Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the National Association of Scholars on November 4, 2024, and is crossposted here with permission.
Higher education has lurched from crisis to crisis over the past five years. The COVID-19 pandemic kept many would-be students from attending college while seriously straining university budgets. Colleges continue to face demographic declines, with one million fewer students attending college today compared to 2019. Tuition continues to price out otherwise worthy students, while uncontrolled student aid props up institutions that otherwise would have made drastic cuts to departments and administrators. Small higher education institutions have been dealt a heavy blow, with the number of announced mergers and closures snowballing to 72 in four years.
This past year, colleges and universities have had a crisis of confidence. Many institutions had to choose between the lawlessness encouraged by years of leftist indoctrination and their mission to educate students. Anti-Semitism is on the rise. And institutions of higher education have continued to lose public support. A July 2024 survey from Gallup revealed that those who have a “great deal or quite a lot” of confidence in higher education have dropped from 57 percent in 2015 to 36 percent, while those with “very little to no confidence” in higher education has increased from 10 percent in 2015 to 32 percent.
Many of these crises are self-inflicted. In pursuit of “diversity,” colleges and universities buried intellectual freedom under the weight of homogeneity and a new campus orthodoxy. Colleges and universities have actively weeded out professors who say they will “treat students equally” by using “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) statements in hiring. The continued use of racial preferences, even after Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023) banned the practice, has left many non-minority students wondering why they should attend an institution that actively discriminates against them. Colleges have hypocritically applied campus policies, supporting the speech and protest of students who fall in line with leftist orthodoxies while suppressing and censoring conservatives. Much of the research produced by colleges and universities is irreproducible and yet creates the foundation for thousands of regulations, causing irreconcilable damage and further eroding public trust in our institutions.
These problems are evidence of the rot in higher education and the need for reform. Thankfully, today you have the opportunity to voice your opinion with the ballot box.
Today, many Americans are heading to the polls to vote for our next President and administration. We Americans will also decide which party will control both houses of Congress. There have been several successes over the last few years, thanks primarily to the actions of courts and state legislatures. Much more is to be done to reform higher education so that it better serves Americans. The National Association of Scholars has spent considerable time thinking about the various reforms we’d like to see. With that in mind, the next President—and Congress—should:
- Address administrative bloat and reform student aid. Americans have had their education handicapped by ever-growing college administrators; more administrators beget higher tuition and even more student loans. This cycle must stop. The next President should push through reforms requiring a reduction in higher education administrators. Such reform could occur by linking Title IV fund eligibility to administrative and tuition reductions. He or she should also force colleges and universities to have skin in the game. The future President could do so by supporting legislation and regulations permitting student loan borrowers to discharge student loans in bankruptcy and require institutions they attended to accept 50 percent of the student’s outstanding loan responsibility.
- Protect the rights of students and professors. The next President should return to the previous Title IX reforms propagated by Betsy DeVos that ensured due process for students and professors accused of sexual misconduct. Any future reform should also ensure that “sex” is defined by biology, not gender identity. Better yet, the next president should strip Title IX of all but its original intent: protecting students from discrimination based on sex. Congress should strengthen Title I protections for students’ intellectual freedom. This could include tying public funds to intellectual freedom protections on campus, therefore encouraging colleges to be proactive in promoting and protecting speech while also de-politicizing campus life.
- Protect and promote America’s national interest through colleges and universities. Many universities turn a blind eye to, or actively engage in, activities benefiting malign states. This takes various forms, such as technology theft and transfer, espionage, and propaganda. American higher education should limit its foreign dependence on foreign student tuition and foreign gifts. The next President should enforce Section 117 and strengthen foreign gift transparency. He or she should further discourage academic multinational partnerships with undemocratic countries and prevent the use of area studies as an outlet for anti-American propaganda. Moreover, strong civics education in K-12 and higher education could further erode these malign actors.
- Protect and promote equality in education. Higher education has grown ever closer to diversity, equity, and inclusion. This ideology politicizes campus life and treats students unfairly while forgoing the hiring of faculty that believe in treating students fairly versus equitably. The next American President should encourage Congress and executive agencies to prohibit any school requiring DEI statements or hosting DEI offices from obtaining public funds through grants or student aid.
These are only a few of our recommendations for the next administration—you can find all of our proposals on our policy page. Our sincere hope is for higher education to better serve students. To accomplish this, we’ll need your help. The victories we’ve celebrated and the rot we’ve exposed have all been thanks to your support, advocacy, tip-offs, and contributions. The next President—and Congress—should be reminded of the great need to reform higher education.
We look forward to advancing our mission, regardless of who is elected today.
Photo created by Chance Layton, original photos of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris by Gage Skidmore on Flickr
