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Rep. Virginia A. Foxx, a North Carolina Republican who just won election to her seventh term in Congress, was named on Friday as the new chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, the main policy-making panel for higher education in the chamber.

Ms. Foxx, who has led the panel’s higher-education subcommittee since 2010, will take over the committee’s leadership in January, when the 115th Congress convenes, a session that may see major changes in higher-education policy. She will succeed Rep. John P. Kline Jr. of Minnesota, who is retiring.

In a recent interview with The Chronicle, Ms. Foxx said her goal was to work with the Trump administration to limit federal involvement in higher education, including by cutting federal spending, and to “stop the executive branch from writing regulations that take over the role of Congress.”

Ms. Foxx grew up poor and credits education for her success. She was elected to Congress in 2004 after spending 10 years in the North Carolina Senate and several years as a professor and an administrator at several North Carolina colleges, including Appalachian State University, Caldwell Community College, and Mayland Community College, where she became president in 1987.

She is known for her support of community colleges as well as for-profit colleges, and for her opposition to the creation of a unit-record system for tracking individual students’ educational progress. She also has a reputation for making controversial comments. She once said Americans had more to fear from a health-care overhaul than terrorism.

http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/virginia-foxx-is-house-gops-choice-to-lead-education-committee/115890