How to Destroy American Higher Education
Decades of Neglect Give Way to Aggressive Animosity
It’s not news that American higher education has faced numerous challenges over recent decades. Some of these, like shifting demographics, are hard to address because the numbers are what they are. Others, like attacks on DEI, are hard to address because no one knows quite what the critics want. Still others, like concerns about trans athletes, take individual instances and blow them out of proportion. Then there are the attacks on faculty governance, whether through limitations or elimination of tenure. Additionally, governments at state and federal levels are interfering in institutional management through attacks on presidents or elimination of courses/programs deemed “offensive”. And, of course, there are the ongoing difficulties of higher education finance, especially as costs continue to rise while enrollments are stable or falling and there are natural limits on tuition increases.
While these challenges have been felt by all parts of higher education, I’m going to particularly focus on four-year public universities. Community colleges have their own unique challenges as do four year non-profits like Christian universities. For-profit institutions are an entirely different kettle of fish and have actually contributed to higher ed challenges.
Many factors brought us to the current state of crisis. I’m going to look at the impact of the media, the states, and the federal government.
The Media:
Over recent decades, the media has helped foster a distorted view of US higher education. For one thing, they seem absolutely fascinated by the handful of elite schools, even though these schools enroll a small minority of today’s college students. Factors that are unique to them given their endowments and selectivity (both very high) are taken as present in all of higher ed. It has been rare indeed to find a news story that understands the nature of college finance, focusing instead on sticker-price tuition over time. It was rarer still to find stories disaggregating the data on student debt and thereby failing to recognize the disproportionate impact of graduate and professional education and for-profit institutions on average student debt.
Then there is the cottage industry within right-wing media that regularly attacks higher education. These polemical views from figures including Charlie Kirk, Chris Rufo, Jordan Peterson, Dinesh D’Souza, and others delight in marginalizing higher education, often by cherry-picking an isolated occurrence and painting it as an everyday event in campuses across the country.
The impact of these media patterns show up in public opinion data. A recent Gallup survey found that the percentage of respondents with high levels of confidence in higher ed had fallen from 57% to 36%. More significantly, the percentage among Republicans fell from 56% to 20%. Which, in turn, feeds the anti-higher ed stories covered in the media.
The States:
K-12 education is the responsibility of states and takes up a large percentage of their budget. In many states, providing this support is a requirement of the state constitution as is a balanced budget. Funding for higher education, on the other hand, is generally a discretionary expenditure. The Bipartisan Policy Center provided an analysis of the relationship between state expenditure per FTE and tuition per FTE between 1997 and 2022.
In the wake of the Great Recession, the amount of educational funding in 2012 was 30% less than it was in 1997. While funding improved by 2022, it was still behind 2001 levels. Tuition increased significantly over the analysis. The focus on rising tuition (and room and board) has not onluy fed the negative attitudes toward higher education but has also provided cover for lots of intrustive policy iniatives — as state and federal levels — offered under the auspices of “reducing costs”, although the linkage between policy and costs remains vague.
In recent years, (mostly conservative) states have infused political orientation into higher education. This is pretty ironic, given that non-profit institutions of higher education are expected to refrain from political advocacy. But states like Florida, Virginia, Texas, and others have had governors place partisans on the trustees of public institutions.
These trustees, reflecting the policies of their governors, have taken action to force out the president of the University of Virginia (with help from the Trump administration) and block the appointment of the president of the University of Florida (who once said nice things about diversity initiatives.
States like Texas and Florida have removed undocumented students from eligibility for in-state tuition, in spite of longstanding practice. This will block many students from attending college at all.
They have also attacked curricula. Florida passed a law limiting divisive issues in general education courses. Indiana passed a law limiting “divisve concepts” in support of “intellectual diversity” in 2024. This year, they passed a law limiting small programs1, that resulted in state institutions like Indiana University to voluntarily phase out nearly 20% of their academic programs.
Last week, Texas governor Abbott signed legislation giving institutional governing boards control over the faculty senates at their universities. While shared governance has been diminishing over the last twenty years, this is an ominous step.
The Federal Government
The Trump Administration has poured accelerants on these existing trends. Early executive orders take the Supreme Court’s 2023 affirmative action decision to absurd levels. Not satisfied to set aside diversity considerations in admission (what the case was about), they have broadened it to include any program that treats some subgroups differently from others. They have used similarly flawed logic to block federal research grants to institutions, even though the grants had already been awarded.
As Inside Higher Ed reported this morning, the administration is using civil rights law to punish institutions it deems out of step. And rather than following prior practice of following up on existing complaints through a system of due process, they seem to be declaring the institutions guilty and demanding compliance to avoid punishment.
In addition to encouraging states to eliminate in-state tuition for undocumented students, the administration has made a significant push against international students. Some of these are on ideological grounds, because the student purportedly held positions opposed to US policy (as imagined by Secretary of State Rubio). There has also been heightened scrutiny of international student visas (although that has toned down from the initial moves this past spring).
Then there are the restrictions against transgender athletes.2 Not satisfied to set forth a new policy going forward (which is what executive orders do), they have mandated retroactive implementation, requiring the University of Pennsylvania to rescind records won by a transgender swimmer in 2022.
The new One Big Beautiful Bill Act will also have impacts on higher education, although thankfully not as much so as the earlier versions. Inside Higher Ed provided this summary.
It adds an earnings test to make sure programs provide return on investment, caps grad school loans and parent Plus loans, and makes adjustments to income-based repayment plans.
Potential Impacts
If I put all of these factors together, it’s quite likely that all sectors of higher education are in for a very difficult few years. The more that states take adversarial views toward higher education, the harder it will be to recruit faculty who will invest in an institution over years. Decreased supports for grant funded research combined with limitations on international students and limits on graduate loans will negatively impact masters and doctoral programs, making them more likely to trigger state minimum enrollments. Institutions will adjust their curricula to feature high ROI programs, leaving those interested in other programs out in the cold. Anti-diversity efforts will negatively impact retention rates for minority populations and first generation students, increasing pressure on new enrollment.
The vast majority of institutions lack the kinds of financial backstops of the highly endowed elite institutions. Disruptions to their enrollments due to lessened grad enrollments, loss of undocumented students, fewer international students (who pay full freight), threats to grant funding, and potential intervention by the Trump administration will have significant impacts on the university’s financial health.
If one set out to destroy higher education in America, this seems to be the path. To borrow the tree metaphor, the best time to organize against these initiatives was decades ago. The next best time is now.
This is similar to the process many institutions have pursued as part of “program prioritization” but this throws the power of the state behind the effort.
Technically, against transgender women. I’ve never heard anyone complaining about a transgender man competing on a men’s team.
The academy has morphed into an archipelago of endowment funded feifdoms that still demand Federal and State subsidies. It is an untenable model. Blaming the decline in quality of education and research on Orange Man ignores the facts of the decline starting long before 2016.
A few anecdotal points of positivity: First gen, lower-income, female and non-white students seem not to be as discouraged as middlish class white males about college. Current political (and other) disruptions can shake up the large number of mediocre programs, faculty and administrators at all kinds of colleges; neo-liberal, I know, but one can turn into a better institution and appeal to prospective students, without giving up your liberal arts, critical soul (you just keep it below the surface). Finally, older alumni, even from modest institutions, are flush with $$$ (their liberal arts education + a more democratic economy in the past) and can help immensely ("estate planning") with investments in scholarships and innovative programs. This moment of change is both ignorant/unfair/ideological but with some positive, constructive ways forward.