The absurd reason Warren is concerned about DeVos’ ‘banking’ experience

In a hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) railed against President-elect Trump’s selection for education secretary, Betsy DeVos, alleging—both during the hearing and afterward—the outspoken proponent of school choice is completely unprepared to take on the nation’s highest education post.

“I don’t see how she can be the secretary of education,” Warren wrote on Facebook following the hearing.

{mosads}Among Warren’s most significant complaints is DeVos’ lack of experience in public education and as a banker (yes, a banker).

“As education secretary, Betsy DeVos would be in charge of running a $1 trillion student loan bank,” said Warren on Facebook. “She has no experience doing that. In fact, Betsy DeVos has no experience with student loans, Pell Grants, or public education at all.”

The reason Warren, a progressive whose policies are comparable to those promoted by self-avowed socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), is so concerned with ensuring the next education secretary is a banker—which, on its face, would seem to have nothing to do with educating the nation’s youth—is because the federal government has in recent years taken on a significant role in the student loan industry and because progressives dream of implementing a “free” college education scheme, one that’s run by an all-powerful centralized government.

Warren worries—and rightfully so—DeVos might work to implement Trump’s plan to scale back the federal government’s role in higher education lending, thereby standing in the way of the incredible “progress” liberals have made in recent years in making the vast majority of American college students beholden to the feds.

Seventy percent of students now graduate with student loans, including those that attend relatively inexpensive community colleges, and the average graduate has more than $37,000 in student loan debt, most of which is owed to the federal government. The crisis, however, is so much worse than that.

More than 43 million Americans have outstanding student loan debt, which combined amounts to $1.4 trillion, more than all outstanding credit card or auto loan debt. Many students who attend four-year colleges owe tens of thousands of dollars more than the national average, and that doesn’t include the massive loans parents and grandparents are now taking out to pay education expenses.

While Warren would argue these figures prove there is a need for government intervention, the situation has grown substantially worse since the federal government increased its role in the student lending industry in the 1990s under President Clinton. From 1993 to 2015, the average combined cost of a full-time undergraduate’s tuition, mandatory fees, and room and board for students attending four-year colleges increased (in inflation-adjusted dollars) from $8,758 to $25,409, an increase of 190 percent. Under President Obama, the government took over an even greater share of the student loan industry, and tuition and debt has risen to staggering levels as a result.

Despite the shocking numbers showing liberals’ plans have not made college more affordable, in as recently as 2015 Warren called for the Department of Education to assume even more power over higher education, suggesting DOE should coerce states into creating “at least one path to a debt-free college degree for all students” at a government-run public college. She also supported Hillary Clinton’s plan to socialize much of the student loan industry by making public colleges “tuition-free” for families with incomes up to $125,000 by 2021.

Warren is right to criticize DeVos’ lack of banking experience; someone tasked with running DOE now needs to be an expert on lending practices to run a department that once was tasked solely with improving educational outcomes. Warren is dead wrong, however, in claiming the federal government should have anything to do with student lending in the first place.

DeVos’ lack of banking experience is only a flaw if the current system continues on as it has, but if DeVos is being brought in to help transition the federal government out of the student-lending business, then her willingness to take on the education establishment might make her a perfectly suitable candidate for the job. 

Justin Haskins is executive editor at the Heartland Institute, a nonprofit that advocates for limited government.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.