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Friday Follow Up
Silence on the American Academy, the House / Senate battle, and PKH updates
Phil Hill
February 21, 2025
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At this point, I’m not sure there is going to be a down week in US education news in 2025.
The Silent American Academy
In the podcast transcript in yesterday’s post, I discussed one topic with Eloy Oakley that is newsworthy in the lack of news. We recorded that podcast on January 31st.
During the campaign, you heard a lot about get rid of the Department of Education. You also heard a lot about, I think they call it the American Academy, the online federal online university proposal. I always took that as bluster and negotiation that nobody's seriously going to go after it. I have to admit, that's a signal to watch. I might have been wrong, if I see actual efforts to put that in place.
Since then, nothing. There has been no mention of this concept for a while, and I am not hearing it mentioned from congressional or department officials, either.
It is important to remember that the American Academy concept was announced on November 1, 2023, right after the October 7 attacks. The framing of the concept was explicitly based on elite campus reactions.
Under the plan I’m announcing today, we will take the billions and billions of dollars that we will collect by taxing, fining, and suing excessively large private university endowments, and we will then use that money to endow a new institution called the American Academy. [snip]
It will be strictly non-political, and there will be no wokeness or jihadism allowed—none of that's going to be allowed.
Most importantly, the American Academy will compete directly with the existing and very costly four-year university system by granting students degree credentials that the U.S. government and all federal contractors will henceforth recognize. The Academy will award the full and complete equivalent of a bachelor's degree.
I maintain that we will not see direct action for this online university concept, and I am more confident today. This whole concept is in direct opposition to all other efforts seeking to diminish federal involvement in higher education, and no one is taking any known action on it.
What might happen is some redefinition of the ideas, as described by AEI, but without any teaching institution.
Congressional Arm Wrestling
Last week I noted that a key battle to watch is that between the House and Senate during budget reconciliation.
