‘If you’re constantly dealing with crisis management, there’s not much time left for a big plan’
Higher ed may get more attention from Washington than K-12 after the next election, regardless of whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden is elected president, says one expert.
While colleges and universities may get assistance from another COVID relief package, there may also be momentum to reauthorize the Higher Education Act—particularly if Democrats take control of the Senate, says Jon Bernstein, an education, technology and communications lobbyist who is president of the Bernstein Strategy Group.
As for the next stimulus bill, the most immediate concern could be community colleges, smaller private institutions and regional state schools, where enrollment numbers have been hit harder by the COVID economic crisis, he says.
“We’re seeing a lot of stories out there about smaller less-branded institutions that are really suffering but I don’t know if there’s a federal role in trying to save them,” says Bernstein, who is also executive director of the National Coalition for Technology in Education & Training. “There are still a lot of kids who want to go to college, and it’s not going to help if we have bankruptcies.”