Editor’s Note: The following article was originally published in the National Association of Scholars’s weekly CounterCurrent newsletter on August 11, 2026. My colleague, Kali Jerrard, does an excellent job each week analyzing the latest developments in higher education, and I’m happy to crosspost her work here. To subscribe to CounterCurrent or browse past editions, visit the National Association of Scholars’s CounterCurrent archive.

The Department of Education (ED) is trying a new tactic to encourage colleges and universities to reform.

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon issued a letter on August 3 directed at university presidents and governing boards, “urging them to reaffirm higher education’s foundational commitments to academic excellence, pathbreaking research, and national service.” This is the latest effort by the Trump administration’s ED to help restore public trust in American higher education.

In her letter, Secretary McMahon asks colleges and universities to address seven questions by the end of this year, detailing plans to achieve these reforms. Then, she asks the institutions to publish their responses prominently on their websites. The topics in the letter have already been subjects of debate among education leaders and even at some universities, which might make addressing the questions easier. National Association of Scholars President Peter W. Wood summarizes the key points of the questions as follows:

1. Ensuring transparency in college admissions
2. Ensuring free exchange of ideas
3. Bringing intellectual pluralism to all faculty hiring
4. Making college affordable
5. Maintaining academic rigor in the age of AI
6. Protecting academic programs from foreign influence
7. Protecting America’s security

Wood further notes that this letter is very straightforward and “ought not to be controversial.” But when does anything “straightforward” remain unfettered by controversy in higher education?

A year ago, the Trump administration attempted to encourage reform at nine universities through its proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” Compared with this latest letter, the Compact carried incentives for institutions that signed and consequences for those that did not. Institutions that agreed to sign the Compact would have received priority in federal funding, while institutions that refused to sign were threatened with penalties. Ultimately, the Compact failed to extract reform, but it did begin a debate that has led to some public self-reflection within a few institutions.

The Trump administration has faced difficulty in reforming higher education as it set out to do at the start of 2025. Wood explains that the Compact was phase two of administration reform efforts, and the slew of Executive Orders (EOs) on higher education were phase one. At this point, many of the EOs issued by the administration have been stonewalled by institutions themselves or by the courts.

With phases one and two seeing minimal returns at this point, we now have phase three in the form of last week’s letter. “Secretary McMahon’s letter inaugurates phase three of the Trump administration’s campaign to reform higher education. What’s different this time?” Wood ponders. “Tone, timing, and circumstance,” he concludes. Wood’s thoughts on tone and timing can be found in his article, but his diagnosis of “circumstance” being ripe for change is unique. Whether higher education continues to dance around reform or not, one thing is certain: American higher education has entered an era of decline. Wood expounds,

The Secretary’s letter alludes to matters that everyone in higher education knows about but many have attempted to avoid. Avoidance isn’t working. The long-anticipated ‘demographic cliff’ has arrived. Fewer domestic students will be attending college. International student enrollment has declined and will in all likelihood decline further. AI is changing the calculations of students on whether to attend college and, if so, what to study. Institutional finances are, in many cases, perilous. Many small colleges have permanently closed or merged. Many large universities have laid off faculty members and eliminated whole academic programs. And as the Secretary’s letter underscores, public trust in American higher education has fallen precipitously. 

At this point, colleges and universities have done little to address the coming crisis, instead paying lip service to reform efforts and clinging to radical ideology like a toxic ex. We can hope that higher education can get its ducks in a row before it is too late.

Back to the letter: since its publication, Secretary McMahon’s letter has drawn both applause and criticism.

The letter praises Yale, Vanderbilt, and Washington Universities for their recognition of, and work to address, issues plaguing higher education. So, some are hopeful that this letter might bring colleges and universities into accord with the Trump administration’s reform efforts. With no threat of consequences should colleges and universities not address the seven questions and publish their responses, it comes across as “a tentative handshake,” President of the American Council on Education Ted Mitchell told the New York Times. At the bare minimum, many legal experts are advising institutions to find some way to respond, if at least to save face and show Americans that they take the loss of public trust seriously.

However, some find the ambiguity of the letter to be problematic, like Macalester College President Emeritus Brian Rosenberg, who claims, “The letter is not a genuine attempt to improve higher education, but a new strategy to further the goals of an administration that knows little and cares less about what colleges and universities actually do. It is a threat packaged as a gift …” The letter differs from the Compact “only in the sense that it attempts to achieve through subtlety what it failed to accomplish through direct assault.”

Time will tell whether this letter achieves what the Compact did not, becomes a talking point in the Trump administration’s reform efforts without actually achieving much, or fades away completely.

The letter does not say what will happen to colleges and universities if they do not comply by the end of the year. But regardless of the letter, institutions need to show more effort and enact common-sense reforms or risk terminal decline. As Wood says, “the boards of trustees and college presidents will have to make their best efforts to see if their particular institutions will be among those that survive the coming dis-establishment of college as a safe and mature part of the American scene.” Secretary McMahon’s questions are a great place for colleges and universities to start answering, post haste.

And for other recommended reading this week, be sure to read Peter W. Wood’s article “Jason Arday and the Dukes and Dauphins of DEI” at the Spectator, and “Why I Quit the Tenure Track” by Tyler Austin Harper at the Atlantic.