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Early this month the Department of Education chose James Kvaal to succeed Robert Shireman as deputy undersecretary of education. The 36-year-old Kvaal, who got his start in politics as a volunteer in President Clinton’s 1996 reelection campaign, also worked as a senior fellow at the center for American Progress, as policy director on John Edwards’ presidential campaign, and, most recently, as senior director at the White House National Economic Council, where he worked on higher education, training, and labor issues. Kvaal, who was a panelist at the Monthly’s June 18th discussion on community colleges and employment, recently spoke with the College Guide about his new position.
Washington Monthly: Could you talk to me more about the job you held before this in the White House?
James Kvaal: So the Nation Economic Council is made up of cabinet officials who have a stake in the economy. It’s run by the National Economic Council director, Larry Summers. And it has a staff to help it function. I was a member of the staff. Its role is to coordinate economic policy development across the administration. It tends to take on two types of issues. One is an issue that has an inter-agency component, it’s a neutral broker between different agencies to make sure that everyone’s interests are represented in the decision-making process and the President’s decision has the benefit of advice from across the government. The second thing we tend to get involved in are things of personal interest to the President. It really is a coordinating organization.
WM: Was there anything in particular about that job that prepared you for this new job?
JK: This job is not dissimilar. One of the things we do in the office of the Undersecretary is coordinate work across the department. Here, you have the Counsel’s Office, the Budget Office; it’s important here to make sure that all issues are fully considered. Also, both offices play a policy development role.
WM: What does the deputy under secretary do? Could you tell me what the sort of scope of your job actually is?
JK: I’ll tell you what the undersecretary does. Martha Kanter is responsible for adult and vocational education, post-secondary education, and financial student aid. The things that deal with people after high school. My role is to help her develop and manage policy for these programs.
WM: That includes vocational programs, college access, and all of that?
JK: It does. Obviously the biggest programs in the area are the Pell Grant program and the student loan program. The largest in terms of dollars are the student aid programs.
WM: So what are you interested in doing while you’re here?
JK: Well, the President has set a goal for us, which is to restore the US as first in the world in college attainment by 2020. So, the overarching goal of our office is to help more students enroll in and graduate from college.
WM: One of the things I have trouble with when I’m covering education it is that this was put out there as a goal but then it got dramatically less money than originally planned. So I’m wondering how we’re supposed to meet that goal if we are spending way less money on it then we originally envisioned for the plan.
JK: I actually don’t think that’s a fair criticism. The goal somehow became shorthanded as community college graduates only, which is not true.
WM: Obama gave the speech at a community college. …
JK: He initially laid out the goal in his joint address to Congress, in his second month in office. So then he followed up by talking about how community colleges contribute to the goal, but the goal was always a higher education-wide thing.
The American Graduation Initiative was a set of resources to help reform community colleges but it was not the only thing the administration is doing to help college completion. So, for example, we have more than doubled Pell Grant scholarships. By the same measure, we’ve now tripled the largest college tax credit, the American Opportunity Tax credit. This is 3 times larger than the old tax credit was in 2008. These are really large investments in making college more affordable. The community college funding, it’s true that he proposed $12 billion; we ended up getting 2 billion, not as much as we’d hoped for. It’s also true that funding is over 4 years, instead of 10 years, so it’s not quite as small as it seems.
WM: Could you talk a little about Pell Grants and the role of that in terms of college funding? One of the criticisms of federal investment in education is that ultimately it doesn’t have any role in reducing the price of tuition. You know, poor people can use Pell Grants to pay for college. But ultimately doesn’t that just raise the cost of college because there is a certain amount that’s taken care of by the government?
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Bronx on February 08, 2011 9:21 PM:
FEAR THE KVAAL!!!