Rep. Tim Walberg, a Republican from Michigan, has been tapped to chair the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
“We have significant work ahead of us, from enshrining protections for parents to continuing to protect Jewish students on college campuses to rights providing more opportunity and flexibility to American workers,” Walberg said in a statement Thursday. “Freedom, opportunity, and fairness will guide our work as we deliver results for America.”
His statement suggests that at least one of his higher education priorities will mirror that of the committee’s outgoing leader, Rep. Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina. For over a year, Foxx and other committee Republicans have investigated colleges’ response to campus unrest following the October 2023 outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.
Most recently, they released a scathing 325-page report that accused 11 high-profile colleges of failing to protect Jewish students from discrimination and called for a review of their federal funding.
Foxx praised Walberg’s selection in a statement Thursday.
“He’s been a collaborative, effective, and hardworking member of the Committee for 16 years, and I am excited to see him step into this leadership role,” Foxx said. “I have no doubt that he’ll hit the ground running and will work tirelessly to ensure students have the opportunity to learn and workers have the ability to succeed.”
Walberg’s recent press interviews provide clues about his other higher education priorities. In October, he told Politico that he would use the top leadership position to focus on college affordability, increase apprenticeships and internships, and make Pell Grants available for short-term workforce training programs.
The final initiative shows growing bipartisan momentum.
A group of bipartisan lawmakers, including Foxx and Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat and ranking member on the education committee, introduced a bill earlier this month that would make Pell Grant programs available for workforce training in 2025 and initially fund them with $40 million.
In an interview earlier this month with Roll Call, Walberg similarly said he would focus on providing alternatives to college.
“We’ve wrung our hands for too long about boys not going on to college,’’ Walberg told the publication. “There are probably several reasons for that, but we also know that there are plenty of boys — and girls — who, given the opportunity to see what’s out there, can make [other] choices.”
The House Republican Steering Committee voted to pick Walberg as the House’s education chair over Utah Republican Rep. Burgess Owens after both lawmakers presented before its members, Politico reported.
Owens currently chairs the panel’s subcommittee on higher education and workforce development. He is a fierce critic of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives on college campuses. Ahead of a hearing earlier this year on the subject, Owens said in a statement that, “We cannot let DEI sabotage our country’s fundamental values of hard work and meritocracy.”
He also introduced legislation in May 2023 that would prohibit accreditors from requiring colleges to adhere to DEI standards.
Walberg’s selection as the House panel’s top leader comes two years after he lost out on the role to Foxx, who has chaired the committee twice and served as the Republicans’ ranking member between 2019 and 2022. At the time, the Steering Committee granted her a waiver to exceed the position’s term limits.
The top education leadership position in the Senate — chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee — will go to Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana. Cassidy was named the Senate panel’s chair in November.
Cassidy has been a vocal critic of the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness efforts, including by spearheading a resolution to stop President Joe Biden’s original debt relief plan. That plan, which would have provided up to $20,000 in loan forgiveness per borrower, was ultimately struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
