At a House Education & Workforce Committee hearing last week, Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) questioned Education Secretary Linda McMahon about degrees offered by colleges and universities.
00:00I now turn and recognize the long-suffering, ever-patient gentleman from Florida, Mr. Fine.
00:08Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You can see my fidgeting here.
00:12I guess it's new guy, itis, having to listen to a lot of these questions.
00:16Secretary McMahon, thank you for being here. It's a privilege to be able to ask you questions.
00:20I do want to save you one follow-up from the meeting.
00:23You don't have to meet with your accountant.
00:25The incremental tax benefit to you will be zero because we're not lowering any rates.
00:29So it will be none. You will continue to pay what you have been paid.
00:32I don't know why people continue to lie about that.
00:35But I want to ask you about something different.
00:38In the world that we live in today, Jews are scared.
00:41And I speak to you not just as a congressman but as a father of two Jewish boys.
00:44They are 17 and they are 13 years old.
00:47I also speak to you as an alum of Harvard.
00:49And I've got to go back and check the data that said in the 90s one in three professors were conservative,
00:54because I certainly didn't see them anywhere when I was there.
00:58But I will tell you as a Jewish conservative at Harvard in the 90s, despite the fact they tried to kick me out twice,
01:04I never felt unsafe as a Jewish student. Never once.
01:09Sometimes felt persecuted because of my political views, but never ever, not once in four years, six years actually,
01:14because I went there twice, did I ever feel unsafe.
01:17But students do now. And I wear this kippah now, it's a new habit of mine, at my son's request,
01:26because of all the students who don't feel safe wearing theirs.
01:30And with my 17 year old, when he was born, actually 17 years ago, I had a dream that he would follow me to where I went to school.
01:38And now we're in the next few weeks where it's time for him to start thinking about where he's going to apply to college.
01:43And I don't know that I even think he should go to college at all in the days that we live in, in the days that we live in.
01:48So my question to you is this, given that Jews are scared, there are things that we can do on our college campuses.
01:54And I thank you for what you are doing.
01:57But I believe that a lot of this problem is coming from foreign influence.
02:01That our universities are taking money from countries that do not share our values,
02:08and do not like our politics, and do not like our people.
02:11And those dollars come at a price.
02:14What they do is they don't just give a donation, they say, hey, we're going to endow a school.
02:18We're going to endow a professorship.
02:20We want you to take our students, and from other countries.
02:23And what are things that we can do to work together so that countries like China or Qatar,
02:29which are clearly not looking out for the interests of Americans,
02:33that we can get that under control in our higher education system?
02:37Well, thank you for that.
02:38And I'm glad that you felt safe, because there are clearly so many students now who do not feel safe.
02:45And I have talked to them.
02:46And they've told me no child going to college or any school today should feel unsafe in the state.
02:52They should feel unsafe in the environment of their education.
02:56So I regret that.
02:57But what we are actually doing is we've launched, we've reaffirmed the Section 117 compliance from universities.
03:06They must tell us.
03:08They're already required to report this, and they're not.
03:11So we're requiring them to report donors' amounts.
03:15Because we want to make sure there's not foreign influence with that.
03:19The Deterrent Act is for a purpose.
03:22That's really what we are supporting.
03:24Well, I'd like to work with you, because even if you look at places like Columbia,
03:28it's generally not the physics department where we see the problems.
03:33It's not generally in what I'll call real degrees.
03:36It's in this creation of what I'll call pre-Starbucks employment degrees,
03:41like gender studies and these other silly things where you can't actually get a job,
03:46which are really nothing more than factories to create people to go and protest, where we have these things.
03:51And so I'd like to work with you on that.
03:53And I also want to ask you this.
03:55We subsidize these degrees.
03:57The idea that these schools walk around and say they're private really is false,
04:00because they couldn't operate without the beneficiary of the United States government.
04:04So does it make sense perhaps for us to look at the ideas of saying if you want to get a student loan to go to the college in the United States,
04:11you've got to go get a degree in something where you actually might be able to do something useful when you're done with it?
04:17Well, I think that's one of the things when I was discussing before that I would like to see colleges and universities have more skin in the game.
04:23Because if they have more skin in the game, I think that they're going to make sure that the subjects and the degrees that they are offering are going to provide diplomas and pathways to employment,
04:36in which those students are going to be able to repay their loans, because if they're on the hook for part of that money,
04:42they're not going to want to have to pay it if that student is not successful.
04:45Well, I just want to close by thanking you and President Trump for what you're doing, because you are fighting a fight.
04:51One of the backlogs that I didn't hear the Democrats ask about are all the investigations of anti-Semitism on college campuses,
04:57which conveniently weren't worked on when he was president.
05:00And thank you for dealing with that backlog.
05:02But know that I'm prepared to work with you and the president on any of these issues whenever you need it.
05:06And thank you for being here today. I yield that.
