Colleges Flex Lobbying Muscle – WSJ (Very Important)

College and universities have lobbied aggressively to beat back dozens of government proposals to measure their successes and failures, including a federal ratings system.

Source: Colleges Flex Lobbying Muscle – WSJ

See Bill Gross on the power of universities – see this to see how much revenue some of them receive yearly.

I commented.

Speaking of Sen. Lamar Alexander (TN), former Sec. of Ed., and his fight against overregulation, this is from his WSJ Op-Ed on the subject,

“…in one year Vanderbilt University spent a startling $150 million complying with federal rules and regulations governing higher education…”

Now, for the rest of the story.

  • That number “…is inflated by costs unrelated to those regulations…”
  • “the federal government reimburses ..as much as 20 percent of the federal-compliance expenses the analysis identified”
  • “$117 million of its regulatory costs were associated with the expenses of its vast research enterprise” [Not “higher education.]
  • “$14 million was spent complying with rules on antidiscrimination, immigration, and other issues”
  • “Vanderbilt said the $14 million was attributable to “higher education” regulations but..acknowledged that $9 million of that was for…accreditation

This is from a report by the Chron. of Higher Ed. A link is on my blog inside-higher-ed., along with much more.