During the first two years of the Trump Administration, Secretary of Education DeVos made some small but important moves to return sanity to higher education policy, which ratcheted down the degree of federal control. Moreover, the GOP seemed ready last summer to push a bill that would have revised the Higher Education Act in several useful ways.

Last week’s election stopped that momentum; it may even throw things into reverse. The policies the Democrats are pushing will make Uncle Sam more intrusive than ever, raising the cost to taxpayers of our misbegotten higher education policy still higher. In this week’s Martin Center article, I look at the new higher ed policy landscape, which is pretty ugly.

Here’s one issue that I find especially galling — public service loan forgiveness. This foolish idea, premised on the notion that “public service” work won’t attract graduates unless the government makes it more financially appealing by agreeing to wipe out some student loan debt, was on the chopping block in the Republican bill to reauthorize the Higher Education Act. But now, PSLF will survive and perhaps become even more expensive as the Democrats propose to make loan forgiveness even more “generous” for students.

The federal government really has no business in higher education at all, but the Democrats want to give it a bigger and bigger role. We will be lucky to hold the status quo.