4 percent excise tax on the net investment income of private colleges and universities with at least 500 paying students tuition and assets of at least $500,000 per student. And this generated intense recoil Since.

But experts generally say they expect a little more legislative follow-through this time around.

“The days when higher education was totally detached are over,” said Laitinen of New America. “It all depends on how they are approached. The question is: are we trying to destroy the business or are we saying the business needs to change, adapt and do better?