Christopher F. Rufo, Inez Feltscher Stepman How Trump Can Make Universities Great Again The message he should send to college presidents: reform, or lose funding
https://www.city-journal.org/article/higher-education-trump-reform-universities-funding
Universities occupy a uniquely privileged position in American life. They enjoy tremendous prestige and billions in public subsidies, even as their costs have exploded, saddling the country with $1.7 trillion in outstanding student debt.
Do universities deserve their status? A growing number of Americans don’t think so. Far from delivering on their promises, most universities have devolved into left-wing propaganda factories. Nearly 60 percent of Republicans say that universities have a negative effect on the country, and only one in three independents has “quite a lot” of trust in higher education institutions. The trendlines suggest that the disillusionment has yet to hit bottom.
This is a crisis—and an opportunity. The Trump administration has a once-in-a-generation chance to reform higher education. The president and his prospective education secretary, Linda McMahon, should seize it.
The starting point of any serious higher-education agenda should be to recognize many universities for what they are: ideological centers that have abandoned the pursuit of knowledge for partisan activism. They have not earned their position as acclaimed credentialing institutions; rather, the schools have amassed their wealth and power from generous policy decisions bankrolled by American taxpayers, whom they have repaid mostly with contempt. These schools posture as though their position is untouchable, but their business model is nearly entirely reliant on federal largesse. Demanding that universities behave in a manner worthy of their unique financial and cultural position is long overdue.
But reform will not come easy. The Trump administration must renegotiate the deal between the citizens and the universities, conditioning federal funding on three popular demands: first, that the schools contribute to solving the student-debt crisis; second, that they adhere to the standard of colorblind equality, under both federal civil rights law and the Constitution; and third, that they pursue knowledge rather than ideological activism.
Here is how it can be done.
At the outset, we should acknowledge the dirty secret of higher education: it has become a creature, or, less charitably, a parasite, of the state. It is no stretch to say that the entire business model of higher education is fundamentally dependent on federal money.
First, consider direct grants. Universities collectively receive more than $50 billion in federal grants yearly. One-eighth of Havard’s annual budget—and two-thirds of its research funding—comes directly from the federal government. Likewise, Washington sends $900 million to Yale and $800 million to Columbia each year.
Some of this money goes to noble causes, such as cancer research. But much of it is devoted to ideological drivel, such as the $600,000 sent to Yale to study the “impacts of mobile technology on work, gender gaps, and norms”; $700,000 to the University of Pennsylvania to study how to allocate Covid vaccines on the basis of race; and $4 million to Cornell University to increase “minoritized” faculty in the medical sciences. And at some schools, administrators get the biggest cut, skimming up to 60 percent of grant funding as “indirect” overhead costs, which Congress once capped at a mere 8 percent.
The real boon to universities comes not from direct federal subsidies, however, but from federally backed student loans and other financial-aid programs, which cumulatively add up to another $100 billion a year in subsidized debt. These loan programs, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson decades ago, were intended to ensure that tuition was not prohibitive for aspiring students. In practice, however, they have subsidized runaway tuition costs, while burdening many students, especially poor ones, with debt. Today, students from the lower half of the income scale make up a smaller percentage of today’s university campuses than they did in 1970.
What have universities done with all this cash? They have built glittering new campuses; stocked humanities departments with activists; padded their endowments; and gone on an administrative hiring spree, such that many schools now boast ratios of one non-faculty employee to just four students. (Among these administrative officials are those staffing the DEI bureaucracies, which have expanded their on-campus footprint after the 2020 summer of George Floyd.) The result of all this has been a crushing student debt load, much of it guaranteed by taxpayers and verging on delinquency. Before the Covid pandemic paused debt payments, the Brookings Institution estimated that 40 percent of student loans would be in default by 2023. Students’ financial prospects have hardly improved since.
The Trump administration should act before taxpayers are asked to bail out those who borrowed money for expensive degrees. Instead of this upward redistribution, Congress should send the bill directly to those who have benefited the most from the business model: the universities themselves. The entire loan system should be reformed to ensure that universities have skin in the game and taxpayers are no longer forced to underwrite substandard programs that often fail to graduate students or to provide a worthwhile education.
This will require privatization. Decades ago, William Bennett, secretary of education under Ronald Reagan, offered a hypothesis that multiple in-depth studies have since confirmed: federal financial aid allows colleges and universities to hike tuition. When the government floods the market with loans, colleges can easily spend more and offload the risk to students—and, ultimately, the taxpayer.
Private lenders, by contrast, would assess loans with a rigorous cost-and-return formula. A loan officer at a major bank would easily approve a qualified applicant for, say, an engineering degree from MIT but would likely reject an applicant seeking a gender studies degree from a third-tier university. A bank, unlike the government, would look not only at the value of the institution but also at the student’s proposed course of study—pressuring schools to deliver on both cost and quality.
Other policy options are available. The small tax on university endowments in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, currently 1.4 percent, could be raised to 35 percent, a solution proposed by then-senator J. D. Vance. At a minimum, Trump could use the threat of such a tax as leverage for broader reforms—an Art of the Deal–styletactic that could function similarly as threatened tariffs on various countries (some of which, such as those on Canada and Mexico, the administration has now put into effect).
The point of these proposals isn’t to punish universities but to improve quality and reduce costs.
The second item for the Trump administration is to force universities to wind down discriminatory DEI bureaucracies and to uphold the standard of colorblind equality. These institutions get billions of dollars in government generosity and must comply with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Constitution. The president has already started this process by issuing an executive order directing a review of illegal DEI practices in institutions receiving federal funds, including universities with endowments of more than $1 billion. But much more could be done to force universities into compliance with civil rights law.
For decades, universities have flouted this obligation and structured their admissions, hiring, and promotion policies around discrimination, in the name of “diversity.” But an ostensibly noble cause does not justify lawbreaking. Rather than continue these practices, the administration should enforce the plain language of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Supreme Court’s 2023 Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision, forcing universities to ditch DEI in favor of colorblindness. As Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his Students for Fair Admissions concurrence, “racialism simply cannot be undone by different or more racialism.” The Court has finally held, correctly, that the racially preferential “balancing” done by Harvard and other universities is unconstitutional. And as employers, universities are subject to the even more stringent Title VII standard, which doesn’t admit room for any racial preferences in hiring and firing, and unlike admissions, has never had a special carveout time to practice affirmative action.
The Trump administration has several levers at its disposal to ensure compliance. It can adapt some left-wing tools, such as civil rights investigations and Dear Colleague letters, to force significant changes to university DEI programs. As part of its investigations, the administration could demand internal admissions data, such as students’ SAT scores, GPAs, and class ranks, disaggregated by race, which would almost certainly show continued widespread discrimination against white and Asian applicants at many selective schools and would open the door to further lawsuits. As a senator, J. D. Vance proposed the creation of a “special inspector” to monitor racial discrimination in college admissions, but the tools to execute such monitoring already exist within the federal law-enforcement apparatus. The Republican Congress could provide extra support by bringing college presidents before relevant committees and forcing them to defend their DEI bureaucracies and discriminatory programs.
The administration should also remember that universities are not only in the business of admitting students but are also large employers, subject to non-discrimination laws. Those laws prohibit schools from making hiring and firing decisions based on race. Yet universities have been very open about their racialist hiring practices—using DEI programs, statements, and hiring criteria that favor some races over others.
This, too, can change with appropriate pressure. The Departments of Education and Justice can announce investigations into the discriminatory hiring practices at Ivy League universities, subpoena relevant documents, and make a public case that DEI is incompatible with the law and runs afoul of Trump’s recent executive orders.The administration can follow through by placing noncompliant universities under a federal consent decree, via the DOJ, or, in conjunction with the Secretary of Education, pause or terminate federal funding to schools that fail to adhere to the law.
Third, the Trump administration should use administrative means to curb violent and intimidating forms of campus activism.
In autumn 2023 and spring 2024, universities across the country hosted multiple rounds of illegal protests, encampments, and occupations. The cause du jour was Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and the subsequent war in the Middle East, but the incidents are best understood in broader terms. Campus activists targeted Israel, which, for them, is a stand-in for whiteness, colonization, and the West; October 7 was merely the latest inciting incident for their longstanding hatreds. These activists deploy the same playbook—disruptive protests, tent encampments, deplatforming speakers, intimidating political enemies, destroying property—for whatever cause is in the headlines.
The administration can put an end to the illegal elements of this playbook. As interpreted by the courts, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act requires universities receiving federal funds to ensure that racial harassment does not disrupt anyone from attending school. A demonstrator screaming anti-Semitic epithets is protected by the First Amendment, but if that same protester prevents Jewish students from moving around campus safely or attending classes, he’s on the wrong side of the law. If a university administration is complicit in such activity, it, too, can be held accountable. The Trump White House should thoroughly investigate such demonstrations, and where merited, withdraw funds from schools that have failed to prevent racial harassment of groups that the progressive Left disfavors: white, Jewish, and Asian students, most commonly.
Likewise, the administration can use another overlooked provision of existing law—the Clery Act—to put a price on violent protests and other mob-like behavior on campus. The act requires universities, which often have private police departments, to record and disclose within 48 hours all criminal reports. Every time a university fails to do so, the federal government can assess a penalty of up to about $70,000; given the thousands of ignored incidents of criminal behavior on campuses in recent years, this could multiply into a hefty sum, and force schools to crack down on illegal protest.
Finally, last summer’s encampment protests included many foreign students, who are here by the grace of the American people and do not enjoy the same rights and protections as citizens and permanent residents. The Trump administration would be justified in permanently revoking the student visas of foreign nationals who participated in protests supporting terror organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah. If universities refuse to provide the names of such students, their funding should be cut.
Again, these proposed actions merely require the administration to enforce existing laws with rigor. Universities that fail to comply should have their federal funding and student-loan-program eligibility withdrawn, which would devastate university budgets and ensure that all but the most ideologically captured institutions change course.
Taken together, this agenda would restore, rather than destroy, America’s once-great university system. While we support a reduction in the number of students attending four-year colleges in favor of trade school and apprenticeship programs, the United States certainly needs elite universities. The conservative reform program should not be misconstrued as a campaign against higher education. Conservatives believe in higher ed; we oppose its corruption.
America’s universities should be places where the country’s brightest students pursue truth, engage in debate, prepare for the professions, and learn the duties of citizenship. An increasingly unstable world demands that the United States retain its edge in groundbreaking research and technological development.
In the end, universities are like any other institution: they respond to incentives. We have already seen subtle shifts in policy, including a major accrediting body in California and Hawaii scrubbing DEI from their standards and replacing it with an emphasis on “educational excellence and success.” While these are likely cosmetic gestures, not substantive changes, the actions show how pressure can often be the strongest incentive for reform.
President Trump should present universities with a simple choice: reform, or lose billions in funding. He can back up the ultimatum with every administrative measure at his disposal. With some concerted action, it might yet be possible to shake universities out of their ideological torpor and remind them of their highest purpose: the pursuit of knowledge and the cultivation of democratic citizens.
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