As Republicans regain control of the Senate—led by Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who is likely to be the new education-committee chairman—large-scale changes in the Higher Education Act seem like a sure bet.
For Senator Alexander, that might mean simplifying the labyrinth of regulations overseen by the Education Department. But the department’s under secretary, Ted Mitchell, offered a different vision on Wednesday at a panel on the act’s reauthorization: A revision of the key law, he said, could instead give the department new authority to crack down on abuses such as the system of sham “paper classes” at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“Some part of my soul is also a troubled regulator,” said Mr. Mitchell. He echoed suggestions, made by other panelists, that the department punish colleges that do not provide students with a rigorous education.
Kevin Carey, an education-policy analyst at the New America Foundation, which hosted the meeting, said penalties for academic abuses could come about in a similar way to the department’s investigation of sexual-assault cases.
Currently, Mr. Carey said, the act “doesn’t give them any reason to do that. We sort of leave the questions of teaching and learning aside.”
Wendell Pritchett, interim dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s law school, agreed, saying measures of student outcomes, such as graduation rates, are often left out of discussions about federal regulation. “We don’t regulate the core of the higher-education experience,” he said.
As a former chancellor of Rutgers University’s campus in Newark, Mr. Pritchett said, “we talked about football, we talked about new buildings, we talked about fund raising, but we never talked about those questions.”
Several panelists found some points of agreement with Senator Alexander, a former secretary of education and university president. Some said they would welcome the hard-charging Tennessee Republican’s emphasis on simplifying the federal financial-aid form, known as the Fafsa, to two questions. Mr. Mitchell, the Education Department official, said he hoped the reauthorized act would simplify the complex system of federal loan programs and loan servicers.
Citing the charged political climate, the panelists said a reauthorized Higher Education Act was unlikely to pass Congress under Senator Alexander’s leadership. Instead, they said, issues of elementary and secondary education would take precedence.
“The big takeaway,” said Mr. Pritchett, “is stay tuned.”