Here’s How Jimmy Carter Changed Higher Education

The Chronicle of Higher Education

Kelly Field

December 29, 2024

Jimmy Carter, who as the 39th president of the United States created the Department of Education, died Sunday. He was 100.

As president, he tackled discrimination in intercollegiate athletics, segregation in the nation’s public colleges, and fraud in student-aid programs. He sought to reduce student-loan defaults, and he oversaw a sharp increase in spending on student aid.

Carter also left a lasting imprint on education policy by expanding federal aid to middle-income students. But his actions also sparked fierce debate over the federal role in education and over who should benefit from federal aid — fights that persist today.

In a statement mourning the death of the former president, U.S. Education Secretary Miguel A. Cardona wrote: “Everything we do here at the Department to raise the bar for America’s students is part of President Jimmy Carter’s lasting legacy.”

Carter attended Georgia Southwestern College and the Georgia Institute of Technology before receiving his B.A. from the U.S. Naval Academy, in 1946. While serving in the Navy, he took courses in reactor technology and nuclear physics at Union College, in New York.

It took Carter almost three years as president to achieve the goal of a free-standing Education Department, partly because he faced pushback from some members of his cabinet and Congress, who didn’t want to give up jurisdiction over education programs then under their purview. (At the time, education was buried in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, with programs scattered across several other agencies.)

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