Republicans, Back in Charge of Congress, Aim to Increase Higher Ed Accountability

Republicans are primed to ratchet up their efforts to hold colleges accountable after securing a majority in the House and Senate.

With President-elect Donald Trump in the White House, the table is set for the GOP to make significant progress on a higher ed wish list that includes granting federal aid to nontraditional programs, increasing taxes on wealthy colleges, cracking down on campus antisemitism and busting the current model for accreditation, experts say.

Unlike Trump’s first term, when the GOP also controlled the House and Senate, Congress will likely be more subservient to the president’s agenda, as several key Republicans lawmakers who opposed him in the first term have left office or died. Those elected in recent years are more in line with Trump.

Margins on the Hill are slim, which could make passing legislation more difficult but not impossible. Currently, Senate Republicans hold a 52-seat majority. House Republicans won the necessary 218 seats Wednesday night, though there are still several races considered too close to call and the GOP majority is likely to grow. But Trump has nominated several House members to cabinet and foreign service posts, cutting into the Republican majority. One such appointee, Florida representative Matt Gaetz, resigned from Congress, effective immediately, after Trump nominated him to be attorney general.

Current Republicans, particularly those on the House Education and Workforce Committee, have been gearing up for this moment, outlining their higher ed agenda via hearings and legislation over the past two years. They want to overhaul student lending, protect free speech on campus for conservative students and faculty members, and restrict the use of diversity, equity and inclusion policies in higher ed. While they have yet to pass significant legislation related to higher education, they’ve used their platforms to sharply criticize colleges, particularly wealthy, elite universities.

With control of Congress, Republicans will be better able to wield their hard power to pass legislation that could have a significant impact on institutions and administrators. The use of rhetorical grilling as a form of soft power to pressure colleges and shape narratives around higher education will also almost certainly continue, experts said.

“​​If you have one-party control, it becomes a whole lot less predictable, and the possibility for disruption, especially significant disruption, grows a lot,” said Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education. “A shift in control of the government is significant. It is meaningful, and it has a real impact on the day-to-day outcomes of institutions.”

Dr. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, is expected to chair the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. As ranking member of the committee, he sharply criticized how colleges responded to campus antisemitism as well as the Biden administration handling of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

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

The GOP Higher Ed Agenda

Since 2023, when Republicans gained control of the House, they’ve regularly put both the Education Department and individual colleges and universities on the hot seat.

Investigations and hearings spotlighted concerns about everything from workforce development to relations with China, college cost and professional outcomes. Feedback from the hearings eventually led to a piecemeal attempt at reauthorizing the Higher Education Act of 1965, which hasn’t been renewed since 2008.

The centerpiece of that effort was the College Cost Reduction Act, a sweeping bill introduced earlier this year. That legislation would have put colleges on the hook for unpaid student loans, required institutions to be transparent about program costs, doubled the maximum Pell Grant award for students of specific majors and created a new pathway for accreditors to gain federal recognition, among other provisions.

Although the bill advanced from the committee, it has yet to receive a vote on the House floor. Still, experts say its introduction alone represents a meaningful shift from the Republicans’ traditional laissez faire approach to one of greater federal involvement.

“Republicans are willing to do things that 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 spiraling tuition costs and reports about bad outcomes for students, they just realized they couldn’t sit on the sidelines anymore.”

Laitinen did note, however, that while both parties agree there’s a problem, they propose different solutions. “A lot of the themes would be the same with Democrats and Republicans, but the flavor would be really different,” she said.

Republicans also ramped up their efforts to hold colleges to account for protecting free speech for conservatives and defending Jewish minorities from discrimination after the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 and the ensuing war sparked a wave of protests on college campuses and an increase of antisemitic incidents.

In early December, the committee hauled in three college presidents for a combative hearing that led to resignations, further investigation and more questioning of administrators. Some higher education experts say the grillings marked a “watershed moment” and signify a dangerous new era of congressional oversight.

“These efforts have less to do with true accountability or an appropriate response … and [are] more an effort to exert influence over campuses—to try to force them to move in directions that meet the policy goals of one group or another,” Fansmith said.

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

“You have Representative Elise Stefanik [a New York Republican] saying that the day of reckoning is coming for higher education,” Bryan Cook, director of higher education policy for the Urban Institute, said just before Election Day. “So under a Republican-led Congress, it could certainly be a bumpy road for higher ed.”

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

The GOP’s Track Record

But even as Republicans seem poised to reshape higher education, their track record during the 2017–19 Congress, when they last controlled both the House and Senate, shows that power doesn’t always translate to action.

When Trump was first elected in 2016, some feared that the party would push for investments in new, nontraditional alternatives like short-term and noncredit boot camps without providing safeguards for students.

But for the most part, Republicans focused on rolling back policies enacted during the Obama administration, including aggressive accountability measures toward for-profit colleges, borrower protection efforts, an intensified focus on campus sexual assault and efforts to strengthen labor unions for faculty and staff. While the party achieved most of its goals, it was through executive action, not legislation.

The main measure the Republican Congress did push across the finish line was a tax on college endowments. Passed as part of the sweeping Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the tariff placed a 1.4 percent excise tax on net investment income at private colleges and universities with at least 500 tuition-paying students and assets of at least $500,000 per student. And it has generated intense pushback since.

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

“The days of higher ed being totally off the hook are over,” said Laitinen from New America. “It’s just a matter of how they’re approached. The question is are we trying to destroy the enterprise or say the enterprise needs to change and adapt and do better?”