Could it be that the last chance for this Congress to draft a new Higher Education Act just died because two United States senators can’t resolve a middle-school-style disagreement over who owed whom a call back?
Sure, there’s more to it than that. Democrats and Republicans fundamentally disagree over the federal government’s role in holding colleges accountable and ensuring that a higher education is affordable and accessible to low-income and minority students. Democrats also distrust the education secretary, Betsy DeVos, over her willingness to protect students from unscrupulous colleges. (In the same vein, Republicans believe the Education Department overstepped its authority under the Obama administration.)
But miscommunication between the chairman of the Senate’s education committee and its top minority member is clearly part of the reason renewal of the key law, known as reauthorization, is all but certainly dead until 2019.
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