Could i please have your attention . Please finish your meal or dessert quietly. Thank you all for being with us this afternoon. I am president of the fund for american studies. I know i have said hello to a lot of you. I want to say thank you for those of you who generously support our Educational Program and our work with high school and College Students around the world. It is my distinct pleasure and privilege on behalf of our board of trustees to ask you to join me in welcoming the 11th secretary of the department of education, secretary betsy devos. We are really honored that you could join us today for this fireside chat. We do not need a fire, it is about 85 outside. Thanks for the opportunity. I thought i would open with a policy question right off the bat. You have spent much of your career leading up to becoming secretary of education, promoting reform and education, improvement in dictation, trying new ideas that might improve opportunities for young people who might not be able to afford an extensive private education. Now that you are in government, you proposed an education freedom scholarship. A very interesting idea with great tax credits at state levels to make more opportunities available to young people. Can you tell us a little bit about that and why it has met such opposition . I would be happy to talk about it. Let me say at the outset, the goal of this initiative is to help more kids get much better quality education. We know that today, too many kids are stuck in schools to which they are assigned when they have no other option because they cannot move somewhere or their parents cannot afford paying tuition to go somewhere different. So, we have, i have long worked at the state level to try to change policies and advance what i term education freedom. We also determine school choice. The initiative we have now at the federal level, the administration is advancing, the establishment of a federal tax credit. An annual fund that would be opted into by states. Not have been, not a mandate. It does not create a new federal department or program or new bureaucracy to administer, it simply is a vehicle or a mechanism for individuals to redirect a portion of their federal tax bill annually to a Scholarship Granting Organization which would then scholarship out to students to make choices in their home state for an education environment that is going to suit their needs and fit their purposes. It is a simple concept, but it does face a lot of opposition because the status quo wants to protect what is at the expense of what could be. Why do you think reform has met such opposition that there is such a strong special interest supporting the status quo and are resisting reforms like this which would improve education . We have strong teachers unions that are very interested in their membership, rightfully so. They are doing a great job at protecting their membership, but it is about adult issues and adults jobs, not about what is right for kids. So, our initiatives really have focused on doing what is right for all children and for over 50 years, we have invested over 1 trillion at the federal level to try to help narrow the achievement gap between those at the upper end of the socioeconomic section and those at the lower in. Over 50 years and 1 trillion, that gap has not narrowed at all. We have got to do Something Different and we have to embrace the idea that change is possible and change has to happen for the kids who are getting left behind. You have been a big believer in moving authorities to state and local levels. There are a number of conservatives who particularly at the time the department of education was founded opposed it. Still those who think that should be abolished. How do you respond to that sentiment among conservatives today . I have said before, i will say again, i would be happy to work myself out of a job. I do think that since the department was originally founded and its original mandate, it has had a lot of mission creeps. We are working on rolling back a lot of the overreach and really trying to diminish the footprint to the extent we can. Congress on the other hand, keeps wanting to continue to expand it. So, it is a pushpole. We are doing everything we can to really pull back and respect the role that states and frankly local communities and parents have in their role in education. I congratulate you on that. You have been a real hero having impact in that direction as secretary. If i could change direction a little, it is fun for american studies, we are very committed to bringing in people to washington so they can learn about American Government and our founding principles, the constitution, they can go visit the monuments and go to mount vernon to learn about our Rich Heritage and about our Founding Fathers you see these polls that are alarming about Civic Literacy and young people are coming out of high school and even College Without a good strong understanding of our basic principles. You know what more we could do to help promote Civic Literacy . The most recent statistic i saw suggested that only about 15 of High Schoolers leave high school with a reasonable understanding on civics and american history. I think talking about it, having forums like this and acknowledging the importance of learning, not only where we came from, but the principles on which we were founded, that helps to advance that notion. It would be easy to say, lets establish a curriculum at the federal level and mandate that everybody learn these things but, you might like what this administration advances but you might not like what a subsequent administration decides to advance. I think it is incumbent on states to take a strong stand in favor of and really in helping to encourage the development of robust curriculum at the state and local level but that coupled with continuing to talk about the lack thereof and i attribute to you and programs like the one you are conducting here for continuing to raise this issue and to train up young people in this way. Thank you, it is very rewarding work for us to do. Many of our products are here today. They look pretty good a related issue and perhaps the answer is similar, but a big focus of our work is in Economic Literacy and teaching student players about our Free Enterprise system. A lot of our supporters are alarmed that people seem to favor socialism over capitalism. If you watch the debates this week, it was concerning that support for business, belief in profit and Free Enterprise in certain parts of our leadership in this country has eroded. Other things particularly in terms of teaching Economic Literacy and making sure that young people coming out of School Support our Free Enterprise system . This is a real area of focus for the president and this administration. There is a president ial initiative to try to raise the level of Financial Literacy of Economic Literacy, there is an Interagency Working Group and that is all insider stuff. A lot of what we are doing at the department of education is centered around helping students become more informed consumers, particularly when they are considering taking out Student Loans for further education. A lot of the initiatives that we are undertaking are focused on modernizing our framework there and providing the kind of tools that students need to be able to make those good decisions about programs to pursue and institutions that they might want to attend. I could not agree more that the discussion around socialism versus capitalism is a very alarming one. I owe it to the fact that there is a high level of ignorance. Again, a real tribute to you for continuing to help raise up young people who can go and defend the free market. Since you mentioned Student Loans, the price of Higher Education in our country has been accelerating faster than the rate of inflation at least over the last 10 years. We have a talk now the student debt crisis, are there things that in your leadership in the department can do to help bring down the cost of an education or deal with the Financial Issues of Higher Education in our country . Yes, 1. 6 trillion dollars, this is just simply unbelievable to me that in 42 years, it took 42 years of Student Lending to get to a 500 billion level. Six years from then to go to 1 trillion and five years from 1 trillion to 1 trillion. 5 this one point, 1. 5 trillion. When the government became the sole provider of Student Loans, there has been no governor on the cost of education. It has been, my observation and many others it is an arms race for higher institutions building swimming pools and climbing walls and other lots of infrastructure to try to attract dudens in a declining student population. So, this is not a one faceted issue to deal with. What we are doing from the departments perspective to help students in their decision making, go to the framework on which federal student aid is administered. It has been an antiquated system , one which has been very convoluted and complex for anyone who has participated in it. The average student has 4. 6 different loans and they are working with multiple providers. We are moving, we call it the nexgen initiative. We are moving from this very convoluted, confusing platform to one which will be single facing, very simple platform for students to be able to navigate in their Student Lending process. And, when which will keep them very informed on what they are actually taking on. So the annual promissory note which they will sign instead of every 10 years, and they will know when they draw down more loans what the implications are for the longerterm. We are also going to be providing information at the Program Level by institution about the cost of those programs and what they are likely to earn 2, 5, and 10 years down the road. What they can look forward to earning. I think this will drive a lot more thoughtful decisionmaking on their parts and frankly, on the institutions part to really examine which programs are adding value, ultimately. That kind of transparency i think will be very important. One of our trustee emeritus is daniel at purdue university. We follow what he has done there. It has been a great model. He has done an amazing job. I think this is the eighth or ninth year they have not raised tuition. The quality of the programming at purdue has continued to go up. He continues to innovate in an area that needs a lot more innovation. We are watching him closely. Perhaps that touches on a question i had related to the fact that we have kind of viewed the traditional four year bricks and mortar education is the way to go for a student coming out of high school and even though many take 56 years to finish, or more, do you see in the future there will be more alternatives with online courses with other types of ways that student purse can get a good education and be prepared for careers without going to the traditional four Year Experience . We certainly do. That is another area President Trump has been very vocal and a vociferous supporter of supporting multiple pathways to productive adult lives. We have continued to talk about the alternatives that student purse should have, that they should be made aware of at earlier ages to pursue beyond high school. There are over 8 million jobs unfilled today. Many of those jobs come in fact the highest percentage of them do not require a four year degree. They require some kind of education beyond high school. But, there has been a real mismatch between what students are prepared to do coming out of high school and then what the opportunities are. We are committed to supporting and enhancing those opportunities and to ensuring that all students have the widest range available to them to pursue. It can, for a kindergartner today, they will graduate high school into a world where the predictions are 85 of the jobs have not yet been invented. So, how can students continue to prepare themselves for that next opportunity and how can education really become a lifelong pursuit that you can enter a formal setting or formal process at some point and then exit it again to a new opportunity. We have got to have a lot more innovation and Higher Education. We are committed to moving the ball down the field in that direction. In fact, again, to the extent the department can take initiation on this, we have just gone through and it is a very insider thing, but a whole rulemaking process on which consensus was reached which is a big deal, around reforming accreditation and more definition around Distance Learning and the opportunities there. We believe this will help take a giant step to allow for a lot more innovation. We hope more providers are going to see that opportunity and come in and help provide those innovative opportunities. That is great. I think higher ed has been an area that does not see a lot of innovation over the centuries, even and can be really useful, especially in terms of the cost issues that we are facing. One of the concerns of a lot of people in this room and of mine is, the data that shows many of our college and universities, most in fact, are not places of intellectual diversity. You see these surveys that say 90 95 of professors are registered democrat or self identify as liberal. There have been conferences held recently to try to look at, bringing together left and right who believe in intellectual diversity to try to tackle that issue. Is there anything you can do in your position or you can recommend in terms of trying to make the university a less lonely place for a conservative professor or a conservative student . This is a really big issue across the country. The whole issue of the Free Exchange of ideas and free speech, where we are today on way too many campuses is just holy on american. It is interesting to note that the loudest voices are most often the ones who are intolerant of ideas not their own. Just know this administration has your back. Of course the president issued his executive order on free speech we are committed to promoting and protecting that opportunity on every single campus and, i encourage all the students here to make sure they feel comfortable to raise voices and let your perspectives and opinions be known. This is not an issue that will be solved with a flip of a lightswitch. It will be solved when all of us collectively say we have got to have discourse and exchange of ideas. Online, cspan is your unfiltered view of government, so you can make up your own mind, brought to you as a Public Service by your cable or satellite provider. A discussion now on how to preserve and rebuild black communities. The institute of the black world 21st century hosted a National Town hall meeting in newark, new jersey. Speakers included newarks mayor as well as economist julianne malveaux, Mark Thompson moderated the discussion. Its not by accident, we are here because at the state of the black world conference, we came deliberately to put a focus on newark. A focus on newark because we believe in whats happening in newark, a focus in newark because of the history of struggle here, protracted struggle, rebellion, resistance, triumph, tragedy, and moving forward, and the eventual ascension to the office of mayor of roz j. Baraka. Give it up. [ cheers and applause ] but its not just about him and i will never forget, i was struck by his slogan, hit me. He said when i become mayor, we become mayor. Right. And what that said was this is ujima, collective work and responsibility, and so there are policies being elam naboratedel. Last year we talked about a marshal plan becauses called for a marshal plan
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