article_snippet: Instead, lawmakers chose to rely on state governments and religious denominations to build and finance new colleges and universities.
article_snippet: To see how, it helps to understand the three ways the federal government currently supports higher education.
article_snippet: Two of the three ways the federal government currently supports higher education are well known.
article_snippet: First, the Defense Department, National Institutes of Health, and other federal agencies spend hundreds of billions of dollars financing university-based research, contributing to countless scientific breakthroughs and commercial innovations.
article_snippet: Second, the U.S. Department of Education provides $150 billion annually in grants and loans to help students pay for college.
article_snippet: As tuitions rise and states continue to slash funding for public universities (Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker recently proposed $300 million in new cuts), the federal government has become the college financier of last resort.
article_snippet: But there is a third essential federal role in higher education that is far less well known.
article_snippet: In many ways, it's the most important of them all, and the key to creating a 21st Century National University.
article_snippet: In addition to funding colleges, the federal government approves colleges.
article_snippet: But in order to make a college eligible for federal money, accreditors must first be approved by the federal government.
article_snippet: Without that approval and the money that goes along with it, both colleges and accreditors would immediately close up shop.
article_snippet: In other words, Uncle Sam ultimately decides who gets to be an American college and grant college degrees.
article_snippet: In order to build a 21st Century National University, the federal government has to do is something very simple: Approve the federal government.
article_snippet: That's where the federal government comes in.
article_snippet: The federal government's higher education approval powers are long-established.