I recently heard from a virulent Never Trumper about the president-elect’s pledge to terminate the federal Department of Education.
Academic sheeple seem to think that revoking the bureaucratic behemoth will lead to the closure of scores of colleges and universities.
In the famous slurred words of our outgoing current president, that’s “malarkey.”
The DoE is a useless federal department that has as much to do with improving education as a Michelle Obama school lunch. Higher ed types froth at the mouth about eliminating the DoE bureaucracy because they were educated in universities sucking at its teat. Now they work at those same universities, and they’ve joined the SuckFest, too.
The Department of Education (DoE) was created in 1979 by the Jimmy Carter administration. The sole reason for the creation of the Department of Education as a cabinet position was because President Jimmy Carter was fulfilling a 1976 campaign promise made to one of the nation’s largest labor unions, the National Education Association (NEA).
Nothing like creating a federal bureaucracy to guarantee new inefficiencies and inconvenience for the people its intended to help. The DoE’s track record with K-12 education is even worse but that’s a subject for another day.
According to its website, the mission of DoE is “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access for students of all ages.”
Their mission statement is spelled correctly, and the grammar is fine, but if any federal agency deserves a dunce cap it’s this one.
Today the bloated and beastly DoE has 4,400 employees and a FY 2024 budget of $238.04 billion distributed among 10 sub-agencies. I’m no accountant, but I’m pretty sure that’s even worse than Kamala Harris’s campaign burning through a measly $1 billion in 107 days.
The DoE oversees the Federal Loan Program (FLP) that has a debt of $1.7 trillion. And then there’s DoE’s bungling of a new financial aid application called the Federal Application for Student Financial Aid (FASFA). This program was meant to simplify the application process for students and parents, but the confusion has been costly.
The Wall Street Journal reported in September a 9% decline in university applications among first-time applicants, and an overall decline of about 432,000 applications due to problems with the process.
To say the new application process has experienced issues is like saying Kamala would have won the election if it weren’t for the Electoral College and the popular vote.
What rational person would support an agency with such a track record? Only eggheads who believe they are dependent on DoE’s largesse and don’t understand distribution networks.
The concern that eliminating the DoE will financially devastate colleges and universities is laughable. What’s not laughable is the average cost of tuition, fees and room and board for an undergraduate degree has increased by 169% since 1979. The average cost of an undergraduate degree when the DoE was created was $5,010 for private institutions and $2,330 for public institutions. Is it a coincidence that the costs of higher education have risen dramatically the past 45 years since the creation of the DoE? Hmm…
The Pell Grant program is the largest source of federal grant aid for college students and is a cornerstone of the federal student aid system. Unfortunately, the administration of those grants is the responsibility of the DoE. The grants were created as part the Higher Education Act of 1965 and were known at the time as Basic Opportunity Education grants. Their name was changed to Pell Grants in 1972 in honor of Senator Claiborne Pell, a sponsor of the bill.
If federal education grants were issued in the 1960’s and DoE wasn’t created until 1979, how did colleges and universities receive their student aid money? Federal funding was administered through the individual states, college boards and other federal programs such as the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) founded in 1952 under the Eisenhower Administration.
The federal government has historically been involved in public education for two centuries, but its role was more of a gatekeeper than a ham-fisted dictator.
There is no plausible reason why the federal government can’t block-grant education money back to the states and return financial control to local authorities who possess more accountability and competence than D.C. bureaucrats with no skin in the game.
The country needs the DoE like it needs another four years of open borders, 20 percent inflation and Kamala Harris’s word salads.
For all the Trump deranged academics and college administrators having a hissy fit in their ivory tower safe spaces, take a deep breath, grab a chill pill and unburden yourselves from what has been the past 45 years.
The incoming Trump administration has got this.
Thanks for reading Dean Riffs. Welcome to all those who love personal liberty, capitalism, and who believe God has blessed America.
Copyright 2024, Dean A. George©
