Mr. Professor goes to Washington: Education interest group lobbying in Congress, 1998-2017

• In Event: The Clash of Honest Ethics and Corporate Greed in Higher Education Lobbying

Abstract

Christopher R. Marsicano, Visiting Assistant Professor of Educational Studies at Davidson College.
Christopher Brooks, Beginning an Educational Policy Ph.D. Program at UNC-Chapel Hill, Fall He studies issues related to higher education policy and finance, public opinion surrounding postsecondary institutions, and interest group political action in higher education. Marsicano also formerly worked for Duke University’s Office of Federal Relations and the New America Foundation in Washington, DC. Christopher Brooks will begin a Ph.D. in Education Policy at UNC-Chapel Hill in Fall 2019. ASHE 2019 will be the fifth participation in the ASHE Annual Conference for Marsicano and first for Brooks.

The paper they plan to present uses a unique panel dataset to chronicle the expenditure patterns related to Congressional lobbying among higher education interest groups over the past two decades. The authors find that more higher education institutions lobby than K-12 institutions and that higher education institutions spend over two-thirds of the total amount of money spent lobbying Congress by education-related interest groups. While popular opinion suggests that for-profit entities like the Apollo Group are now-defunct Corinthian Colleges are the biggest spenders in higher education lobbying, the paper shows that the vast majority of higher education lobbying is undertaken by not-for-profit and public institutions. This paper reimagines higher education scholarship by drawing attention to higher education lobbying as a major political function of colleges and universities.

Author

• Christopher R. Marsicano, Davidson College