Congressional Ed Committee Chair Foxx Determined to Reauthorize Higher Ed Act

“I’m the only one in Congress with the legislative and higher ed experience to finally reauthorize the Higher Education Act of 1965,” said Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the Congressional Leader, for the second time, of the House Education and Work Force Committee. Foxx (74) was elected to the House in 2014. She is a reliable conservative Republican pledging oversight of the Biden administration. She favors a diversity of institutions to deliver higher education in the United States, including community colleges -- she had served as President of Maryland Community College -- and for-profit institutions with fewer regulations but more accountability and oversight. A new accountability system could include a provision for risk-sharing, so that colleges and universities would be accountable for loans that students are unable to repay, according to Foxx, although Congress rejected such a plan in 2017.

But she opposes the College Transparency Act requiring colleges and universities to report certain data – such as comparative salaries of graduates. She also opposes the Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plans for student loans, which would grant a loanee monthly payments based on their post-graduate income and family size, and whether or not their outstanding federal student loan debt represented a significant portion of their annual income. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the IDR policy would cost taxpayers $230 billion – a cost that will severely exacerbate rising college costs and excessive borrowing, according to Foxx. The Committee is also targeting the implementation of President Biden’s Student Loan Policies for Students and Taxpayers. “President Biden lacks the executive authority to implement his $1 trillion executive re-write of the federal student loan policies,” according to Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development Chair Burgess Owens (R-UT).

The last reauthorization of the Higher Education Act was in 2008, and the law is supposed to be renewed every five years. “This is “exactly the right time” to reauthorize the Higher Education Act of 1965”, Foxx said in a recent interview with Inside Higher Ed. “That’s because the COVID-19 pandemic exposed gaps in the higher education system and fueled drops in public opinion about higher education. In fact, higher education has never been held in lower esteem,” Foxx reportedly said. But with narrow margins in the House and Senate, any reauthorization will need firm bipartisan support to pass. Still, with rising tuition costs and a historic decline in college enrollment triggered by increasingly open debate about the value of a full four-year college and graduate degrees, legislators are being pressured by constituents throughout the country to fix higher education.

Defining "woke" Across the Spectrum

Suddenly everyone on the Hill, in academia and in the media seem to be talking about “woke”. … “woke”. Capitalism, politics, school and college curriculum, ideology and beliefs. In just the first two weeks of March, numerous articles and opinion pieces and interviews of Congressional leaders and even Senate candidates (Jim Banks of Indiana) appeared in the Atlantic, the New York Times, USA Today, the New York Post, National Review, Semafor and similar publications seeking public leaders’ positions on “woke” policies. But what is “woke”? Can the Hispanic Outlook’s diverse and intelligent readership agree on a definition? Perhaps it comes best from a historical angle.

It seems that many in-the-know – and yes, there are already several books about “woke” - agree that black communities originally used the term and concept of “woke” in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. It referred to being awake to bigotry and prejudice and the coming revolution and reckoning writes author Jennifer Sey. Merriam-Webster offers this definition: “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially racial and social justice). “That’s not bad so far as it goes,” writes Atlantic author Thomas Chatterton Williams.

But then, in the early 21st century, the term got politicized. “The ‘woke’ concept was broadened to apply to progressives of all races who had adopted genuine social consciousness, specifically around issues of inequality,” writes Sey. “And then Woke evolved all at once to inform an ideology, a comprehensive belief system that is rooted in the idea that every issue we face can and must be defined by a hierarchy of oppression, through the eyes of the oppressor vs. the oppressed.”  “Social-justice-movement insiders (came to) have different associations and uses for the word than those outside these progressive circles,” writes Williams. “Before you can attempt to define what “wokeness” is, you should acknowledge this basic fact.”

In March, USA Today came out with the results of a poll of Americans’ opinion about “woke”: more Americans defined “woke” as meaning “to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices” than “overly politically correct.” But the head of the Congressional “Anti-Woke Caucus,” Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind), didn’t buy the result, according to Semafor on March 18. “Woke is “a left wing religion” as he put it — that conservatives have attached to everything from academia to Silicon Valley Bank. “I believe wokeness is dividing Americans along racial lines,” Banks said. “It's divisive; it’s anti-American; it's a sharp departure from everything that Martin Luther King stood for, when he talked about equality, that we would not be judged by the color of our skin. And wokeness is using the power of the federal government to do just that.”

Latinx – Now Part of the Culture War

On Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ first day in office in early January, she signed an executive order barring the use of the term “Latinx” in official state documents, suddenly making the gender neutral term that is popular among Hispanics, particularly on college campuses, part of the cultural wars that are said to be splitting red and blue America. While it’s not clear if banning the use of Latinx and its derivatives in government documents is that big a deal or not, a bill proposed in March by five Hispanic Connecticut state lawmakers would prohibit state agencies from using Latinx in any official communications and documents in the state. The bill’s chief sponsor, state Rep. Geraldo Reyes Jr., D-Waterbury, argued that the term alienates native-Spanish speakers, particularly members of Connecticut’s sizeable Puerto Rican population.

A 2019 survey of Hispanic adults by Pew Research found that just 3 percent reported using Latinx,  while more than three-quarters had never heard of the term. Among those familiar with the term, a majority said they preferred other general terms such as Hispanic and Latino to describe the population. Reyes said that while he and others pushing for the bill do not intend to offend transgender or nonbinary people, the use of Latinx by government officials is seen as inappropriate by the wider Hispanic community.  •