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Career education is a vital pipeline to high demand jobs in the workforce. Students from all walks of life benefit from the opportunity to pursue their career education goals and find new employment opportunities. Join Dr. Jason Altmire, President and CEO of Career Education Colleges and Universities (CECU), as he discusses the issues and innovations affecting postsecondary career education. Twice monthly, he and his guests discuss politics, business, and current events impacting education and public policy.
Jason Altmire [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to another edition of Career Education Report. I'm Jason Altmeyer. Today our guest is Jon Fansmith. He is the Senior Vice President for Government Relations and National Engagement at the American Council on Education. We are very fortunate to have him here as we get into 2025 because it's going to be a very eventful year with the change in the political climate in Washington, D.C. and as I think everybody knows, the American Council on Education is the umbrella group that speaks for all of higher education, not just in Washington, D.C. politically, but in the media and representing all of higher education across the country in all kind of ways. And Jon is the political.
Jason Altmire [00:00:50]:
I think I'm allowed to call you a lobbyist, right?
Jon Fansmith [00:00:53]:
You're allowed, Absolutely. Yeah.
Jason Altmire [00:00:55]:
He is the representative in Washington for all of higher ed. So that includes, we, of course, speak for it in our association, the career colleges, private career colleges, but they represent all of higher education. So really exciting to have Jon on the show. Jon, thank you for being with us.
Jon Fansmith [00:01:16]:
Well, Jason, thank you so much for having me. As you mentioned, you know, a lot of your members are my members too. So we have that overlap and it's great. It's my first time on your podcast. And as somebody who hosts the ACE podcast as well, we'll have to reciprocate and have you come back over and join me and Sarah and Mushtaq sometime.
Jason Altmire [00:01:34]:
Would love to do it. And everyone should listen to the ACE podcast as well. Always good topics and kind of, I think a good place to start would be sometimes our Career College members are frustrated that, you know, ACE might take a stand, of course, if not in opposition, but, you know, different than maybe more nuanced or even sometimes be silent on an issue that's important to our members. But I know you have that happen across all of your members because you have to juggle and you have to determine where there's conflict and where to come down. So maybe talk about that dynamic. What goes into the decision making process about what issues your association advocates for.
Jon Fansmith [00:02:19]:
It's a great question, Jason, and it's one of those things too, where I have friends who work in different fields and the government relations space. And I envy them because if they work on behalf of the short line railroads or something like that, they have very specific focus and all their members are aligned and they know what they want to accomplish. And, you know, probably not a surprise to you and your members in higher ed, there's a lot of viewpoints, often often more than one viewpoint per person. And we do represent all of higher education. And that's not just, you know, institutions like those you represent, or, you know, nonprofit independent colleges, universities, or large public institutions, but it's also a lot of the people who work within the campus. So it might be the campus IT officers, the campus business officer, or campus financial aid officials, the representatives of those campus employees. We represent them as well. So there's a huge diversity of viewpoints on really a lot of different issues, which, admittedly, I think can be frustrating from the outside when you say, well, why isn't AC weighing in here? Or why are they weighing in that way? And what I would say is, we probably have our own frustrations.
Jon Fansmith [00:03:28]:
There are times where we would like to sort of speak out and be more active, but what we have to do is weigh the interests of all the varying groups. And there are times in which our general policy is where we can build consensus. And we work very hard, we work with you and your members to build consensus in a number of policy areas, balance against all the other concerns we're hearing from other groups, and try to find a place where there's a uniform voice. And a handful of cases we found that's just not possible. People are too dug in. The impacts for their institutions or their professions are so significant that they don't see the possibility of compromise as being possible in those cases. What we have chosen to do at AC historically has been to say, look, there are big divides within the community. We can speak to those.
Jon Fansmith [00:04:13]:
We can identify them. A lot of times, frankly, I will have opposing sides where I agree with both of them. Their concerns are legitimate. They may be in conflict for very good reasons. The policy does divide them in ways that there will be a winner or a loser, depending on how it moves forward. I don't think that's good. We're obviously working for the best possible outcome in all scenarios. But to put AC's voice behind it, it has to be something the community as a whole supports.
Jon Fansmith [00:04:38]:
And that's the challenge, that's the tension. It's the thing that me and my team are always working on. And we do it a lot just by being in close contact with our colleagues here in Washington, D.C. reaching out to our members across the country, trying to get as much information and feedback about what proposed federal policy might mean. And so we can bring the most informed voice to the conversation and share in a collaborative way. So all of higher education is part of discussions.
Jason Altmire [00:05:01]:
And just to put it in perspective for the listeners, you know, we at cq, our association, we're on the secretariat, which is sort of the cabinet of entities for whom ACE speaks and represents when they're thinking about higher education. But also in that group are the, you know, just to name a few, you know, the Catholic schools, the big elite, Ivy League universities, public universities, the HBCUs, community colleges, as you said, the independent schools, the nonprofits. You hear all of this feedback, and I will just say I have found ACE to be very receptive, very collaborative, always considering points of view. And as you said, sometimes just that mix of members that you represent adds up to you either not being able to take a position or taking a position that's going to irritate or offend some of your membership. It's just inevitable when you represent such a wide constituency.
Jon Fansmith [00:06:09]:
It's one of those things where I've come to accept that somebody's always going to be a little bit unhappy with what we're doing. But as long as the majority of people are supportive and see even if they disagree with us, that we're moving in a direction that's thoughtful, that's considerate of their views, that is really focused on the best outcomes for institutions and for students, that is really the best we can do. And we work constantly to make sure that those are our north and south poles in terms of navigating that. We are always keeping that front of mind. And we appreciate, again, I hope that your experience, and it sounds like it has been. We want to hear criticism, we want to hear disagreement. That's not something we're afraid of or something we would ignore. We really want the different viewpoints because that helps inform us and helps inform our discussions.
Jon Fansmith [00:06:55]:
We even were saying this might be our position, but you should keep in mind what this means for these institutions or those folks as you're considering policy implications. When we go up to the Hill.
Jason Altmire [00:07:04]:
And talk to the administration, one of the examples of. I think what we're talking about comes in the form of accountability metrics. Of course, many of our members are for profit career schools, and they have been subject to regulation and accountability measures and a lot of debate and discussion and regulations being put forth and lawsuits in response relating to how schools are held accountable. And we advocate in the new environment with, you know, Republicans in control of everything in Washington, and you know that that sort of unified party control provides an opportunity to have the discussion about universal accountability so that all schools are held accountable to the same standards, so that all students can benefit from those standards. You at ace, of course, as we just said, represent a wide constituency, and there is a difference of opinion on that. And we don't have to dwell on that issue. But you, I think it's fair to say you are interested in having the discussion on accountability more generally in a way that the higher education sector has been resistant to in years past. So can you talk a little bit about that?
Jon Fansmith [00:08:23]:
Sure. And there has been, I will say from my perspective, there has been a massive change from 15, 20 years ago, even 10, 12 years ago, where there was a lot of debate in Washington about which institutions should be given access to X programs. What does accountability look like by the type of control of institution? And I think in a very positive way, that conversation, we've moved beyond that now to moving away from a focus at the institutional level to looking at accountability at the programmatic level, which is really neutral as to who is providing that program. Now, to be clear before you jump in, Jason, there are still policies that differentiate between proprietary institutions and nonprofit institutions. But I think generally what we've seen is Democrats being more open to the idea of saying take out the level of control, focus on what are these programs, outcomes. Is that the metric? Are students able to earn? Are they able to repay loans? Let's think about that. Regardless of who's providing it, if it's a good program, and I think obviously goes without saying, Republicans embracing that as well. I think that gives us a framework for talking about accountability that is both just a more rational approach.
Jon Fansmith [00:09:42]:
You can have a nonprofit school that may have some outstanding programs and some terrible programs. And that doesn't necessarily mean that's a bad institution or a good institution. Right. It means they're an institution that has some good programs and some bad programs. We should really be focusing on what the impact on students are. And so we've seen that. I think I would highlight certainly the bipartisan workforce Pell Act. You know, the positive of that, I think, was there was bipartisan agreement that it did not matter whether you were a for profit or nonprofit institution.
Jon Fansmith [00:10:10]:
It mattered what were the outcomes of your students. Now, as you know, we had other concerns with that bill and some of the political gimmicks that were put into that bill. But in terms of the idea of saying let's identify what a quality program looks like, let's make sure that programs that meet criteria's clear criteria of quality have that access to Pell grants for their students, that to me is a positive sign in terms of the policy development's going now. Absolutely. I mean, you started this talking about that is not a uniform view across all of American higher Education there are absolutely contingents we hear from who have very critical views of the for profit sector, who as a baseline would look to exclude for profit institutions from participation on equal terms with other institutions. You know, a lot of those controversies are informed by experiences in the past. I think the nice thing is like we talked about, there's lots of different viewpoints. I think where the conversation as a whole has gone and especially where policymakers has gone, has moved to this better place of like let's we have enough data to start digging in a little bit on where are students performing well, where are the risks for students, and trying to gear accountability along those lines rather than saying X type of institution is a good one, Y type of institution is a bad one.
Jon Fansmith [00:11:26]:
So all in all a very positive shift and it's made frankly my job easier because you can point to metrics and say this is what we're looking at, not these other factors that may not have a direct relevance on the education that's being delivered to a student.
Jason Altmire [00:11:39]:
And I think that's the difference between, you know, we'll recall when President Obama put forward the concept of accountability measures and holding all schools in higher ed accountable. There was great anxiety across higher education and it ended up not going anywhere and he withdrew it because of the opposition. But the difference today is what you just said. Now we have the college scorecard. Now we have other ways to immediately compare outcomes of schools in a way that did not exist 10 or 15 years ago. So the access to data, the outcomes to quality measures and the ability to judge whether schools have high quality programs and good outcomes is very different today. And what you described about the workforce, Pell also called the short term Pell Grant, of course that did not quite get across the finish line in the last Congress, but we expect there's a real opportunity to pursue that in the current environment. And it's a really good example because there were people primarily on the Democratic side who wanted to keep for profit schools out of that and make students attending for profit schools ineligible to get a short term Pell Grant to fund their education.
Jason Altmire [00:13:05]:
And ACE was supportive of, of our position, which was if you have outcomes measures as part of the criteria to qualify in the first place, you're guaranteed that a school is a high quality institution regardless of what their ownership status is. And we're hopeful that that debate will carry forward. So that that is a very good example of how we've worked together and you've supported that concept. A big issue. I know series of issues for ace, maybe the reason why there was so much anxiety after the election back in November among the higher education community revolved around social and cultural issues, the so called woke issues, as the Republicans would say. Can you talk about how much that has influenced your priorities and what you're hearing from your members and what your strategy is to address what is certainly to come in this current session to Congress?
Jon Fansmith [00:14:07]:
You know, I think it's an interesting one to try and unpack a little bit too, because we saw a level of attention on higher education in the presidential campaign that I don't think we're used to. But a lot of it was. I mean, there was mention of accreditation, there's mention of affordability, there's mention of pathways to post secondary training that leads you to a career short of getting a degree. And I think those are all really valuable conversations, ones I think the higher ed world is both used to having and eager to engage in and great conversations to have. But a lot of what we saw more of raised to the level of national TV ads and Senate races and in House races was these kind of woke culture war issues around things like DEI or trans athletes or other things where I think it's important to think a little bit about the difference between an election and governing. Right. So there was a lot of consternation. And I think a lot of people looked at this and said, you know, there are things that are inherent to our mission as an institution, to the community we're trying to build here, to the culture we want to sustain, that is letting our students know we're a place where you belong.
Jon Fansmith [00:15:14]:
We are a place that will be welcoming to you. And what does that look like? How have we approached that? Where you see broad attacks on DEI programs as being, you know, a threat to your ability to do the kind of things that you think might be valuable in terms of supporting your students and encouraging other students to come to your campus. And so absolutely concerns about that. That said, we have a long history that's enshrined in statute in this country that the federal government can't interfere in curricula, the federal government can't dictate your staffing decisions. There's the ability of Congress to do a lot. Statute is powerful. You write a law, it's meaningful. You know that certainly better than I do, Jason.
Jon Fansmith [00:15:56]:
But an administration can't do these things unilaterally. There's things they can do on the regulatory side. Executive orders are important and meaningful. There will be impacts from actions the executive will take. But a lot of these Things will involve stages. They'll involve the ability of institutions to think about what their policies are, to recalibrate them in ways that probably are worth examining in this environment. Right. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
Jon Fansmith [00:16:22]:
That said, I think some of the panic is probably a little bit overblown. Just because there are processes within our government, the minority still has a strong voice. If you want to pass legislation in this Senate, the Congress we're in now, you will need seven Democratic votes to join the Republican majority to pass legislation. So there are checks and balances in terms of what can immediately be done. So a lot of concern, I think a lot of that attention surprised people because they're not used to being discussed in those ways. Coming out of the last Congress, where we had all these hearings around campus protest and what are the acceptable limits around free speech and free expression? Where does that cross the line into hate speech and intimidation and harassment? Those are important debates to have. They're also debates we've been having as a country for 250 years, since our founding. These are hard lines to draw in any context.
Jon Fansmith [00:17:18]:
So the politicization of those troubling, but equally the ability of the government to act in ways that the courts won't weigh in on that there aren't processes involved. For I think there are some safeguards in place that people who are afraid of unilateral action taking the rhetoric, the campaign rhetoric, maybe too seriously in terms of what the immediate impact will be. It's worth taking a breath. It's worth thinking about where your institution is positioned in these areas and the case you have to make, and then seeing what actually happens before worrying too much.
Jason Altmire [00:17:49]:
The Higher Education act has not been reauthorized since 2008, as you are well aware. And many of the top issues in higher education, priorities not only of your association, but just of higher education institutions, in order to be addressed, would, if you go through the appropriate process, have to be part of a reauthorized Higher Education Act. It is possible, with unified control of the government, that that could happen, although with such a slim majority in both the House and not having 60 votes in the Senate, honestly, it's unlikely. I think you would agree with that. But let's just say that it was possible. And you know, we are, both of us are going to. And others are going to be working to make that happen or try to make it happen. But if you had final say, if you were the king, what are your priorities for if we were to reauthorize the Higher Education act, what would you most like to see addressed, given how much higher education has changed since 2008?
Jon Fansmith [00:18:56]:
Justin, I don't think we have seven or eight hours to go through that list for me, I mean, you could just walk away and I'll just keep speaking into the microphone. No, I would say, and I'm echoing AC's president, Ted Mitchell here. I think the first thing, top of the list, front of mind, and not just for me, but for basically all Americans who are experiencing higher education either as students or as family members of students or people who are hoping to send their kids to school, is we have a very broken system for financing higher education. And there's a lot of different elements of that. Right. States have walked away in terms of their support for higher education. How do we bring them back to the table in a way that, you know, gets us back to this idea of that it's a shared partnership. But also our loan system is incredibly complicated.
Jon Fansmith [00:19:49]:
It's incredibly expensive. It delivers poor returns to taxpayers. It delivers bad outcomes and bad experiences for borrowers in repayment. We're in a particularly difficult point where the clarity in terms of what your obligations are as a borrower and what your options are has never been more confusing, I don't think. And this is 44, 45 million people in repayment right now in varying stages of it. You know, part of this idea about loan forgiveness, why is it so appealing to people? I think it's because the system itself is so complicated. They just want to walk away from it. They just want to be done with it.
Jon Fansmith [00:20:21]:
And it shouldn't be that way. We are a nation with incredible talent and resources. It would be great to start back at the beginning and think about a system that gives aid to the students who needs it. Make sure that the ability to attend higher education is affordable to students without risk. So maybe that's eliminating borrowing for some categories of students with high need and then making sure that repayment is affordable for those who do still have need, who graduate. And maybe we'll be seeing less economic outcome immediately on. And then thinking about a system that's also pushing the funding where it is appropriate, where institutions are returning that faith, where they're demonstrating good value to their students, where even if you're not getting rich from your time in higher education, you are seeing yourself move up the socioeconomic ladder, you're seeing greater opportunities. Your experience with higher education is improvement in your.
Jon Fansmith [00:21:14]:
You've made that investment yourself, financially time wise and otherwise, and you have a system that supports that rather than one that in many cases throws obstacles in your way and makes it very punitive for the time you've spent. So that's number one. We could, like I said, we could go right through every title of the hea and, and we have a list of things we talk about, but, you know, certainly making college affordable and making that affordable to all students at the right level so it's targeted to their need. That would be number one by far for us here at ace.
Jason Altmire [00:21:47]:
I think for the last question you mentioned a couple of times there. Value. How does ACE define value? And when you're talking to policymakers, what do you advocate for with regard to policies that ensure institutions are offering high value?
Jon Fansmith [00:22:04]:
It's a really great question, right? Value means a lot of different things. And one of the things just on the national level we've been hearing these debates about is college worth it anymore? And I think when people say that, they're not just talking about a four year residential bachelor's experience, they're talking about any level of post secondary education. And all the data shows some level of post secondary education leads to increased outcomes in the marketplace. But there's concerns about debt, and those are totally fair. Value can look like we are developing the, you know, the research that leads to innovations that fuel our economy or, you know, keep our national defense tops in the world. There's a lot of different ways to define value, but I think the way you were getting at it and the way most people think about it is, you know, what is the individual return for the investment in time and money they put into higher education? And it's easy in some ways. What we've seen generally in the policy space is to shorthand that to how much money are you earning after you leave an institution and how well are you repaying the loans you took out to do that? Those are certainly valid indicators of outcomes, but they lack a lot of the nuance that we have data to talk about, which is things like, where did you enter the higher education system? If you started out from a wealthy family and went to a highly selective school and you come out and you do well, did that school give you some inherent benefit that you would not have received at a different institution? Whereas, you know, you look at some of the people like Raj Chetty's data, and you look at, say, you know, some of the students from the lowest socioeconomic statuses entering some institutions shoot right up the socioeconomic ladder and they do so at relatively low cost. They do so relatively good time to completion, and that's real value.
Jon Fansmith [00:23:50]:
Right. I mean, that is a tremendous value return. It's not to say the first institution is a bad institution or is doing anything wrong. But if we want to start putting emphasis on a federal system, where are we putting the rewards? Where are the policies we want to promote? It's those institutions, those ones that are looking at student populations that need the most support and not just serving them, but serving them well, moving them up the socioeconomic ladder and looking at the communities they serve, both in terms of their composition and their socioeconomic status and the jobs are preparing for. And when you start getting a little bit more detailed and thoughtful about those elements, I think some of this becomes a lot more clear about where are the good actors and where they're and it has nothing to do with level of control, whether they're public or private, nonprofit, for profit. It's, it's how are they serving their students. And, and that's a lot more, to me, valuable information about value than simply just what's the median income of your students and what's the, you know, employment rate and what's the loan repayment rate?
Jason Altmire [00:24:48]:
If somebody wanted to learn more about the American Council on Education, learn who your members are, what your priorities, you know, how, how you go about your business, how would they find more information?
Jon Fansmith [00:25:00]:
The easiest place to go would be our website, which is www.acnet.edu. so www.acet.edu. we don't currently have a members only section of our website, so everything we do is available to the public. And that includes I host a podcast. My colleagues and I host a monthly webinar where we talk about policy issues. We have all of our bill summaries, talking points, legislative analyses, letters to Congress and the administration and executive agencies up there. So you can read as much as you want, learn as much as you want about AC And I'll just as a pitch for doing that because as you pointed out the top, we work with everybody in the higher education space. It's rare that there is something that impacts U.S.
Jon Fansmith [00:25:47]:
college or university that we haven't engaged on. So there's a lot of resources available there.
Jason Altmire [00:25:52]:
And mention one more time, your podcast. How would people find that?
Jon Fansmith [00:25:56]:
The podcast is called.edu d o t E D U and you can find links to that from our website as well as it's on Apple and Stitcher and Spotify and all the all the places you find your podcasts. We're up there.
Jason Altmire [00:26:12]:
Our guest today has been Jonathan Fansmith. He's the senior vice President for Government Relations and National Engagement at the American Council Council on Education. Jon, thanks for being with us.
Jon Fansmith [00:26:23]:
Jason, thanks so much for having me. It was great talking with you.
Jason Altmire [00:26:33]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Career Education Report. Subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. For more information, visit our website at career.org and follow us on Twitter @CECUED. That's C-E-C-U-E-D, thank you for listening.