The New Principal in the House: Virginia's Robert Scott
After nearly 25 years on the House Education panel, Rep. Robert C. Scott has at last ascended to the chairmanship, giving him the opportunity to focus on his priorities — a reauthorization of the Higher Education Act paired with free college for students and rigorous oversight of the Trump administration’s policies.
Scott (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)
During his tenure, the Virginia Democrat has helped pass much of the modern education legislation, most recently the Every Student Succeeds Act (PL 114-95), the federal K-12 education policy signed into law in 2015.
One of the first changes under his leadership has been renaming the panel the Education and Labor Committee, from last session’s Education and the Workforce Committee. House Democrats opted to return to the original name, which was tweaked a few times under Republican control.
A former member of the Judiciary Committee, Scott has already brought some of the experience with him, establishing — for the first time in recent years— a civil rights subcommittee, to be led by Oregon Democrat Suzanne Bonamici.
First, his focus will be on how to make higher education more affordable for students, including reauthorizing the Higher Education Act with a provision that would offer students two years of tuition-free community college.
“We have a lot of students today who are calculating that college is just financially not worth it,” Scott said in a recent phone interview with CQ.
“People who are academically qualified and who could move up academically don’t, because it’s too expensive,” he says. “Well, that violates the entire goal of the Higher Education Act to make sure that every student can attend any college and get the best education possible, notwithstanding the financial situation of the family.”
College costs vary, but according to the College Board, for the 2018-19 school year, the average price for one year of tuition for an in-state student at a four-year public school was $10,230. At a four-year private school, tuition averaged $35, 830 for the year. Students would also need to pay room and board and other expenses.
Overall, student loan borrowers collectively owed $1.5 trillion in student loan debt in 2018.
The Higher Education Act, first signed into law in 1965, expired at the end of fiscal 2013 but Congress extended it. Republicans also prioritized the law’s renewal in the 115th Congress, but their bill didn’t get a floor vote.
Scott plans to bring back Democrats’ reauthorization proposal that was introduced last year but expired with the 115th Congress. It would offer states federal funding in exchange for providing all students two years of tuition-free community college.
“No tuition at community colleges would be a way that you can achieve a four-year degree much cheaper than you can today,” he says.
Scott’s free college proposal does not go as far as those from more liberal lawmakers such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who supports government-paid degrees for some students at four-year public universities. But Scott isn’t opposed to other options: “We’ll be open to other ideas, but community college is just one.”
Democrats’ legislation also would allow incarcerated people to receive Pell grants, currently aimed at low-income students, and increase funding levels for TRIO grants, which go to low-income students, first-generation college students and students with disabilities.
However, the proposed bill may not go anywhere this session without support from Scott’s Senate counterpart, Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican.
Alexander has long advocated for reauthorizing the Higher Education Act, but negotiations between Senate Republicans and Democrats stalled last session over ideological disagreements and leftover tension from Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ confirmation hearing in January 2017.
Without Republican support, the most Scott may be able to do is hold hearings on the bill and give voters a peek at Democrats’ education proposals.
“Obviously we can pass a partisan, Democratic bill, and we’d get a lot of fanfare, but it probably wouldn’t go very far in the Republican [Senate] and it’s even less likely to be signed by a Republican president,” he says. “I think all of us agree that if we’re going to make any substantive changes in higher education, it has to be on a bipartisan basis.”
For his part, Alexander is proposing “simplifying federal aid . . . a new student loan repayment plan and a new accountability system for colleges,’’ moves he says would drive down costs. He outlined his proposal at the American Enterprise Institute earlier this month.
In a divided Congress with a Republican president, Scott’s biggest opportunity to influence policy is through oversight. As ranking member, along with other panel Democrats, he regularly pushed back against emerging Education Department policies.
They include DeVos’ decision to go easier on for-profit colleges, and Title IX policies, which would revise sexual misconduct rules to make proving wrongdoing harder. Scott says his panel also would look at school accreditation as well as student loan policies.
He has objected to the Trump administration’s proposed changes to the student loan borrower defense rule, which would require students to be in default before making a claim that their school defrauded them. Under the program, federal student loans can be forgiven.
“Some colleges are receiving accreditation and recognition for the purpose of eligibility for student federal financial aid that should not be eligible because they’re not providing a meaningful education,” he says.
The committee will also look at states’ implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act.
And Scott recommends oversight on civil rights protections in higher education.
Democrats will also want to push on the Education Department for clearer answers on DeVos’ proposal to arm teachers. Freshman Rep. Lucy McBath, a Georgia Democrat, is well positioned to lead on the issue as an established gun control activist.
Another priority for Democrats is an infrastructure bill to build and repair schools.
But Scott says the measure, which includes a $70 billion grant program and $30 billion tax credit bond program, could be held back while Democrats probe the costs of the 2017 Republican tax law (PL 115-97).
“There’s obviously strong bipartisan support for spending on infrastructure; the complication comes in whether or how you pay for it,” he says.
Meanwhile, as chairman, Scott will need to balance the interests of Democrats on the panel, such as Connecticut Rep. Jahana Hayes, a high school teacher who won National Teacher of the Year in 2016, and Rep. Susie Lee of Nevada, who led an after-school education program and later a dropout prevention program.
Rep. Andy Levin of Michigan, who led a state job-retraining program, is the panel’s new vice chairman.
Scott has been involved on the committee for nearly the entirety of his tenure in Congress, beginning when he joined the House in 1993. He grew up close to education policy — his mother was a teacher, and his father sat on the Newport News school board when the Supreme Court handed down its Brown v. Board of Education ruling.
His Hampton- and Norfolk-centered district is home to several academic institutions, including Old Dominion University, a 24,000-student research university, and Norfolk State University, a historically black school.
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