Dive Brief:
- Terry Hartle, one of higher education’s most prolific policy voices, will retire from his senior position at the American Council on Education, the sector’s top lobby, at the end of the year.
- Hartle, senior vice president for government relations and public affairs, has been with ACE for nearly three decades, its president, Ted Mitchell, said in a message to higher ed associations Tuesday.
- After Hartle steps down and the organization names his successor, he will serve as an ACE senior fellow, Mitchell said. A search for his replacement will begin immediately.
Dive Insight:
Hartle made the jump to ACE in 1993 after six years as a high-ranking aide with what was then the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, chaired at the time by the late Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy.
Since then, Hartle devoted more than 25 years to the lobbying group, coordinating efforts to influence Capitol Hill lawmakers on issues ranging from federal student aid to science research.
Mitchell referred to Hartle’s higher ed knowledge as encyclopedic and credited him for “a good bit of what constitutes the current Higher Education Act,” Congress’ primary vehicle for postsecondary education policy.
Hartle more recently helped guide associations’ efforts to secure federal coronavirus aid funding from Congress, which amounted to about $78 billion for institutions and students.
His tenure “is probably longer than Terry might have wanted to stay, but as always Terry put ACE first and led us through the most tumultuous period in the modern history of higher education,” Mitchell said.
Hartle, who is regularly quoted in higher education trade publications, earned a doctorate from George Washington University and a master’s in public administration from Syracuse University.
He is a trustee board member of Smith College, a women’s institution in Massachusetts.
