When Betsy DeVos arrived at the Department of Education in 2017, higher education policy was not the primary focus of her public profile. That was largely occupied by her long record on K-12 school choice. But as Education Secretary, she oversaw a portfolio that included oversight of the country’s vast and complex higher education system, and she brought a consistent philosophy to that work: accountability for institutions, relief from unnecessary regulatory burden, and protections for students navigating a system that did not always serve them well.
One of her most significant higher education actions involved the overhaul of regulations governing for-profit colleges. She delayed and ultimately rescinded the so-called gainful employment rule, arguing that it unfairly targeted for-profit institutions while applying different standards to nonprofit and public colleges that produced equally poor student outcomes. Her critics argued the rule was necessary to protect students from predatory programs. Her supporters contended that the rule was selectively applied and that a fair standard should apply across all institution types.
DeVos also took steps to reform the borrower defense to repayment program, which allows students to seek loan forgiveness if they were defrauded by their institution. She argued that the Obama-era rules were too broad and lacked adequate standards of evidence, potentially allowing claims that had not been sufficiently substantiated to proceed. The revisions she proposed were aimed at establishing clearer, more consistent processes for evaluating those claims.
On student loans, she consistently raised concerns about the ballooning size of the federal loan portfolio and what she described as a system that encouraged borrowing without sufficient attention to whether the education being financed would produce the outcomes students needed. She advocated for simplifying the loan repayment system and providing students with clearer information about the financial consequences of their borrowing decisions before they took on debt.
Her approach to higher education accreditation also reflected a desire to reduce barriers and increase innovation. She supported efforts to explore competency-based education models and alternative credentialing pathways, arguing that the traditional four-year degree was not the only route to economic opportunity and that the regulatory system should make room for approaches that served students who did not fit the conventional mold.
The higher education landscape is enormously complex, and DeVos’s tenure produced a mixed and contested record on it. But her underlying instinct, that institutions should be held accountable for student outcomes and that regulatory frameworks should serve students rather than protect incumbents, reflected a coherent and consistently applied philosophy.
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