Jimmy Carter: A Decent Man, a Damaging Education Policy: News: The Independent Institute

As I have written elsewhere Jimmy Carter had many redeeming personal qualities that are often lacking in today’s American political leadership. But his policies also did a lot of damage, especially in higher education.

Two developments during the Carter years have had lasting, damaging effects. Only under Carter did the federal student loan programs begin to explode. This not only led to much higher costs for students – countering the purported increased accessibility of undergraduate colleges – but had such unintended effects as the rise of a costly and damaging university administration that has displaced the emphasis on the key functions of universities: the discovery and dissemination of knowledge . Second, he gave us the Federal Department of Education, one of the most destructive administrative bureaucracies ever devised by man in the many millennia of human existence.

In 1978, Carter signed the Moderate Income Student Aid Act, proclaim“An additional 1.5 million students from middle-income families will be eligible for the Basic Grants program. He called it “similar to the GI Bill as a landmark in the federal commitment to help families with college students.” Previously limited to low-income students, the the new law some aid to students from families with incomes of nearly $100,000 annually — comfortably above the median family income — in today’s deflated dollars.

The tragedy, of course, was that the students were not the true beneficiaries, but rather others, especially the rent-seeking staff of the universities, who used the big boost in student aid to aggressively raise tuition fees over the next four decades, making college smaller, rather than more affordable, for millions.

In addition, the student aid programs had a number of other shortcomings that reduced the quality of American higher education. For example, academic excellence was not rewarded, and poor students actually often received more aid—because they went to school more years—than exceptionally bright ones.

The creation of the US Department of Education was even opposed by some of the most respected Democratic leaders, notably Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a first-rate scholar and former Harvard professor. Both New York Times and that Washington Post editorially against it. The Times noticed that “school and university authorities have a hard enough job without a full-time cabinet delving deeper into their business.” The bill barely made it out of committee in the House of Representatives – by a vote of 20 to 19 – with seven Democrats voting against. It even failed to get a majority of 218 in the full house, but still passed due to a few members not voting.

Why was the legislation passed?

Mainly because in 1976 Carter had promised the nation’s most powerful teachers union, the National Education Association (NEA), that he would support it. In short, this severable bill was a win for a major campaign contributor, despite widespread opposition from many senior leaders in his own party and even prominent members of the liberal press. But for Carter, a deal was a deal—he had promised the NEA that he would promote their pet project to the long-term detriment of the American people.

Is American education generally in better shape than it was in 1980?

No. And what about the universities? America achieved global supremacy in higher education long before ED even existed. Even moderately reform-minded Republican secretaries of ED did little. I know this personally as I was a member of the very prominent Spelling Commission on the future of higher education in the first decade of this century, whose achievements were at best exceedingly modest.

As I have stated elsewhere, I got to know Jimmy Carter personally and found him to be a fine, decent man with many qualities not often found in abundance among today’s political leaders. I would probably feel better buying a used car from Carter than from, say, Barack Obama or Donald Trump.

Carter was not a liar, a womanizer, or a thief. He believed in God and taught others to do so. But that didn’t make him a great president of the United States, especially for higher education. Yet showing respect for an honorable man is not inconsistent with wanting to rid ourselves of the part of his legacy that has harmed Americans in general and students in particular.