Once a sleepy policy area on the national scale, higher education is now a central issue making headlines in the overall political discourse.
Believe it or not, the education policy divides between mainstream Democrats and Republicans used to be trivial. For example, 10 years ago, Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) proposal to lower student loan interest rates to 3.9 percent seemed radical. It was the sort of thing that fueled angst among observers on the right, and failed to generate consensus support on the left.
When Mitt Romney ran against then-President Obama in 2012, both pledged to maintain funding for Pell Grants to support access to higher education, with few other substantial differences in their platforms. The range of arguments considered acceptable in mainstream debate, sometimes called the Overton window, was quite narrow.
