Neal McCluskey & Rick Hess: How Should the Department of Education Be Addressed?

Summary

Podcast Summary: Future of Freedom — "Neal McCluskey & Rick Hess: How Should the Department of Education Be Addressed?"

Host: Scott Bertram
Guests:

• Neil McCluskey, Director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom
• Rick Hess, Senior Fellow and Director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute
  Release Date: February 14, 2025

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1. Introduction

In this episode of Future of Freedom, host Scott Bertram delves into the contentious debate surrounding the U.S. Department of Education. Bringing together contrasting viewpoints, Bertram facilitates a discussion with Neil McCluskey and Rick Hess to explore whether the Department should be abolished or reformed.

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2. Neil McCluskey Advocates for Abolishing the Department of Education

Constitutional Concerns

McCluskey opens the conversation by challenging the constitutional legitimacy of the Department of Education. He emphasizes that the U.S. Constitution does not explicitly grant the federal government authority over education:

“Nowhere in the Constitution do you see the word education...some people will say, oh well, the general welfare clause lets the federal government do anything in the interest of the general welfare. But we know that's not correct.” ([01:15])

Historical Context

He traces the Department's origins back to post-Civil War America, highlighting its minimal role until the 1960s:

“We didn’t really see the federal government involved much until right after the Civil War... until the 1960s when you have the Great Society.” ([02:30])

Influence of the National Education Association (NEA)

McCluskey attributes the establishment and persistence of the Department to the political activism of the NEA:

“The NEA became a union... They said, look, we now are, we're a union... support a candidate who says they'll create a US Department of Education.” ([05:00])

Impact of Federal Policies

He criticizes policies like the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, No Child Left Behind, and Common Core for federal overreach:

“We were on the verge of having the federal government essentially dictating what every kid... would learn in the country. And that is hugely dangerous.” ([07:00])

Current State and Higher Education Issues

McCluskey points out the Department’s inefficiency, especially in managing student loans and grants:

“The department is largely incompetent at doing that, which we saw with its failure to simplify the student aid form...” ([10:00])

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3. Consequences of Abolishing the Department

Handling Existing Programs

Addressing concerns about the future of student loans and Pell Grants, McCluskey proposes transferring these responsibilities to the Department of Treasury:

“What happens to students who currently are receiving those funds... would simply be repaying as they are now, except they would be working with the Department of Treasury...” ([11:37])

Federal Government’s Role in Academic Performance

He argues that federal oversight should be limited to addressing clear instances of discrimination, not general academic performance disparities:

“It shouldn't be the concern of the federal government unless it is clear that some state is discriminating against particular groups of people.” ([13:52])

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4. Opposing Views and Potential Risks

Use of Department for Political Agendas

McCluskey warns against leveraging the Department to enforce conservative policies, such as bathroom regulations and DEI initiatives:

“In a free society, we don't want government... making decisions for everybody about what is right or wrong or good or bad. That should be left to free society.” ([17:07])

Risk of Perpetual Federal Interference

He cautions that using the Department for ideological battles can lead to ongoing federal intervention and instability:

“You then keep us in perpetual federal warfare and on a perpetual yo-yo where every time there's a change of administration... is a bad idea.” ([17:07])

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5. Rick Hess Argues for Reform Over Abolition

Department’s Dual Role in K-12 and Higher Education

Hess acknowledges that while abolishing the Department might seem appealing, most federal education programs would remain active as they are authorized by Congress:

“These programs would still be there because Congress has authorized the programs and appropriated the funds.” ([20:39])

Focus on Higher Education and Student Loans

He highlights the Department’s significant involvement in managing student debt, criticizing the inefficiency and mishandling under recent administrations:

“It holds more than a trillion dollars in outstanding student debt... transferred $400 billion from taxpayers to people who had borrowed money...” ([22:45])

Proposed Reforms for the Student Loan Program

Hess advocates for shifting student loan management to the Department of Treasury and implementing measures to ensure colleges demonstrate value:

“Representative Virginia Fox... passed the College Cost Reduction Act, which says that if programs aren't providing a decent return... colleges should have skin in the game.” ([22:45])

K-12 Education and School Choice

He discusses potential reforms to enhance school choice and reduce federal micromanagement:

“Trump issued an executive order directing the Department of Education to revisit those formulas... ensuring that dollars are following the children to the schools they're attending.” ([25:45])

Accreditation Reform

Hess proposes dismantling the higher education accreditation cartel to foster competition and innovation:

“The Trump administration has the authority to let new accreditors come into the space... discontinue accrediting agencies mandating DEI.” ([28:28])

Addressing Hostile Campus Environments

He emphasizes the need for the Department to actively enforce civil rights laws to combat discrimination and harassment on campuses:

“President Trump issued... executive orders... Department of Education will be going out, spotlighting institutions tolerating or engaging in this behavior.” ([31:17])

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6. Efficiency and Future Prospects

Streamlining the Department

Hess believes that even without abolishing the Department, significant improvements can be made by reducing bureaucracy and enhancing efficiency:

“Department of Education has over 4,000 employees... failed three consecutive audits... we could come out of this with a much leaner workforce.” ([34:48])

Potential for a More Responsive Department

He is optimistic that a reformed Department could better serve educational needs without the excessive overhead:

“I think most observers would say... we are in a much better place than we were four years ago.” ([34:48])

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7. Conclusion

The episode presents a nuanced debate on the future of the Department of Education. Neil McCluskey argues for its abolition based on constitutional principles and inefficiency, while Rick Hess contends that reforming and streamlining the Department would better address current educational challenges without dismantling essential federal programs. Both perspectives highlight the complexities of federal involvement in education and the ongoing struggle to balance governmental oversight with educational freedom.

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References:

• Neil McCluskey: Cato Institute
• Rick Hess: American Enterprise Institute
• Future of Freedom Podcast: America's Talking Network

Transcript

[Neil McCluskey]

Foreign.

[Scott Bertram]

Welcome to Future of Freedom. I'm your host, Scott Bertram. Future of Freedom is a production of America's Talking Network. You can check out all of our great [e-mail] to support great podcasts like this one, please donate by clicking the link in the show description. We bring you interviews today from different sides of the debate over the abolishment of the Department of Education. In a little bit, we'll be joined by Rick Hess, Senior Fellow and Director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. First we talk to Neil McCluskey, director of the Cato Institute's center for Educational Freedom. [e-mail] Neil's on x eel McCluskey Neil, thanks so much for joining us.

[Neil McCluskey]

Oh, thanks for having me talking a.

[Scott Bertram]

Bit today about the future of the Department of Education. And you wrote a piece in the most recent Reason saying abolish the Department of Education. We'll get to that in a moment. You argue the department has no constitutional business existing this U.S. department of Education. Why not? And if so, how did it come into existence?

[Neil McCluskey]

Sure, so the federal government is given specific enumerated powers by the Constitution, and those are the only powers that it has. And nowhere in the Constitution do you see the word education. Do you see anything that gives the federal government any authority to govern an education? Now, some people will say, oh well, the general welfare clause lets the federal government do anything in the interest of the general welfare. But we know that that's not correct. And James Madison wrote, the reason that the general welfare clause is in there is the term general welfare introduces the reason that specific enumerated power powers are given. They are to promote the general welfare. They said, look, if that clause itself was to give power, why bother with the specific enumerated powers that follow? And it has long been understood, largely up until about the 1960s, that education is the purview of the people first, then their local districts or the state, but not the federal government. And the federal government wasn't really involved in education for most of our history. Now some people say, well, but the Northwest Ordinance and the land ordinance in 1785 and 1787 said that part of parcels of territory should be used for education. And that's true. But one, that was under the Articles of Confederation. And two, the federal government actually does have authority over territories and has authority over the District of Columbia. That's why it's fine if it wants to run the school schools here, but it doesn't have any broad authority to govern education outside of federal Lands. And so we didn't really see the federal government involved much until right after the Civil War, actually. There was a Department of Education created. It was created in 1867. It mainly gathered data and within, I think about a year and a half was downgraded just to an office. And it basically did nothing for most of our history other than gather some data. And then you really don't get the federal government involved in a serious way in education until the 1960s when you have the Great Society and then you have the creation of the elementary and Secondary Education act, which we still have with us. We just give it new names every year. So right now it's the Every Student Succeeds Act. More famously before that, it was the no Child Left Behind Act. This is where we get the Higher Education act, which governs all the student aid programs like Pell Grants and student loans and work study. And that's also when we got Head Start, although Head Start is not part of the Department of Education. And then we don't get this U.S. department of Education as it exists now until 1980. And there's a big debate in Congress to create it really in 1979. And the roots go a little bit further back. So the National Education association, when it was really a professional association of educators, not a union, they always kind of wanted the federal government involved in education because they wanted education to have a higher profile. But they never really succeeded. It wasn't until the National Education association became a union, a labor Union in the 1970s. And it became, it was an organization run by teachers, not by administrators as it had been for most of its history. It said, look, we now are, we're a union. We're very clear about this. We've got lots of money and lots of basically political foot soldiers ready to go. And we will support a candidate who says they'll create a US Department of Education. And at the time, Jimmy Carter was running for president and he said, I support creation of a U.S. department of Education. He gets the support of the National Education association and all, you know, teachers and others who can do lots of political work. They're well organized. And he ends up winning, of course, in 1976. Takes him about a year and a half and more pressure from the NEA before he says, okay, I'll work on this. Department of Education gets voted into existence 1979. So basically as kind of a payoff to the NEA for its new found political action. And it has existed since then, it was largely just giving out money for about half of its existence until you get to the 1980s. Well, so in the beginning of the 1980s, Ronald Reagan says he campaigns on get rid of this new department. He isn't successful in doing that. And then you get into the late 80s and 90s and people start to say, well, what are we getting for all this money the federal government is spending? That leads us to this accountability and testing movement, which kind of peaks with no Child Left behind that's enacted in 2002. People get really tired of the federal government telling everyone to do in education by 2010, really. But by 2014, people are really tired. There have been lots of efforts to even have something called Common Core, which would have been national curriculum standards. And we actually, with the Every Student Succeeds act, move the federal government out of dictating a lot of what happens in K through 12 education, which is a major change, and in and back to it, at least in the right direction, away from micromanagement, even if the federal government still spending money. And that's kind of where we are today. The federal government and the Department of Education runs lots of programs, but typically isn't trying to dictate a whole lot about what goes on in schools, though it does do a lot about bathroom policies and locker room policies and is heavily involved in higher education and been a big recent movement to cancel student loans.

[Scott Bertram]

So is the Department of Education just this big bureaucracy, this big government organization, or is there, would you argue, some actual harm being done by its continued existence?

[Neil McCluskey]

Primarily, it is a big bureaucracy. It was doing a lot more harm under no Child Left behind when it really was on the verge, especially within Common Core, sort of put into the no Child Left behind standards and accountability apparatus. We were on the verge of having the federal government essentially dictating what every kid, at least in public school, would learn in the country. And that is hugely dangerous. If you like freedom, if you like innovation, if you like competition, that would have ended all that. But there was like a very powerful bipartisan revolt against that kind of micromanagement. So we're not there now, although we could come back to it. And that's always a threat. But right now it is more a big bureaucracy. And notably, the department itself employs about 4,100 people, which is quite small for a cabinet agency. What people don't understand is a lot of the red tape is imposed on states where the federal government says, at least this is in K12 education. The Department of Education says, okay, we're going to give you money for these programs. You actually have to hire a lot of the administrators and then you report to us what you're doing. So the 4,100 employees in the Department of Education is sort of like just the tip of the bureaucratic iceberg when it comes to the bureaucracy that the federal government imposes. The other major danger is again, this regulatory power especially. Well, this is in K12 and higher ed, not regulatory power, but civil rights enforcement. And that's a double edged sword because we actually do want the federal government to enforce against serious discrimination by states and districts. But that is too often or has too often been used to push cultural and social war and warfare onto districts and colleges. And we see it especially with the Title 9 regulations that the Biden administration has been promulgating that have been held up in courts in lots of parts of the country that say, look, we've decided that there's no longer going to be a debate about whether it is appropriate for kids who are born biologically male, but are, you know, their identity is female, whether or not they can access girls bathrooms and locker rooms. They decided no, we think it's discrimination if you don't allow that. And so the federal government's going to impose it. It's very dangerous to try and push one answer to hot values battles onto everybody. And so that is still an imposition danger. And then we always. Higher education interest get sort of plays second fiddle when we talk about the Department of Education to K12. But the Department of Education does far more in terms of money, does far more with money in higher ed because it runs all these, not just Pell grants, but student loans. Now you're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars. And mainly what we've seen from that is the department is largely incompetent at doing that, which we saw with its failure to simplify the student aid form that everybody has to fill out the FAFSA in order to get student aid. And so the programs are dangerous, but the department of itself has shown that it can't execute those programs.

[Scott Bertram]

So abolish the Department of Education is your prescription. And I guess following up on the very last point you were making on Pell grants and student loans, there are a number student loans, many student loans that are still outstanding, that are still in effect Pell grants for college students. If the Department of Education is abolished and goes away, what happens to students who currently are receiving those funds and then who in the future administers those types of programs?

[Neil McCluskey]

Yeah, so there's a big question. I think we're moving in the direction of what is going to happen in Washington in the next couple of years as a push not to end many federal education programs, but to move them. I think that ultimately a lot of the damage comes from the programs, no matter where they are. But the Department of Education itself is dangerous because it concentrates power over education in one cabinet level department. So that means with direct connections to the president. So what we're likely to see, I think, in the next year or so, and we've already seen with legislation from Senator Mike Rounds from South Dakota, is legislation to move things done by the Department of Education to other departments. And all of those student aid programs, the student loans, the Pell grants, presumably the work study would go to the Department of Treasury because of the Department of Treasury. That's kind of their specialty is finance and financial instruments and money. And really what student loans are, is a finance instrument. It's not that you need an educator in charge of those because somehow a student loan is educating kids. It's not. It's just the financial instrument by which you pay for college or grad school. And so for people with current loans, they would simply be repaying as they are now, except they would be working with the Department of Treasury rather than the Department of Education. And of course, even now the Department of Education, you actually work through servicers who are contracted with the Department of Education. It's not clear whether if this were to move to treasury, they would use servicers or just do it themselves. But ultimately the money's going to treasury rather than first going to the Department of Education.

[Scott Bertram]

Should the federal government care at all if one state begins to outperform others in terms of academic performance, or if a. A state or a handful of states begin falling far behind other states in academic performance? Is that a concern of the federal government at all?

[Neil McCluskey]

It shouldn't be the concern of the federal government unless it is clear that in some way some state is discriminating against particular groups of people. And clear would have to mean not just that you have disparate scores, but that is clear that the state is intentionally withholding something from one group of people that they're letting others have based on their group identities. And so we already have and have had throughout the existence of U.S. department of Education, pretty substantial differences in the academic performance within states. Massachusetts has almost always or has always done better than Mississippi, at least if we're looking at overall test scores. Now you can have improvements or declines in different states, but in terms of these absolute differences, they've existed for a long time. And the federal government hadn't fixed them. But even if it, you know, maybe in theory could fix them, that is not the federal government's job. The federal government doesn't have authority over education. And there's nothing in the Constitution that says, well, but it has authority to do whatever it wants if there's. If there are gaps in the performances of different states. And what's really important to note is that no Child Left behind was focused. I wanted to say obsessed. I wanted to say focused with standardized test scores. But many people don't believe that standardized test scores are a good measure of quality education. Many people think that, well, just because you can fill in blanks on a Scantron sheet doesn't mean that you can really grapple with deep literature or really understand and work through naughty engineering problems or all sorts of things like that. And so we don't even agree on what the right measure is of academic outcomes. So it could be that Massachusetts does really good on people filling out those Scantron tests, but maybe not so great at creating creative thinkers or people who are morally grounded the way that maybe many people think they should be. In other words, the point is, education is about many things and many different things for many different people. And it's dangerous to reduce it to just one or two things, especially if we back that reduction with government power. And we saw that, we rejected that pretty solidly by 2014, 2015, with the end of no Child Left Behind.

[Scott Bertram]

Neil, there's a wing, a more activist wing of conservatives that say, don't abolish the Department of Education. Keep it, use its framework, its power to advance things that perhaps we would like to see the bathroom policies you mentioned earlier, use the Department of Education to repeal and reform those when it comes to higher education, colleges and universities, anti DEI policies, or using the power of those loans and grants to force policy changes on some college campuses across the country. Is that a bad idea?

[Neil McCluskey]

That is definitely a bad idea. I understand the desire to use it. One is because people think some things are right and some are wrong. And they say what's most important is that I get what I think is right, not necessarily the process by which it's done. And then many people think, well, okay, you're never really going to get the federal government out. And so we know that people who want things different than we do will use that power to get what they want, and so we should do the same. I think that what you then do, if you say, well, we're not really going to get the federal government out, so let's use this power to do things we want to do is you then keep us in perpetual federal warfare and on a perpetual yo yo where every time there's a change of administration from one party to another, we tell the whole system, okay, get ready, you're changing again. So the thing that you know, before, the day before the new administration came in, we say this is intolerable. Now we're saying this is absolutely the right thing to do. And I don't think that that is good governance. Even more important, though, is in a free society, we don't want government, and especially the central government making decisions for everybody about what is right or wrong or good or bad. That is something that should be left to free society. And so we should say, look, we may not like dei, but we should at least let private institutions make their own decisions about dei. And if we have something like federal student aid with the loans and the grants, don't compound the problem of federal funding with federal micromanagement. Say, at least we let sort of a marketplace of ideas exist by saying, okay, we give the money to students. They choose what schools, including what policies they like or don't like. And we don't have the government decide. Nope, Today policy X is intolerable, even though that means maybe tomorrow policy X will be required.

[Scott Bertram]

Neil McCluskey is director of the Cato Institute center for Educational freedom. [e-mail], he's on X. Eeal McCluskey, Neil, thanks so much for joining us here on Future of Freedom.

[Neil McCluskey]

Thanks for having me on.

[Scott Bertram]

Now to hear another side of the argument about abolishing the Department of Education, we talk with Rick Hess. He is Senior Fellow and Director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. You can also find them on xickhess99. Rick, thanks so much for joining us.

[Neil McCluskey]

Hey, good to be with you.

[Scott Bertram]

Talking today about the possible abolishment of the Department of Education. And I want to establish up front that you agree that it would be great to eliminate the Department of Education. You just don't see it as likely to happen. Is that about correct?

[Rick Hess]

Yeah. Yeah. And in fact, you know, we could abolish the department and it wouldn't solve a lot of the things that I think many of us, especially conservatives, are appropriately concerned about. And you can actually solve a bunch of the problems even if you don't, you know, take down that website and take the name off that building.

[Scott Bertram]

Let's start there then. Even if the Department of Education were to be abolished, what would remain? The employees, the programs what would still be around? And how could you deal with that even now, perhaps?

[Rick Hess]

Yeah. So certainly the programs. I mean, folks should remember Carter created the Department of Ed with the Democratic Congress in 1979 as a payback to the teacher unions from his campaign in 76. But we had major federal education programs long before there was a Department of Ed. The Higher Education act, the elementary and Secondary Education Act. These things had been around for well over a decade. And there were other programs that went back much longer. So if the department went away tomorrow, these programs would still be there because Congress has authorized the programs and appropriated the funds. Now, fact is, I think most people are not thrilled about the idea of cutting spending for children with special needs. They're not thrilled about stripping title $1 from schools serving low income kids. What they're frustrated with, Primari, is Washington, D.C. trying to micromanage schools. Washington, D.C. dumping lots of rules and regulations on top of school leaders and teachers. Washington, D.C. dragging cultural conflicts and wacky agendas into these things. So these programs would still be there. But for me, the appeal of abolishing the department has always been about solving these other problems, about red tape and wacky ideologies and the rest. And those problems need to be solved whether or not we get the department either downsized or eliminated.

[Scott Bertram]

So let's talk about a few of those things that might be addressed, how to downsize and do it in important and long lasting ways. And something that you point out in this piece at the Washington examiner is that the student loan program that the Department of Education manages, which is one of its core duties, has been a disaster under President Biden. How can we fix President Biden's mess here inside the student loan program?

[Rick Hess]

Yeah, so you know, what a lot of casual observers might not know is that the Department of Ed doesn't really do much in K12 education. Mostly it's a megabank with a little K12 shop attached. It holds more than a trillion dollars in outstanding student debt. The problem is, as you mentioned, under President Biden and previously under President Obama, what happened was they took the student lending model Obama introduced and then blew up this notion of public service loan forgiveness, which Biden further expanded. There were these notions of borrower defense where borrowers had been ripped off. But under first Obama and then Biden, they turned it from some sensible precautions against colleges ripping off hardworking Americans into an effort to give billions of dollars back to people who had attended for profit colleges. And then, of course, there was Biden's wholesale student loan forgiveness scheme, where he transferred $400 billion from taxpayers to people who had borrowed money from taxpayers and didn't want to repay him. So how do we fix this right now? Fortunately, there is a pretty decent answer in Congress. Representative Virginia Fox, last year, when she chaired the Education Committee in the House, had the committee pass the College Cost Reduction act, which says that if programs aren't providing a decent return for the graduates, people should not be able to borrow taxpayer money to pay for those programs. If it says that colleges should have skin in the game, if you are going to take money from taxpayers to have folks attend and your graduates don't repay taxpayers, by gosh, you as an institution are going to help make taxpayers whole. It creates new expectations and transparency around what students and families deserve to know before folks are borrowing money to go off to college. So what we really want to do is we need to reboot the lending model so that it's no longer about an entitlement for colleges to subsidize kind of overpriced tuition. But we ought to get borrowing out of graduate school. We ought to make sure colleges have skin in the game, and we ought to make sure that programs which aren't paying off for students aren't getting taxpayer money to send students to them.

[Scott Bertram]

Rick, you said something which is that the Department of Education is so much more focused on College than K12. I bet that's not the perception of many Americans. But also I wonder, does that preclude the Department of Education from playing a larger role in a Trump administration or a future administration when it comes to K12 and the issue of school choice, which is such a big deal on the right, can the Department of Education still play a role in perhaps spreading and expanding school choice across the country?

[Rick Hess]

Yeah, sure it can. In fact, while Washington only pays about 10 cents on the dollar for K12 education, one of the reasons that there's so much frustration is its impact on the rules and regulations is many times that 10%. So if you've got a child with special needs and you talk to their teacher, the data tells us those teachers will report that they're spending 30% or more of their time just filling out paperwork, not diagnosing what your kid needs, not working on instruction, but filling out paperwork for Washington, now that's a problem. That's the stuff that drives people crazy. So if you think about that in reverse, kid, Washington have that kind of amplified impact on choice. And sure it can. Right now in Congress, there's talk that they'll put a $10 billion tax credit scholarship program into the reconciliation bill, which would be a massive increase in tax credits to encourage folks to write checks to scholarship funds that support all kinds of education choice. Washington I think the Trump administration is likely to unwind these onerous regulations that the Biden team stuck on charter schools primarily with the intent of forcing them to get permission from local school districts before they could open and weaving Biden's whole of government DEI program into the charter school criteria. It's also the case that existing funding programs like Title 1. Right now, many states and school districts hog those funds even when they are supposed to support learners who are in other kinds of options. Trump issued an executive order directing the Department of Education to revisit those formulas, revisit kind of those requirements. And if they follow through, that could have a big impact on ensuring that these dollars are following the children to the schools they're attending rather than just winding up in central bureaucracies.

[Scott Bertram]

Talking with Rick Hess, senior fellow and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute about the Department of education, that's K12 on the college education side. You mentioned in this piece at the Washington examiner the ability to bust the higher education accreditation cartel. That's a little inside baseball when it comes to schooling, I'm sure, for some of our listeners. What does that mean and why do we want to see that happen?

[Rick Hess]

Yeah, you know, there's thousands of colleges in this country and one of the funny things is how little actual competition there is among them in any meaningful sense. So the colleges will tell, you know, wannabe students, they'll tell families and policymakers who write checks that they are so important because they are educational institutions. They are teaching essential skills and knowledge. Well, it's hard to square that with the fact that even second tier colleges compete for professors by promising they'll teach less. We've got a system where in order to be eligible for federal aid, students are supposed to be working nine hours for each course, three hours in class, six hours out. So 36 hours for four courses and most students report working half of that. So we have publicly subsidized, publicly funded institutions where faculty are only teaching 10, 15 hours a week when school's in session, where students are only working half time while they're enrolled full time on the taxpayer nickel. How can this be? It can be because all of these institutions are playing by the same set of rules. And the gatekeepers to this, the organizations that let these institutions get away with it while keeping out newer models that might be more cost efficient, that might get Kids through faster that might demand more faculty are called these accreditation agencies. Colleges have to get accredited. What that involves right now is one of these accreditation agencies basically sending people from another college over to check out their paperwork and say, yeah, they're good, they're part of the club, and then go back. What the Trump administration has the authority to do under existing statute is to let new accreditors come into the space where they can focus on things like making sure colleges are actually paying off economically for students on the back end. They can let new colleges into the space that unapologetically embrace the western intellectual tradition, and they can start to discontinue to kick out some of the accreditors who are mandating DEI while giving colleges a pass in terms of cost and educational quality.

[Scott Bertram]

We have these scenes at college campuses across the country, Rick, that I think many Americans and many parents are distressed by and their protests. The hostile learning environments, environments we've heard about on many campuses. What can the President do inside the Department of Education and the Office for Civil Rights to address what we're seeing on some of these college campuses?

[Rick Hess]

Yeah, and I think we've seen, you know, President Trump issue some really hard hitting and much needed executive orders on this. There are existing laws on the books, Title 6 and Title IX civil rights protections, which make it illegal to create hostile learning environments where students are disadvantaged because of their race or ethnicity or faith. There is language on the books that you cannot discriminate against students on the basis of their sex. Well, the Biden administration, not only did it actually try to fundamentally illegally rewrite these laws substituting gender for sex so that women in college or girls playing high school sports had no choice but to allow biological men into their dormitories and locker rooms. But when hit with complaints about antisemitism, about just crude harassment and threatening behavior on campus at ucla, anti Israel protesters barred Jewish students from campus. The Biden administration Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Ed had the authority to go in, investigate, provide hard hitting oversight, and for instance, UCLA should have absolutely lost its ability to trade in federal funds because allowing that to happen on campus clearly violated the promises it makes to the government and the taxpayers in return to be eligible for hundreds of millions in federal funding. The Biden administration did no such thing. The Biden administration either agreed, either just turned a blind eye or agreed to limp noodle agreements, or in fact tried to fuzz the issue by saying, well, this is all very complicated. What President Trump has done in his executive order is he has made clear that there's gonna be a new sheriff in town, that the Department of Education will be going out, that they will be spotlighting institutions which have been tolerating or engaging in this behavior, that they are going to hit them with serious investigations, that when they find wrongdoing, they will demand that institutions take strong remedies. And what they will then do is an old trick from the Obama and Biden teams, is they will then send dear colleague letters out to colleges across the land explaining that if they don't want to be investigated and they don't want to be dragged into litigation, here is what they also will need to do to protect their students. So, again, I would love to see Washington not as involved as it has been under Presidents Obama and Biden and propagating kind of radical cultural agendas. But it would be a mistake, for instance, to get the department out of this business before the Trump administration actually gets things reset, gets us back to a healthier, more sensible place. That's when it would start to make more sense to, you know, to.

[Scott Bertram]

The buzzwords, of course, are more efficient and leaner government in Washington these days. If the Department of Education remains in some way, will all of these activities and actions lead to a leaner and more efficient Department of Education?

[Rick Hess]

You know, if we were sitting back in armchairs smoking pipes, I would say, look, this approach is not the most efficient. You're breaking some stuff that doesn't need to be broken. But part of the logic, I think, of what we see going on right now is that the Trump administration has concluded that if they move slowly, that if they move gingerly, they are going to get pushed back by all the usual institutional players, the unions and higher education and malicious compliance and the bureaucracy. And so they've decided, we're going to go too fast, we're going to go too hard. I think out of this, it is very easy to imagine a more cost effective, more efficient, more responsive Department of Ed. Right now, the Department of education has over 4000 employees. Over 1400 of them are working on student loans alone. It is not at all clear that they are providing anywhere near the level of service or support than you would expect. With that kind of massive workforce, I think this can be automated and run much more effectively. Department of Education has failed three consecutive audits during the Biden administration. I think it's very clear that they can run their books much more effectively. When you look at the policy shop at the Department of Ed, primarily its job is to hand out to states, into school districts, the funds that Congress has apportioned for special needs students for Title one for Pell Grants. The idea that you need a large bureaucratic workforce to basically manage transferring cash from one account to another account is a real problem. And what it's done is introduced lots of red tape and lots of room for funny business. So look, but there's every reason to think that even if the department website is still there and the name's still on the building, that we could come out of this if the administration keeps pushing hard with a much leaner workforce, which a much more focused department with much less tomfoolery. And sure, I think there's going to be some breakage along the way, but I think most observers, most fair minded observers would say, wow, we are in a much better place than we were four years ago.

[Scott Bertram]

Rick Hess, Senior Fellow and Director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, aei.org, find him on x iess99 and his recent essay at the Washington examiner putting the Department of Education to Work if Trump Can't Abolish It. Rick, thanks so much for joining us here today on Future of Freedom.

[Neil McCluskey]

Hey, good to be with you.

[Scott Bertram]

We thank both of our guests for Joining us, Neil McCluskey, director of the Cato Institute center for educational [e-mail] and Rick Hess, senior Fellow and Director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. AEI.org for additional episodes of the Future of Freedom podcast and other fine podcasts from America's Talking network, check out americastalking.com or anywhere you find your audience. Thank you for listening to Future of Freedom, presented by America's Talking Network.