Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos on Tuesday railed against President-elect Joe Biden’s push to make public colleges free, calling it a “socialist takeover of higher education.”
“Make no mistake: It is a socialist takeover of higher education,” DeVos said, without mentioning Biden by name, during an online conference hosted by her department’s Federal Student Aid office. “Now, depending on your personal politics, some of you might not find that notion as scary as I do. But mark my words: None of you would like the way it will work,” she declared, according to The Boston Globe.
DeVos, who has been repeatedly accused of working to undermine her department’s own student loan forgiveness programs, was held in contempt of court last year by a federal judge who found that she violated a court order halting the collection of loan payments from borrowers who have applied for forgiveness.
In her speech on Tuesday, the outgoing secretary of Education addressed the Department’s recent activities and the “insidious notion of government gift giving.” She did not speak on relief for student loan borrowers due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic despite the moratorium on payments ending at the end of this month.
“If the politicians proposing free college today get their way, just watch our colleges and universities begin to resemble a failing K-12 school, with the customer service of the DMV to boot,” DeVos said.
“Somebody, somewhere pays the bill,” she added. “And the bill is coming due. What we do next in education policy — and in public policy writ large — will either break our already fragile economy, or it will unleash an age of achievement and prosperity the likes of which we’ve never seen.”
