A Bipartisan Law From 1980 Offers a Blueprint for 2026

Higher ed rarely makes it into stump speeches in midterm campaigns, but this year the price of a degree is tied to voters’ worries about the cost of living. 

The affordability crisis was top of mind for voters in a recent survey by Jobs for the Future. Only 43 percent of voters said they had enough money to enroll in a degree program, and 66 percent said they would be more likely to support a candidate who focused on making education and training more affordable.

In another poll of voters in Kansas, Iowa and Ohio, more than three-quarters opposed the Office of Management and Budget’s proposal to overhaul the grant-approval process.

Voters from both parties want similar things, and though it seems improbable in such a divided political moment, lawmakers have found common ground before. I was reminded of what bipartisanship in Congress looks like when I spoke with Joe Allen, executive director of the Bayh-Dole Coalition, for Inside Higher Ed’s podcast, The Key. The group of research universities, higher ed organizations and innovation businesses champions the Bayh-Dole Act, a law passed in 1980 that grants universities and other federally funded researchers ownership over their discoveries. Allen was a staffer for Senator Birch Bayh, a Democrat from Indiana on the Senate Judiciary Committee, when he partnered with Bob Dole, a Republican senator from Kansas, to create the system to commercialize federally funded research. 

At the time, double-digit inflation and high unemployment weighed on voters while American innovation had stalled and our economic competitors were leading in industries like steel and electronics. “The American public was as angry as they could be, and we said, ‘OK, we don’t agree on everything, but we can’t afford to squander billions of dollars of taxpayer-funded research and just give it away to our foreign competitors,’” Allen said.  

Allen assured me it wasn’t the “kumbaya” moment I imagined. Bayh (who also authored Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972) and Dole were both “pragmatic workhorses” on “rival teams” who were able to find agreement on this one issue in an election year, Allen said: “You respect the people on the other side who play the game right, but you’re still playing for your team.” More importantly for Allen, the act proved that our way of governing can work. “It really does show the American system can operate if you have serious people looking at a serious issue and coming up with something that really is pragmatic, not dogma,” he said.

A more recent example of bipartisan policymaking is Workforce Pell. The education secretary has already approved several training programs for funding eligibility since the initiative launched in July. Yet, while lawmakers could agree on expanding Pell funding to cover workforce development programs, finding money to fill the $11.5 billion shortfall in overall Pell funding has proven more difficult. If Congress fails to allocate more money for the program, the gap could balloon to $132 billion by 2036. It’s unlikely the next Congress will settle on a long-term funding model for Pell Grants, but they will have to agree on how to pay for it in the short term. 

On OMB’s plans specifically, Democrats found allies among moderate Republicans to push back on the proposed changes to the rules governing how federal grants are awarded. Despite the Trump administration’s success in canceling research grants or slow-walking funding out the door with little protest from GOP lawmakers, the White House’s proposal to assert more political control over grant awards may be a step too far. Lawmakers in both parties condemned the plans and, like voters in Kansas, Iowa and Ohio, Allen at the Bayh-Dole Coalition is concerned about how the proposal could impact research breakthroughs. “Our process works. It’s working in the hard, cold light of day under both Republican and Democratic administrations, and if it looks like people are playing political games on either side, that’s when people lose confidence [in the system],” he said. 

Republican Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski broke ranks to vote to delay the OMB changes until mid-December. Depending on which party wins control of the Senate, Democrats may need to find more moderate Republicans to join the fight against the proposed rule.   

Bipartisanship seems quaint in our political times. But as surveys show, party lines disappear for voters on issues like affordable education pathways and politics-free grant funding. Pragmatic bipartisan approaches—like the one Senators Bayh and Dole struck—can address voters’ concerns and produce transformative policies that shape generations of Americans. Lawmakers know what to do, but do they have the political will to do it?