Richard Veddar unearths this gem from the New York Times editorial board in 1979:
The idea [of the Department of Education] remains as unwise as when it was first broached in a Carter campaign promise to the National Education Association. ...
It has always been American policy ... to deliberately avoid centralizing education in a way that requires direction and financing by a national ministry. ...
We believe that diversity of direction has served American education well and that it will continue to do better without a central bureaucracy, even a benign one.
Those NYT editorial writers , in 1979, sure were sensible fellows. Economist Richard Veddar explains:
The 30 years between 1950 and 1980 were the Golden Age of American higher education. The proportion of adult Americans with college degrees nearly tripled, going from 6 to 17 percent. Enrollments quintupled, going from 2.3 to 12.1 million.
By the end of the period, the number of doctorates awarded in engineering had quintupled and over 40 percent of Nobel Prizes were going to individuals associated with American universities.
This was the era in which higher education went from serving the elite and mostly well-to-do to serving many individuals from modest economic circumstance. State government support for higher education rose dramatically — spending per student rose roughly 70 percent after inflation.
During this period, however, the federal role was quite modest. The GI Bill had increased higher education participation, but the loan programs authorized under the 1965 Higher Education Act were comparatively small until the very end of the period when loan eligibility was extended to large numbers of comparatively affluent Americans.
In 1978, the year before the Department’s creation, only one million student loans were made totaling under $2 billion — less than 5 percent the current level of lending even allowing for inflation.
You'll want to read the entire article.
