Trusteeship Podcast Episode 48: Higher Education and the 2024 Election

Morgan Alexander:
Welcome to the Trusteeship Podcast from AGB, the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. We cover everything higher education leaders need to know about the challenges facing our nation’s colleges and universities.

More importantly, we provide the facts and insight you need to solve those challenges and to be the storytellers and advocates that higher education needs.

Like many of us, higher education leaders are anxiously awaiting the US elections in November 2024. The election’s winner will undoubtedly reveal new policies and regulations that could have a significant impact on students and institutions. But with all that said, in the national policy debates higher education has so far mostly stayed under the radar, leading to a lot of assumptions and speculation.

In this episode, I talk with Alex Nock, Principal of Penn Hill Group, about highlights of the Republican and Democratic Party platforms, which are each party’s official stance on everything from agriculture to national defense, and what those platforms tell us about what higher education may look like in 2025 and beyond.

I’m Morgan Alexander, your host for this episode of the Trusteeship Podcast. Alex, let’s dive in. Let’s start with the platforms. Give me some highlights from the Republican and democratic platforms that I think people think are most important to boards and to colleges and universities.

Alex Nock:
Hi, Morgan. Nice to be with you again. I think one of the highlights that has gotten the most attention is what will happen to the US Department of Education. The GOP platform calls for its elimination. It’s gotten a lot of press. I think our listeners won’t be surprised to hear me highlight that. The Democratic platform doesn’t speak to whether the department should or shouldn’t exist, because I think they view the default as happening, right? Where there is no elimination of the department. That gets a lot of attention. Morgan, you may ask me in a little bit, “So what might happen with that?” That’s be a bit of a challenge. It would involve Congress and lots of things like that, so we can talk more about that. But that is probably one of the most notable aspects of the GOP platform.

In addition the GOP platform does call for alternatives to four-year college degrees, things like CTE and credentials. Notably, the Democratic platform calls for that as well. Both platforms talk about Title IX, I’m sure that’s not a surprise to our listeners, where the GOP platform calls for the repeal of the recent Biden administration regulation regarding Title Nine that obviously is in the middle of quite a few court battles as we’re recording this right now. Whereas the Democratic Party platform calls for essentially enforcement and implementation of that very rule. Again, not surprising given the two party stances on that particular issue.

There are some notable differences between the two platforms as well. The GOP platform calls for the repeal of the Biden executive order on AI, and essentially says that AI should be rooted in free speech and human flourishing. It doesn’t go on to say what that means, but obviously someone who wrote that element of it has an idea of what they want with that particular kind of focus.

It’s not surprising that the Democratic Party platform does focus a lot on higher education costs. One, it calls for doubling the maximum Pell Grant through 2029. That’s a position that the Biden administration has taken in past budgets. And certainly highlights a lot of the loan forgiveness elements that the existing administration has taken on in the past couple of years. It does highlight as part of those loan forgiveness efforts certainly how Republicans and courts have blocked efforts to provide that loan forgiveness. So, I think it has a little bit both ways, Morgan, on that. We’re saying we’re for this and we’ve tried, but we haven’t been as successful as we wanted.

Morgan Alexander:
So, going to the Democratic Party platform, we now know that Kamala Harris is the candidate running under the Democratic banner. How are her policies? Are they very different from President Biden’s in her platform? Or are there distinctions that need to be made? What do you think?

Alex Nock:
So, we have the advantage, I guess, Morgan, of recording this immediately after the final Democratic Party platform has been issued since the Democratic Convention just started, and in the space that I think a lot of our listeners would care about, the party platform seems really similar, the final one, to the draft party platform that was put out when there wasn’t a candidate Harris by herself at the top of the ticket. So, I think the party platform itself largely seems to be very similar to what was put out when Biden was the candidate. Again, we highlighted some of those elements of the party platform.

But as of right now, there aren’t a lot of differences. You are going to see Vice President Harris, candidate Harris come out and stress, I think, policy areas over the coming weeks. So maybe we’ll learn some things about what she might want to do in particular areas that affect higher ed and issues that boards care about. But right now, there isn’t a brand new, essentially, party platform or a brand new kind of policy outlook just because Harris has taken over the top of the ticket.

Morgan Alexander:
And I do want to go back to the GOP platform for just a second. There’s been a lot of conversation in the news about Project 2025, which is a document that was created by the Heritage Foundation and did not seem to involve former President Trump directly, but many of his former aides and allies had some component or some element to its creation. How much does that fit into this? Do we think that Project 2025 is going to have a meaningful impact on the platform and a potential Trump administration? Or is it just posturing?

Alex Nock:
So there are some similarities between the GOP party platform and Project 2025. One of the most notable ones is both call for the elimination of the US Department of Education. Now, to be fair to everyone listening to this, that is not a new issue for the GOP and their party platforms, so it’s not surprising to see that, one, in Project 2025, but also in the GOP party platform. Project 2025, though, is a much more detailed document than anything we would ever see from a party platform Republican or Democrat, to be fair. But look, it is a very comprehensive blueprint for a policy call from the GOP side. As you said, Morgan, put together by a lot of individuals that have ties to the Trump administration, and larger Republican efforts that are out there.

Whether it’s followed remains to be seen. If Trump is elected, I think a lot of what is in there involves Congress and Congress taking action. Just having Trump get elected doesn’t mean that Project 2025 is about to pass, just like getting Trump elected doesn’t mean that nothing in Project 2025 is going to pass. But I would say it’s a very instructive thing, if listeners have time to read the US Department of Education section, just to get a sense of what are GOP policy priorities.

The party platform as well as the Trump campaign documents don’t have a ton of detail on education. This is one thing that Republicans in Congress as well as a future Trump administration and the people that work for a Trump administration could look at to think about policy ideas they may want to follow.

Morgan Alexander:
Sure. Why do these platforms matter? And if they do matter, are there any policies that you think are likely to occur that aren’t in the platforms?

Alex Nock:
So, they matter in the sense that both parties, and really any party who’s trying to compete in the presidential race wants to talk about what are their policy ideas, their values, and that’s what shows up in a party platform. It also allows all of the other folks that are involved in this, the delegates and the super delegates and all of the policy and party officials to have input into what the party should stand for. So, it does help in the sense that it identifies very big picture and medium picture issues that I think are important to a particular party. And certainly is an indication of where should that candidate for that party be successful in winning the presidency in November, where that candidate may go when they are President in terms of pushing their policy parties.

Obviously, as you know, and all our listeners know, if you’re talking about things that Congress has to pass, certainly the President is super important in those conversations, but the President is in a whole different branch of government and doesn’t dictate what the Congress could do. Now, if you’re talking regulatory or executive actions, then the President matters quite a bit, so you have to look at those party platforms and think about what can get done unilaterally? What might a president have bipartisan, or unanimous support, or near unanimous support to move?

Often, I think part of the challenge with party platforms is they’re also trying to draw distinctions between the GOP and the Democrats about what they stand for. Those distinctions sometimes make it very hard to actually find unanimity on an issue where the Congress and/or a particular administration can move forward in a way that’s durable. We’ve seen that a lot in higher education in the past couple of years.

So, I think they’re very instructive for listeners here to review and think about what it might mean. But there are issues, like you hinted at, that could come up. Certainly, it would be surprising to me if a Harris administration did not continue to try to pursue loan forgiveness. That’s been a hallmark of the Biden administration and probably will be of the Harris administration. Whether they’re successful or not is a definition. When I say successful, obviously wide-scale forgiveness. There are programs out there that are already in law that provide forgiveness, that will be pursued and will continue to be pursued.

But other issues come up. For instance, a President Trump and a President Biden both had to deal with the impacts of COVID. COVID was in no one’s party platform anytime because it just wasn’t something that was anticipated, and that certainly impacted the higher education landscape. So, often there are issues that come up that push and pull a president in different directions and a Department of Education, that are never ever going to be referenced in a party platform because they just weren’t issues at the time.

Morgan Alexander:
And I think it’s important to note too, that when you’re talking about issues that show distinction but also show unanimity within the party, that means that there are issues that are specifically left out that maybe are more contentious. We’re talking about widespread loan forgiveness as an issue that maybe doesn’t resonate the same way that it did four years ago, and so what does that mean for a party and for a candidate to put that in their platform? So, I totally agree with you. I think the party platforms matter because they signal the direction that the candidate wants to go in, even if maybe the exact proposal clearly isn’t laid out in the platform, is just a, “We care about this issue and this is the general direction that we’re going to go if elected.”

Alex Nock:
So Morgan, after that discussion, let me ask you a question. So, as all of our listeners here are thinking through like, “Okay, what does this mean for me?” What are the questions that boards should be asking of themselves with these party platforms? What sort of preparation? What should they be doing?

Morgan Alexander:
I think a lot of this has to do with boards, like many issues that they’re dealing with it’s really about being proactive and prepared for when a policy is announced from the administration or from Congress. It doesn’t mean that the details have to be well understood, but just making sure that the board has an understanding of the landscape so that they’re not caught off guard, so that they can prepare, so that resources can be devoted. When the regulations around Title Nine came out, there were a lot of boards that needed to talk to their general counsel, talk to their Title Nine coordinator, of course, talk to the President about what the institution was doing in response.

And then as the court cases mounted, and more and more institutions are under a mandate that they don’t need to, or at least the rule can’t be enforced to affect those colleges at the moment.

I think it’s a matter of leveraging the board’s relationships with the president and the senior staff, and of course connecting with AGB. One of the things that we recently did is on the AGB website, we’ve actually created a tool that allows you to look at a side-by-side comparison of the party platforms on the website. And it’s a little more detailed than what we’re getting into in this conversation today, so you can look at what each side is saying in detail. In fact, the tool is interesting because it just takes the warning verbatim. We’re not doing any analysis, we just want to offer up a comparison so that users can look at it and make some informed decisions for themselves.

And the other thing that I think is really important for boards to do is encourage leadership, including boards to attend professional development conferences. There’s a lot of conversations, we’ve had conversations about Title Nine at past, say the National Conference on Trusteeship. But also it’s not just about the board, the president, the Title Nine coordinator. I don’t think institutions should be looking at this in a vacuum. They need to be talking with one another, need to be understanding where everyone else is so that they can make the best decisions at the time.

So, I really encourage folks to attend webinars, attend conferences, do some professional development around both public policy and particular regulations that are affecting your campus.

So, I think that’s all the time we’ve got right now. Of course. Alex, thank you so much. I really appreciate your insights, I really appreciate all that Penn Hill does for AGB and for its members. For our listeners, if you want to know more about the party platforms, go to that side-by-side comparison. You can find it at agb.org/2024platforms. That’s agb.org/2024platforms. For all your other higher education policy needs coming from AGB, check out Top Public Policy Issues, that’s on AGB’s website. And of course, send any questions to us. We are here for you. So thanks, everybody. Really appreciate your time. We’ll see you next time.