With election season very much upon us, a question is on the minds of higher education leaders. If former Vice President Joe Biden wins the presidency, who would he choose for secretary of education?
Last year, Biden promised his pick would be an educator.
“First thing, as president of United States – not a joke – first thing I will do is make sure that the secretary of education is not Betsy DeVos,” he said at a National Education Association forum for presidential candidates. “It is a teacher. A teacher. Promise.”
As the election draws closer, speaking with education scholars about Biden’s possible picks feels a lot like playing fantasy football. Dr. James Earl Davis, the Bernard C. Watson Chair in Urban Education and professor of higher education at Temple University, even broke down his list of hopefuls into seven different categories: experienced policy leaders, “new kids on the block,” legislators, academic leaders, philanthropists, progressive policy thought leaders and more.
Suffice to say, there are a lot of names floating around the higher education world. To list a small fraction of potential front-runners: former U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr., now the president and CEO of the Education Trust, and former U.S. Assistant Deputy Secretary of Education Jim Shelton are contenders. Among members of Congress, Rep. Alma Adams, who leads the Bipartisan Historically Black Colleges and Universities Caucus, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Joyce Beatty and Rep. Frederica Wilson are on scholars’ minds.
Among higher education leaders, the possibilities are numerous, like Dr. Walter M. Kimbrough, president of Dillard University; Dr. Michael J. Sorrell, president of Paul Quinn College; Trinity Washington University President Patricia McGuire; Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig, dean of University of Kentucky’s College of Education; Dr. Mildred García, president of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities; Dr. Kim Hunter Reed, Louisiana’s commissioner of higher education, among many others. Dr. Linda Darling Hammond, president and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute, seems to be a crowd favorite.
The stakes are high. Historically, the secretary of education hasn’t always been the department’s main policy wonk – that’s where other roles like the deputy secretary come in – but “it’s a signal of the president’s priorities,” Davis said. “With this one strike, with this one appointment, the administration signals or indicates their policy disposition and their values.”
