Federal Legislation

The National Association of Scholars upholds the standards of a liberal arts education that fosters intellectual freedom, searches for the truth, and promotes virtuous citizenship.

Federal Legislation

Congress can and should reform higher education and K-12 education to promote intellectual freedom, academic rigor, equal opportunity, affordability—and limit foreign interference, politicization, and administrative bloat. Our policy recommendations focus on reforms to the Higher Education Act, but include stand-alone suggestions for legislation.

General Principles

The policy background and the principles that guide our recommendations for federal legislation.

General Principles

Title IV Federal Funds Eligibility

Reforms to reduce administrative bloat, reduce tuition, focus federal aid on needy colleges, and reduce dependence on adjuncts.

Title IV Federal Funds Eligibility

Federal Student Aid

Reforms to simplify student aid programs, make colleges partially responsibility for student loans, provide a legal framework for income share agreements, require student loan buyback programs, increase student knowledge about college debt, and redirect a portion of student aid disbursements from the federal government to the states.

Federal Student Aid

Rigorous Academic Standards

Reforms to eliminate financial aid for remedial coursework and link Title IV eligibility to academic rigor.

Rigorous Academic Standards

Title IX Due Process Protections

Reforms to link federal student loan eligibility to due process protection and require Title IX responsible employees to have criminal defense experience.

Title IX Due Process Protections

Freedom To Learn

Reforms to protect intellectual freedom, require an Intellectual Freedom Charter, and define sex as biological.

Freedom to Learn

De-Politicizing Campuses

Reforms to make intellectual diversity protection a condition of Title IV eligibility, sunset the diversity bureaucracy, defund irredeemably politicized components of higher education, rescind the service-learning authorization, dedicate civics funding to classroom instruction, make speaker intellectual diversity a condition of Title IV eligibility, and require colleges to disclose their speaker fees and honoraria.

De-politicizing Campuses

America's National Interest

Reforms to limit colleges’ dependence on foreign student enrollment, limit Chinese government influence, mandate transparency about foreign gifts, end international branch campuses in undemocratic countries, reform Title VI area studies grants, forbid sanctuary campuses, and strengthen the U.S. Civics Test administered by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.

America's National Interest

Educational Variety

Reforms to provide equal treatment for for-profit colleges, mandate accreditors to make it easier for new institutions to enter the higher education marketplace, prohibit discrimination against homeschool students, and allow financial aid for dual credit courses.

Educational Variety

Equal Opportunity

Reforms to mandate transparency about university’s discriminatory policies, require assessable discriminatory policies, dismantle neo-segregation, and reframe support for “Minority-Serving Institutions.”

Equal Opportunity

Education Department Procedures

Reforms to depoliticize accreditation, protect religious freedom, and replace “peer review” with “expert review.”

Education Department Procedures

College Board

Reforms to facilitate the ability of alternative assessment providers to compete with the College Board and to require the College Board to cut ties with the Chinese government.

College Board