Heritage Action Shows Its Cards on Higher Education

Today, Heritage Action, the advocacy arm of the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, released a massive report evaluating the policy positions of the current presidential candidates, ranking them on their conservatism. In general, this can viewed as Heritage Action’s public test of ideological purity (Ted Cruz wins, by the way).

I read through the analysis of each candidate’s views and priorities on higher education. While Heritage Action is definitely not the intellectual core of the conservative movement (that would be closer to National Review or National Affairs), it does provide a good bellwether as to what more hardcore conservatives are thinking at the moment. So without further ado, here are my main takeaways:

[pullquote]Heritage Action has taken a view that seems counter to some of their other conservative principles. [/pullquote]

Accreditation is Now A Big Deal

Heritage Action uses the phrase accreditation cartel” on five separate occasions throughout the report. Candidates tend to receive the highest praise on higher education when they favor breaking up this “cartel.”

This suggests that the issue of our absurd accreditation system is gaining traction as a conservative policy issue. Unfortunately, Heritage Action has taken a view that seems counter to some of their other conservative principles. Heritage wants to allow more flexibility in the accreditation process, meaning more schools entering the system and likely more federal dollars going to questionable actors.

This is at odds with Heritage Action’s interest in protecting taxpayer dollars. While Heritage Action generally supports fewer dollars going towards higher education, an even more lenient system to obtaining federal dollars would open the spigot of federal aid.

FFEL Is Still a Thing

Heritage Action praised candidates who criticized the “Obama administration’s nationalization of the student loan market.” Of course, federal student loans have always been government loans, it’s just that the old program Heritage Action wants to bring back was also an expensive corporate welfare program. So, FFEL fever dreams aren’t quite dead yet, but, encouragingly, Heritage Action doesn’t spend much time on this, suggesting maybe they’re finally moving on.

Student Unit Record Is Bad

While praising Florida Senator Marco Rubio for his attempts to break up the accreditation cartel, Heritage Action sharply criticizes Rubio’s support for the government collecting and releasing information on student outcomes:

While consumers today have a multitude of private scorecard options to evaluate college performance, each emphasizing different sorts of priorities, government scoring could crowd out private evaluations by dictating to the market what does and does not constitute good performance. No doubt the higher education lobby would do all it could to lobby government to focus on metrics that play to the strengths of the institutions that benefit from the status quo.

That’s a little confusing, since right now private entities can’t judge schools on outcomes since the data don’t currently exist. Also, for conservatives looking to decrease the amount of taxpayer dollars at stake, arming policymakers with data on outcomes could actually help their case. Lastly, it is the higher education lobby that pushed for the student unit record ban in the first place, so it’s curious that Heritage Action is worried what the lobby would do if student unit record was a thing. Nevertheless, their point about the influence of the higher education lobby is an interesting one and leads me to my next takeaway:

The Higher Education Lobby Is Real and Bad

As you can see from the previous block quote, Heritage Action is concerned about the influence of the higher education lobby. This is good timing, as the Wall Street Journal just ran a long piece on the power of the industry and New America released a new tool that visualizes the power of the industry. Of course, Heritage Action is a little inconsistent, in that they don’t seemed worried about the for-profit higher education lobby, or the fact that opening up accreditation creates even more schools that will lobby the government. But still. Watch out ACE, you’re apparently on notice.

Automatic Income-Based Repayment is Bad

Criticizing Rubio’s support for auto IBR, Heritage Action calls it an “inflationary loan repayment model.” While Heritage Action’s distaste is unsurprising, there is a conservative case to be made for automatic IBR.*

Income Share Agreements Are Good

Candidates supporting Income Share Agreements get high marks from Heritage Action. That is either a sign of a tremendous opportunity for bipartisanship, or that ISAs are becoming a partisan issue. I hope it’s the former, but fear the latter.

Lowering Student Loan Interest Rates Is A Waste of Money

Candidates Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, and Donald Trump were all criticized for being sympathetic to lowering interest rates or stopping the government from “making money” on federal student loans.

They Want to Cap or Lower the Pell Award

Heritage Action praises Senator Rand Paul for attempting to decrease the maximum Pell grant award. In general, Heritage Action appears to be skeptical of adding any new money to federal student aid (except for allowing more colleges to participate), and in favor of decreasing it.

More Tax Credits?

They also may be praising Paul (it’s hard to tell) for proposing to make tuition completely tax deductible. That is seemingly a massive government giveaway to colleges and a huge cost to the taxpayer beyond the already sizable cost the government incurs through grants and tax credits each year. But Heritage Action devotes no energy to examine it so we’re left guessing.

Conclusion

In reading the report, it is clear that Heritage Action’s ideology lacks consistency, and in some ways flies in the face of their mission of limited government and protecting taxpayer money. This is not new. Many Republicans in the past have supported the wasteful FFEL program and unmitigated flows of federal aid to schools with terrible outcomes. Their new support of busting the accreditation “cartel” is especially worrisome, as it could lead to even more waste of taxpayer dollars. That being said, some of their views seem consistent with a conservative ideology: they support creating a legal framework for Income Share Agreements, and are opposed to increasing federal student loan subsidies or Pell grants.

*Correction: This post originally stated that Rubio’s IBR bill eliminates loan forgiveness. In fact, the bill retains loan forgiveness, though it extends the period to thirty years for high-debt borrowers.“