Reading Project 2025, part 2: changing the military, Homeland Security, diplomacy, and higher education

Posted on July 29, 2024 by Bryan Alexander

How might a likely second Trump administration impact higher education?  How can academics plan for and anticipate that major event, should it occur?

This week we continue our reading of Project 2025, a key document in understanding the near- and medium-term future of American politics.  This is an online, open, and distributed reading and anyone can participate. Here’s a post explaining how it works.  You can find all of our Project 2025 posts here.

Before we start, I wanted to thank John Warner for writing positively about our reading at Inside Higher Ed.  Welcome, new readers!

In today’s post I’ll summarize this week’s reading, which is the section called “The Common Defense” in pages 87-199.  I’ll draw out the bits which bear directly on higher education. Next I’ll add some reflections and then several discussion questions.  At the end I’ll add some more resources.  Please join in with comments below – for examples of that, you can see good comments at the end of our first post.

Summary overview

With this section the book turns to three major government agencies, the Departments of Defense, State, and Homeland Security, with an eye towards overhauling them.

In the first chapter former Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller criticizes the DoD with being too concerned with equity and vaccines. Instead, he wants it to focus on deterring Chinese aggression against Taiwan and other east Asian US allies, above all other potential threats.  Proposals include modernizing and expanding America’s nuclear might, speeding and growing domestic war material production, improving recruitment outcomes, using AI in intelligence gathering, and reforming cyber capabilities in response to the Ukraine war experience.  The Army should grow by 50,000 soldiers and the Navy to beyond 355 ships.  The Space Force should have offensive as well as defensive capabilities.  Irregular warfare should become more important.  Lastly, the US should invest more in homeland and overseas missile defense.

Project 2025 coverThe second chapter in this section concerns the Department of Homeland Security, and the author, Virginia politician Ken Cuccinelli, was once its deputy. He sees the department now as “bloated, bureaucratic, and expensive” and wants to break the whole thing up, distributing its functions to other units while privatizing the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and federal flood insurance.  This chapter fits the Project 2025’s argument by urging more political appointees across the units picking up DHS services, as well as by calling for a stronger crackdown on illegal immigration.  There is a great deal of detail about adjusting multiple agencies’ operations, from retraining certain staff to reporting lines, funding streams, closing units, and altering myriad policies.

The third “Common Defense” chapter, written by Kiron K. Skinner, focuses on the State Department, where Skinner worked during the first Trump administration.  The author envisions a reduced department more closely aligned with a conservative president’s goals.  State should cut back its international agreements and instead refer those to formal, Senate-supervised treaties. (174-5) State should cut back involvement with international organizations which, basically, do not support conservative goals, taking a “tough love” approach. (190-3) Overall, Skinner wants State to also join the immigration crackdown by withholding visas and reducing refugee admissions.

Skinner then gives the reader a global tour of new policies. As per the rest of Project 2025, this chapter wants State to focus on China as the leading global threat to America, yet it also targets Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela (179-183, 185).  Mexico joins that list as a source of drug imports and state collapse. Further south, the chapter calls for a new government to re-source outsourced industries to Latin American, or “Re-hemisphering” them. The United States should expand its African efforts, shifting from humanitarian aid to business development in order to compete with Chinese ambitions.  The Quad (Australia, India, Japan, America) should anchor United States south and east Asian policies.  To the north, Skinner wants to redirect NATO, the US Navy, and Coast Guard to assist in expanding American economic development of the Arctic (188-9).

What does this mean for higher education? While the three “The Common Defense” chapters don’t deeply bear on colleges and universities, there are several touches worth noting.  The discussion on military acquisition improvements wants to spread functions the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) now has to “include accreditation of non-DOD institutions.” (98) This might include civilian institutions.  Similarly, the push for more military innovation names “communities” that surely include some universities.  That discussion also includes some vague language about universities supporting American but not Chinese research and development. (100) The idea of improving recruiting includes more recruitment efforts and even military testing in high schools, which could impact the flow of those students to post-secondary schooling. (102-3)

There is also a call to reform post-secondary military education, asking a new government to “[a]udit the course offerings at military academies to remove Marxist indoctrination, eliminate tenure for academic professionals, and apply the same rules to instructors that are applied to other DOD contracting personnel.” (104) Along this line is the idea of launching a Space Force Academy:

to attract top aero–astro students, engineers, and scientists and develop astronauts. The academy could be attached initially to a large existing research university like the California Institute of Technology or MIT, share faculty and funding, and eventually be built separately to be on par with the other service academies. (119)

The Homeland Security section targets international students, wanting to reduce some of their numbers:

Prioritize national security in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP). ICE should end its current cozy deference to educational institutions and remove security risks from the program. This requires working with the Department of State to eliminate or significantly reduce the number of visas issued to foreign students from enemy nations. (bold in original; 141)

The State Department chapter similarly has several implications for higher education.  It calls on American campuses to assist its African policy: “The U.S. should support capable African military and security operations through the State Department and other federal agencies responsible for granting foreign military education, training, and security assistance.” (emphases added, 187) The call to show “tough love” to international organizations calls out several which have some engagement with American education, like UNESCO and WHO.  Overall, the emphasis on reorganizing the foreign service and aligning it to conservative ideology has implications for faculty and staff who work with State, as well as students considering careers there.

Reflections

This section continues the theme of infusing a conservative ideology throughout government. Here this means a pro-family, anti-abortion, climate inaction, etc. approach through the military, Homeland Security, and diplomacy.  We can see this in the Defense Department section.  The introduction’s opposition to abortion and transgender rights finds support in this call to exclude them from the military:

individuals… with gender dysphoria should be expelled from military service…

the use of public monies for transgender surgeries or to facilitate abortion for servicemembers should be ended.

Similarly, we find this call to “[e]liminate Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs and abolish newly established diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and staff.”

Academia doesn’t play as large a role in this section as it did in the first part of Project 2025.  Colleges and universities don’t appear as antagonists.  Instead, this week’s chapters see higher education playing an instrumental role in terms of training, reducing immigration, providing expertise, and so on.  Looking ahead, if a second Trump administration implements these proposals, I wonder if we’ll see a rise in academic opposition to the military, as well as criticism of Homeland Security or whichever constellation of departments succeed it.

Questions

  1. How would the policy changes expressed in this week’s chapters impact your professional and personal lives?
  2. Do you see Trump as likely to attempt what this week’s reading describes?
  3. How might the world change if these global policies take effect?
  4. If you oppose what these three chapters call for, what opposition strategy and tactics would best resist it?
  5. Having read this far, what do you anticipate from the rest of the book?

Resources

…and that’s it for this week’s reading.  For next Monday, August 5th, we will read further into “The Common Defense” and then “The General Welfare,” which means pages 201-318.

Please do comment in the boxes below this post.  If you’d prefer to share your reactions on other platforms, tag me or otherwise let me know about those comments so I can include them in our next post.  If you want to respond but are worried about what people could make of your reactions, feel free to contact me here without the web knowing.

Comment away!  And on to the next tranche of Project 2025.

(thanks to many people, including Mark Corbett Wilson)

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Redesigning my information technology usage because my eyeballs betray me

Posted on July 28, 2024 by Bryan Alexander

Greetings from a hot northeastern Virginia.  It’s not excessive today, with the temperature standing around 90° F/33° C, and quite dry.  I just did some weeding before hitting the gym and imagined the yanked-out plants withering in the sun.  Hydration is the order of the day.

Sometimes on this blog I share personal stories and reflections.  Today I’ll offer another one having to do with information, technology, the body, and time.  I’m starting to rethink how I use digital technology, again.  This time it’s because of changes in my face.  Specifically, my eyeballs are making things… difficult.  It might be a small or minor thing in the end, but the details grow in my examination, and the possibilities might be of interest.

Bryan on a plane with beard looking out windowTo explain with a bit of personal history: for the first 50 years of my life I enjoyed superb eyesight.  Tests reliably showed 50-50 vision (20-20 in Britain). Years and years of intensive and extensive reading didn’t stress my eyes – which was strange.  Everyone in my family wore glasses except me.  It was weird but nice.

My schooling and career involved extreme amounts of eyestrain due to extensive amounts of reading: for a literature PhD, grading student writing, and escalating amounts of screen content.  The eyeballs held up just fine through all of that.

…until a few years ago, when I grudgingly noticed small font blurring. I realized I was squinting to read some product labels and books with tiny print.  After enduring enough of this I bought my first cheap reader, or glasses designed to help people read close up, from a drugstore, and using thing thing was a marvelous improvement.  Fuzzy print leaped into the clarity I remembered of old.  So I bought several different readers and stashed them in the places where I’d most likely need them: my office, my laptop bag (I travel a lot for work), my bedside (I always read before sleep), and the kitchen (for recipes, labels, print cookbooks).

One thing hasn’t worked well. I tried to get used to carrying glasses with me, besides stashing them in my laptop bag, but have often failed so far. I even bought a pair that hangs around my neck and magnetically clips together, which doesn’t involve carrying them in a pocket, which is handy, but they tended to snap closed on my beard so I keep sort of deliberately forgetting them.  Instead, and pathetically, I end up using my phone’s magnifying glass app when I need to, say, read a print menu in a restaurant or scrutinize a food label in a grocery store.

Meanwhile, my medium and far vision has been fine.  I have no issues with driving, reading street signs, identifying buildings, scanning the horizon for kaiju, etc.  So there’s been no need for bifocals or progessives.

Alas, recently things seem to be worsening again. I turned 57 this year and now am noticing that some screen content on some devices is blurry.  Some, not all: my desktop computer (a Mac Mini) produces easily readable stuff on a big screen, but sometimes laptop text is hard to read.  My Kindle hardware e-reader is lovely, once I embiggen the font, but I’m finding I have to squint at some of my phone (a new Galaxy Fold 5). When I get to play Xbox, I usually sit, as one does, but increasingly stand to get closer to the screen to read small print in dialog boxes.  Subtitles on a big screen are fine, but worryingly dim on small screens.

This is frustrating and worrying, yet also fascinating.  The word is presbyopia.

eye and optic nerves from Degravers 1780

It’s a new term for me.  Apparently over time the eyeball and related muscles gradually lose elasticity, decreasing focus.  The Mayo Clinic helpfully describes it as “a natural, often annoying part of aging.”  (Another friend wrote “welcome to your next stage of adulthood”) I’m reminded of how ancient glass slowly, so slowly, starts to flow downwards in the direction of gravity.  I’m seeing through those leaking panes now.

What can one do in this situation?

To start, I tinker with the technologies.  Some devices and some applications give me wide latitude for font sizes, which makes a great difference.  The Kindle is splendid for this.  Others do not, or make those changes hard to find.  On the phone I can make some pdfs enormous but not Duolingo’s texts.  Thankfully the Fold has a nearly tablet-sized mode, which some apps sprawl across. On my laptops I can hit command or control plus on web pages, which is great for text and some script-created images, but system dialog boxes are frustratingly immoveable.  A good amount of text appears not as text, but as part of image files (like the 18th century drawing above), and those I need to either download to my desktop to manipulate in an image viewer, or get a screen shot for same… and sometimes those just end up blurry.  Some computer games have font options we can adjust, while others do not.

I can also try altering default fonts in systems.  An old friend recommended the Atkinson Hyperlegible Font, which I’ve downloaded and (I think) installed on at least one machine.  I think this will make it easier to read some text.

Then there’s supplemental technology – i.e., glasses. I can’t remember when I first crammed glasses on my face to stare at a phone, or what the stimulus was, but I do remember the sweet rush of clarity which resulted, as well as the awkward way it felt, like peering through a window to see through another window. Now I’ve taken to pushing my readers on when using the laptop more and more often.  It still feels strange, an admission of failure somewhere.

Naturally, I asked people about this idea, in person and online, as is my usual open practice. Some folks confessed to using glasses on their machines as well, always citing their aging bodies.  Often it’s the close-up hardware that requires glasses: phones, tablets, laptops.  Some have said that devices positioned a little farther away – a desktop monitor one or two feet from one’s face, an airport flights display standing off a yard or so – doesn’t require eyewear. It’s good to know others are in the same position.

Several folks have recommended blue light readers, which reduce some of the input from computer screens.  I haven’t tried this yet.

I still need to get use to hauling readers with me everywhere, and I haven’t got the habit down yet.  Maybe I need to attach them to something which I’m habituated to carrying, like phone or watch.  Perhaps I should make a glasses case which will delight me and some others, either repurposing and revamping a preexisting one or building one from scratch.  I’d like to add some of my style, perhaps some Gothic, metal, or steampunk themes.

Professionally, I’m a futurist.  I have to look ahead at possibilities.  Applying this lens (ahem) to myself, I assuming eyeball relaxation will continue and vision will keep degrading.  I’m also assuming I’ll keep reading a lot, both on screens and elsewhere. Based on that:

  • A simple fix is to get used to always having glasses on my face.  Bifocals might be in my future, so I can quickly flip between close-up and the rest of the world.  I’ve also heard good things about progressives, but never tried them.
  • I’ve never managed to fit a contact lens into one of my eyeballs.  Maybe I should try this as an option.
  • Perhaps the Meta Ray-bans will be a good step.  I’ve long been fascinated by the possibilities of combining augmented with virtual reality, and this will be a useful experiment.  I don’t know if I can get them with readers, though.
  • Changing my hardware environment.  The Fold opens nicely, but maybe I’ll need an even bigger screen in a few years.  Should I expect to shift to a full tablet then, or will glasses have evolved enough to take up a phone’s functions?
  • Doing more with audio.  I can shift some close-up visual experiences to digital audio. I’m already a podcast fiend and do like audiobooks; I can do more of that.
  • Looking further ahead, I can imagine losing my near vision entirely, perhaps in a decade or two, assuming I live that long. I don’t know if my medium- and long-range vision will fail as well. Maybe the thing to do now is start preparing myself for at least partial blindness, and lean hard into accessibility technologies.
  • I don’t know what the medical options are at this point, nor have I looked into (har har) possibilities for the next decade.   Surgeries? Implants?  Time to research.

That’s where I’ll stop now, having delved too deeply into matters opthamological.  I’d love to hear any suggestions or stories from people with more personal and/or professional eyeball experience.

(thanks to all kinds of friends on Mastodon and Facebook, not to mention my patient family)

Posted in personal | 4 Comments

Reading Project 2025, part 1: the agenda and the start of a guidebook

Posted on July 23, 2024 by Bryan Alexander

How might a likely second Trump administration impact higher education?  How can academics plan for and anticipate that major event, should it occur?

This week we begin our reading of Project 2025, a key document in understanding the near- and medium-term future of American politics.  This is an online, open, and distributed reading and anyone can participate. Here’s a post explaining how it works.  You can find all of our Project 2025 posts here.

In today’s post I’ll summarize this week’s reading, which is the first part of the book, “Taking the Reins of Government”: front matter through page 85.  I’ll draw out the bits which bear directly on higher education. Next I’ll add some reflections and then several discussion questions.

Summary overview

The book is actually titled Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, and that does describe what follows.  It assumes an electoral victory yielding a mandate to take major political steps. And it describes what the conservative authors promise to do.

Project 2025 coverThere are several sections here.  The first, the foreword, is an introductory overview, which summarizes the book’s ideas.  The next, “Taking the Reins of Government,” consists of three chapters breaking down how the federal bureaucracy works from the very top.  The former strikes me as more interesting and provocative, while the latter looks very useful.

Before those is a quick “Note” which describes the book’s intention: to inform a new Trump administration about what to implement in its first days in office, and how to do it.  It is a “a consensus view of how major federal agencies must be governed.”

The Note also names its enemies:

The long march of cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass. The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before. The task at hand [is] to reverse this tide and restore our Republic to its original moorings…

That first sentence is a not too well hidden gesture at colleges and universities.

Beyond the book we’re reading, Project 2025 has other operations in play: “a personnel database” where supporters can upload their profiles, auditioning for a role in the new administration, plus a “Presidential Administration Academy, an online educational system taught by experts from our coalition.”  The project’s team is also “forming agency teams and drafting transition plans.”  As noted elsewhere, this is a very ambitious and practical plan.

Also in the book’s front matter is a long list of main writers, editors, and contributors, which one could mine for all kinds of network analysis. For now I’ll note that many of these people worked for the first Trump administration.

The foreword, written by Heritage Foundation leader Kevin Roberts, is a passionate text.  Like Trump, it describes an America falling through decline into ruins, and the only way to turn things around is by an aggressive Trump administration.  Roberts repeatedly condemns crime, inflation, drugs, drag queens, antiracism (“the Great Awokening”), pornography, China, lack of Christian faith, transgenderism, and more.  He condemns Democrats, progressives, and the left (terms used interchangeably) as totalitarian and dictatorial. He then recommends a new administration advance along “four broad fronts that will decide America’s future”:

  1. Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.
  2. Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.
  3. Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.
  4. Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls “the Blessings of Liberty.”

Quite a few recommendations flow from this quartet in just a few pages: removing DEI language from government documents, preventing kids from using smartphones, federally banning abortion, massively cutting parts of the federal budget (“the Administrative State”), focusing foreign policy solely on Beijing, closing the national border to illegal immigrants, turning away from some international agreements, decoupling America’s economy from China’s, and otherwise deregulating the economy.  There’s a clear call to ban pornography at a breathtaking level, with one eye on educators:

The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered. [emphases added]

Climate change doesn’t appear as an issue at all. Instead, Roberts calls out environmental policies as bad for humanity. Instead, he’d like to massively increase America’s fossil fuel production.

The foreword condemns academic credentials and progressive elitism:

Intellectual sophistication, advanced degrees, financial success, and all other markers of elite status have no bearing on a person’s knowledge of the one thing most necessary for governance: what it means to live well. That knowledge is available to each of us, no matter how humble our backgrounds or how unpretentious our attainments. It is open to us to read in the book of human nature, to which we are all offered the key just by merit of our shared humanity.

Higher education comes in for another critique, this time via connections to China.  Roberts refers to “Beijing-compromised colleges” and singles out  Confucius Institutes, which have been “compromising and coopting our higher education system as they have at compromising and coopting corporate America.”   In fact, “[u]niversities taking money from the CCP should lose their accreditation, charters, and eligibility for federal funds.”

The next section, “Taking the Reins of Government,” includes a short introduction followed by chapters breaking down the federal system.  The intro offers a quick jeremiad against bureaucracy before admonishing us that “the new Administration must fill its ranks with political appointees.”  That’s a key feature of the next chapters.

“White House Office” would be a great primer for any politician, analyst, or interested party looking for a clear breakdown of top level offices, positions, and bodies.  What each one does, who appoints them, whom they can hire, the limits of their remits are all there, along with a swarm of acronyms.  It’s not an ideological treatise but a user’s guide to the uppermost federal bureaucracy.

“Executive Office of the President of the United States” continues this civics class drive with an added layer of political theory.  Author Vought takes us through more offices, from the National Security Agency to the Office of Management and Budget, to show us how they work and how a new president could use them.  Said executive could also cut, break, or shut down some of these entities, like the Gender Policy Council.

“Central Personnel Agencies: Managing the Bureaucracy” focuses on how to change the federal government’s personnel.  This chapter delves into the weeds of supervision, hiring freezes, pensions, approval processes, union negotiations, merit pay rates, even the design of application tests.  The goal is to “bring that bureaucracy more under control and enable it to work more efficiently and responsibly.”

Reflections

There’s a lot going on in the book so far. Well, in the foreword. I don’t have much to add to the three chapters on governance, as they seem straightforward to me.  Yet I’m not a political scientist, so would like to hear from readers who are.  One point I would make is that Project 2025 calls for a massive replacement of federal staff by people whose most important feature is political reliability:

In order to carry out the President’s desires, political appointees must be given the tools, knowledge, and support to overcome the federal government’s obstructionist Human Resources departments. More fundamentally, the new Administration must fill its ranks with political appointees.

The foreword feels like a full throated attempt to express the hard right side of the culture war in politics through total federal power. The focus on the family – i.e., one particular version of the nuclear family – anchors an agenda some of us will find terrifying, even dystopia.  Personally, I found it hard to maintain a sense of calm analysis.

The document expresses some classic contradictions in the conservative worldview.  For example, it calls for liberty, then favors the imposition of extreme authoritarian policies around abortion and pornography. It wants to shrink the federal government, but at the same time to expand the military.

I might be biased, given my work, but I was impressed by the fairly prominent role higher education plays in the foreword.  Academia plays a major role in creating the society Project 2025 wants to overthrow, from credentialism to communication.

Questions

  1. What do you think of the agenda described in the foreword?  How would it impact your life, if implemented?
  2. Is the guide to government power in “Taking the Reins of Government” accurate?  Can a president effect such changes?
  3. Do you see Trump as likely to attempt what this week’s reading describes?
  4. What does Project 2025 mean for higher education, thus far in our reading?
  5. If you oppose what the book calls for, what opposition strategy and tactics would best resist it?
  6. Having read this far, what do you anticipate from the rest of the book?

That’s it for this week’s reading.  For next Monday (August 29) we’re tackling “The Common Defense,” found on pages 87-199.

Please do comment in the boxes below this post.  If you’d prefer to share your reactions on other platforms, tag me or otherwise let me know about those comments so I can include them in our next post.  If you want to respond but are worried about what people could make of your reactions, feel free to contact me here without the web knowing.

Comment away!  And on to the next tranche of Project 2025.

Thanks to Steve Greenlaw and others for thoughts and suggestions.

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What might Biden’s withdrawal mean for higher education?

Posted on July 21, 2024 by Bryan Alexander

Today I’ve been finishing up a post about politics, scheduled for tomorrow.  But history has intervened, so I need to do a different politics post today.  I’m not a political commentator, generally, although I follow politics closely, so this is a bit of a stretch.

Question: what might Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race mean for higher education?

To recap: as of this writing, president Biden announced on X/Twitter that he was withdrawing from the presidential campaign.

Biden quits tweet

Then he followed up with a post endorsing current vice president Harris:

 

Biden endorses Harris on Twitter X

My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.

At this point some Democratic leaders have endorsed Harris. Others are trying to wrangle (or just explain) the process by which Harris becomes the candidate.  Some prominent Republicans are asking Biden to step down, not just from the race, but from the presidency itself.

Very interesting and chaotic times.  I can glimpse various forces that I think are shaping the national and global future here: the rise of people of color; the rise of women; our cultural rethinking of advanced age; opposing drives over globalization (extend or reduce it); continued rethinking of policing (Harris’ career as prosecutor); how we value economic reality.

But right now my focus is more narrow.  What might this electoral break mean for higher education?

We might see a contested fight to succeed Joe Biden.  No candidates have presented themselves with the Democratic party yet, and Harris has the presidential endorsement, yet it’s possible that some ambitious politicians could make a fast move for the crown.  We could also see party activists try drafting a noncommitted politician.  I don’t have time to create a list of possible competitors and suss out their higher education potential, but we can wonder

For now, let’s assume Kamala Harris becomes the candidate and launches an energetic campaign against the Republican Donald Trump.  We can consider the remaining election months and wonder if education will appear in the campaign.  Harris could run on Biden’s record, pointing to Title IX revision, efforts to forgive student debt (which she stumped for in April), supporting STEM education (especially within the CHIPS Act context), and supporting historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).  The campaign could cast each of these as appealing to various constituencies.  Harris has already done a college campus speaking tour on behalf of the Biden-Harris team.

Or might Harris carve out a new path on education in the election?  She could target for-profit institutions, as she did as prosecutor in 2015. She could link her abortion rights focus to student life, as she has already done at least once, urging campuses to maintain womens’ access to contraceptives.  She could also call for more HBCU support, based on her own undergraduate experience. Or she could attack the Republican party’s published disdain for colleges and universities.  Perhaps she would link the Biden pro-science agenda to the Democratic claim that Republicans are anti-science or anti-intellectual.

Education events might prompt a different direction.  If Israel’s war in Gaza continues a month from now, then campus protests might arise again, which could empower the GOP to condemn academia as a dangerous hotbed of antisemitism and free speech quashing.

Of course, academia and education in general might play no role at all in a Harris-Trump contest.  After all, there is a huge amount of issues to argue over and higher ed is but one.

On something of a tangential note, I’m struck by the way Biden announced his decisions on social media – specifically, on X/Twitter, first and foremost.  For all that platform is supposed to be collapsing, irrelevant, or a right wing brutal cesspool, it seems the most powerful political figure in the world still uses it.  In fact, at least one Biden 2024 campaign site still has Joe as the nominee:

Biden campaign website still saying Biden

I’m honestly surprised Biden didn’t make the announcement first as a live video statement.

Let’s look ahead a little further.  After the election, what might a Harris administration look like?  (We’re already exploring what a second Trump term might present.) I’ve outlined some possibilities above, and they really depend on what Harris wants to do as president – specifically, to what extent she wants to continue Biden’s policies, versus the new ideas she’d like to implement.  Searching on the topic is a bit frustrating, as there hasn’t been much written on Harris and higher ed.

Let me pause for now. This post is a hasty one, written between plane flights (gah), meetings, and a conference presentation.  I’d really like to hear from you all.  What are you thinking of the impacts of Biden’s two decisions on higher education?  Any members of the K-Hive want to represent?

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“The professors are the enemy”: J.D. Vance on higher education

Posted on July 18, 2024 by Bryan Alexander

[W]e have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.

-JD Vance

Greetings from a somewhat less infernal Virginia July day.  A storm front broke through our heat last night, which is a relief to all of us, especially the cats.

I’m writing in a hurry, as I’ve got a stack of meetings today (including a Future Trends Forum community session!) and am hitting the road tomorrow (speaking to the NACUFS national conference in Louisville, then the SCUP annual conference in Philadelphia; I’m happy to meet with readers in those cities), but I wanted to share notes on a current event which might be significant for higher education.

This week the Republican party named Ohio senator J.D. Vance as its vice presidential candidate for the fall election.

What might this mean for higher education?

On the one hand, we can dismiss vice presidents as traditionally useless appendages on the presidency, famously not worth a warm bucket of spit, etc.  On the other, we’re in a very intense election season and vice presidential selection is always a strategic move.  The veep candidate signals many things to the electorate, from geographical importance to demographic representation.

Today I want to single out Vance’s documented attitude towards higher education.  Again, he’s only the VP candidate, and Trump is famously egocentric, so this might not turn out to have any impact over the next four months or years.  But Republicans nationwide are increasingly hostile to academia, and so would likely be receptive to campus-bashing campaign messaging.

Please note that the below summarizes and lightly reflects on Vance’s stated views. I do not endorse them myself.  That should be obvious, but this is an intense election season and unless I say so, someone might accuse me of complicity or support.

Let’s start with a 2021 speech by Vance to the National Conservatism Conference.  I’ll summarize it and share some thoughts after the embed:

 

This is something like a declaration of war. Vance begins by assuming the decades-old culture war trope of conservatives battling progressives for control of institutions, then targets academia as a major battleground.

Note that he has a more sophisticated model of higher education than we see in most right-wing accounts, describing campuses as sites of knowledge production and dissemination in addition to their teaching mission.  The latter includes something like a version of (unnamed) liberal education, where institutions prepare students for a difficult to anticipate future.  It’s a model with a strong claim for academia’s impact on the nation: “We live in a world effectively made by university knowledge.”  As an example the would-be vice president then slams Anthony Fauci, quickly gesturing to COVID lockdowns, unpopular with Republicans, in order to assign his public influence to his academic training.  (Recall that this speech occurred in 2021)

Vance goes on to charge higher education with being hypocritical in the pursuit of truth.  More, “our universities transmit not knowledge and not truth but deceit and lies,” citing transgender research and medical care.  Several times he calls out academics for canceling students and faculty for politically unpalatable speech.  He cites a story about a University of Texas professor attacked for publishing a paper about using AI to anticipate some scientific research, but I can’t find any accounts of this (can anyone?).

The now vice presidential candidate builds up an economic or materialist charge against academia, alleging that it exploits people or its teachings further economic damage.  He attacks  “college for everyone,” hinting that that social goal benefits campuses economically while speeding the destruction of American jobs.  He mocks (presumably) campus-based climate justice as a kind of perverse globalization, sending materials to Asia and worsening the environment.  He hits at student debt repeatedly, while damning academics for standing against people who work with their hands.

Vance criticizes DEI (or “critical race theory”) for working on elite representation “instead of invest[ing] in black communities all across our country –  or frankly white communities all across our country.”  In his vision university-driven diversity efforts are about “rob[bing] the American people blind and… to tell them to shut the hell up about it if they dare complain.”  Those drivers of DEI are, or are working for, “our enemies.”  He extends this to K-12 education, blaming academia for teaching the teachers. (“Telling a little girl that she’s evil because of her skin color is disgusting and vile and as a Christian I’d say Satanic”)  Vance also blames antiracism for mischaracterizing opposition to migration through a story about an Ohio grandmother fearing imported fentanyl, although he doesn’t make the academic connection explicit there.

Vance’s last words are a quote by Richard Nixon: “the professors are the enemy.”

To sum up: Vance calls for a major, aggressive conservative drive against higher education.  He charges academia with mendacity, hypocrisy, with causing and aiding economic misery, and with unfairly teaching division.

Is this speech a one-off?  It was back in 2021, after all, which feels like a very different time.  Given Vance’s changing attitudes, this call for war could recede into the past.  But he has echoed and amplified its themes since.

In an interview Vance introduces education when discussing generational differences: “Millennials are really worried that their kids have a viable pathway to the middle class. Are they being educated at their schools, or indoctrinated into weird gender ideologies?”  Questioned on the point, he goes further, starting by linking DEI to Harvard’s firing president Gay:

What happened at Harvard was, in some ways, confirmation of the thesis, right? We saw identity elevated over ideas. There’s this weird way in which, obviously mediocre people are protected because they fit a particular political narrative. What happened at Harvard is a perfect manifestation of the idea that the universities are not so much after the pursuit of truth, as they are about enforcing dogma and doctrine.

He adds that the Gay story shows universities to be weak: “One takeaway from what happened at Harvard is that these academic institutions are just paper tigers. We should be really aggressively reforming them in a way to where they’re much more open to conservative ideas.”

Then he admires Hungary’s president Orban for taking action against that nation’s universities:

the closest that conservatives have ever gotten to successfully dealing with left-wing domination of universities is Viktor Orbán’s approach in Hungary. I think his way has to be the model for us: not to eliminate universities, but to give the a choice between survival or taking a much less biased approach to teaching…

[W]hether it’s the incentives that you put into place, funding decisions that are made, and the curricula that are developed, you really can use politics to influence culture. And we should be doing more of that on the American Right.

Note the threat enclosed in the word “survival.”  That’s a world of… possibilities.

A recent article quotes Vance thusly in another interview:

“I’m not endorsing every single thing that Viktor Orban has ever done. I don’t know everything he’s ever done,” Vance said in a recent CBS interview. “What I do think is on the university — on the university principle, the idea that taxpayers should have some influence in how their money is spent at these universities. It’s a totally reasonable thing. And I do think that he’s made some smart decisions there that we could learn from in the United States.”

Politico quotes Vance in a related discussion, where he calls for deinstitutionalizing DEI ideology with inspirations from deNazifying Germany and the deBaathification of  Iraq:

Vance also called for the “de-woke-ification” of schools and cited Orbán as inspiration in an appearance on a right-wing podcast last September.

“What do you do at the Department of Education? Well, you do what Viktor Orbán has done in Hungary, which is basically say, ‘You’re not allowed to teach critical race theory anymore, you’re not allowed to teach critical gender theory anymore … You’re not allowed to do those things and get a dollar of federal money or a dollar of state money.’”

In Inside Higher Ed Katherine Knott observes that Vance has tries to turn his views into law in the United States Senate:

He’s introduced legislation to ratchet up enforcement of federal laws that require disclosure of foreign donations to colleges and universities. He also sponsored a bill that would increase the excise tax on endowments’ net investment income from 1.4 percent to 35 percent for secular, private colleges and universities. The tax was necessary, he said, to rein in a university system that “has gone so insane.”

Speaking to those bills, the senator explained:

“Why is it that we allow these massive hedge funds pretending to be universities to enjoy lower tax rates than most of our citizens, people who are struggling to put food on the table and buy Christmas presents this season?” he said on the Senate floor in December. “It’s insane. It’s unfair. And I think we ought to fix it in this chamber now.”

One recent article notes his support for taxing university endowments continues.

Education Week adds that Vance criticizes what he sees as China’s undue and malevolent influence on higher education:

One bill would establish stricter requirements for colleges and universities contracting with or accepting donations from “foreign entities,” which he said would help keep the Chinese Communist Party from “exerting financial influence over American educational institutions.”

This connects with Project 2025’s clear focus on China as America’s prime enemy.  Vance also floated a bill about universities hiring undocumented workers: “The second bill would prohibit public colleges and universities from employing undocumented immigrants by taking away federal funding.”

On the economic front, Vance has expressed divided views on student loan forgiveness.  On the one hand he opposes it in class terms:

Forgiving student debt is a massive windfall to the rich, to the college educated, and most of all to the corrupt university administrators of America. No bailouts for a corrupt system. Republicans must fight this with every ounce of our energy and power.

At the same time, “[i]n May, he helped introduce legislation that would excuse parents from student loans they took on for a child who became permanently disabled.”

Summing up, as a senator JD Vance has been broadly and clearly critical of higher education, urging political and perhaps cultural action against elite and other universities.  He has developed this critique in connection with his other concerns, many of which connect with today’s Republican party.

Now, let’s take a step back.  All of this might not be meaningful, since Vance is running for vice president, after all.  More importantly, he campaigns on a ticket with a man who is notoriously egocentric. Trump is clearly the senior partner in the relationship and it is to him we should turn to see what a new administration will try to do to academia.  If Trump ignores higher ed in his second term, it’s hard to imagine what Vance would do.  And Vance didn’t mention education in his admittedly very short acceptance speech at the Republican convention.

However, the Ohio senator may still impact colleges and universities.  Trump might indeed seek to change postsecondary policy and/or to stir up cultural and local political actions against campuses.  It seems likely that Vance could play an attack dog role there.

There are also six months between now and the potential start of a new administration. Vance should be an energetic campaigner in this period.  We shouldn’t be surprised if he returns to his higher education arguments in the field.  That may have downstream impacts on culture, local or state politics, and perhaps next year’s Congress.

Additionally, as public intellectual (no, I haven’t finished Hillbilly Elegy yet) and as politician, Vance could keep the heat on higher education through media appearances, lobbying, writing, and more.

We should keep a close eye on this senator, author, and vice presidential candidate.

Posted in politics | Tagged | 4 Comments

Getting ready to read Project 2025 in an open, online discussion

Posted on July 15, 2024 by Bryan Alexander

How might a likely second Trump administration impact higher education?  How can academics plan for and anticipate that major event, should it occur?

NOTE corrected schedule below!

Project 2025 coverA week ago I posted that Trump is the likely winner of the upcoming American presidential election.  I offered to do a few things which might help those of us who work in higher education prepare.  One of those items is an online reading of what seems to be a crucial document for the next administration, Project 2025.  Today I’ll describe plans for that reading.

What I’d look to do is read a chunk of the book each week, around 100 pages.  That should be enough to let us finish the whole text before the November election. Each Monday I’ll post about that reading here on the blog.  Those posts will include my summary notes about the passage, followed by some reflections and several questions.  I’ll copy each post to Medium, share each post across social media, and also try to offer a video on YouTube.  (This is more or less what I’ve done in our online book club for years) I hope to hold a Future Trends Forum meeting or two on this as well.

How do you participate?  There are a bunch of ways:

  • Reading along (helpfully, the text is freely available as a giant pdf).  If you can, follow our schedule (see below).  If you’re reading more slowly, no worries.  The blog posts will wait for you.
  • Commenting on each blog post.  Historically people have shared their reactions, asked or answered questions, disagreed with my take or other folks’ comments – in other words, discussed the reading.
  • Posting on your own sites, be they blogs, a Medium post, a Google Site page, a podcast, a video, or whatever you like.  I’ll try to link to those my next blog post, as well as embedding them and summarizing their contents.  Please tag or ping me if you want to make sure I see them.
  • Responding on social media.  Right now my plan is to share links to each blog post from my accounts on (deep breath) Twitter/X, Mastodon, LinkedIn, Facebook, Bluesky, and Threads.  Speaking of which, here’s my YouTube channel.
  • You might also want to respond to me privately, if you’re worried about what people could make of your reactions.  If so, here’s a way to reach me without the web knowing.

The reason I have for doing this is to assist academics in responding to what a second Trump might do.  This means I will keep an eye on implications for higher education throughout.  Sometimes the implications will be direct, as when the book explicitly calls for ending the Department of Education.  At other times the connections will be implicit or contextual.  For example, if the document calls for mass deportation of people, that will impact academic institutions.  Yet if you’d like to read along for purposes other than what’s happening to colleges and universities, you are most welcome.

Given how contentious this topic is, I’d like to ask readers (at least those responding on this blog) to be respectful of each other.  This might be a big ask at times, depending on the events of the next few months, but I think it’s possible to explore this reading without trying to tear each other apart.  If things get heated I’ll weigh in to try cooling a situation down. As blog owner I reserve the right to delete comments if they get out of hand.

Here’s the schedule:

July 22 – “Taking the Reins of Government”: front matter through page 85.

July 29 – “The Common Defense”:  pages 87-199.

August 5 – “The Common Defense” and “The General Welfare”: pages 201-318

August 12 – “The General Welfare”: pages 319-416. NB: this starts with a chapter on the Department of Education.

August 19 – “The General Welfare”: pages 417-516.

August 26 – “The General Welfare”: pages 517-617.

September 2 – “The General Welfare” and “The Economy”: pages 619-715.

September 9 – “The Economy”: pages 717-823.

September 16 – “Independent Regulatory Agencies” and “Onward!”:  pages 825-887.

If this reading looks daunting – nearly 900 pages! – here are some introductions and resources which might help:

If you’d like to learn more about how this kind of online, open, and distributed reading works, here’s a link to all posts for one excellent book we read, and which elicited a great deal of responses.  Speaking of which, I’ll tag all posts here Project2025.

Any questions?  In the meantime, click on the pdf or the links above and let’s start reading.

Thanks to a bunch of people who helped set this up: Chandra; Peter Shea; my fine supporters on Patreon.

Posted in book club, politics | Tagged , | 7 Comments

American views of higher education continue to worsen

Posted on July 9, 2024 by Bryan Alexander

What do Americans think about our higher education sector?

Greetings from the road – the railroad, to be precise.  I’m traveling from Washington, DC to a series of in-person and online meetings.  That means a very busy few days, but I wanted to blog this story before the mass of news swallowed it up.

Gallup has been polling on the question of American attitudes towards academia for some time. I’ve written about them in 2015, 2019, 2020, and 2023. The polling agency just published new findings and the results aren’t good news.

Overall, positive views stabilized, while negative ones have deepened, yielding a very divided population.  As Gallup summarizes, “An increasing proportion of U.S. adults say they have little or no confidence in higher education.”

Americans are now nearly equally divided among those who have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence (36%), some confidence (32%), or little or no confidence (32%) in higher education. When Gallup first measured confidence in higher education in 2015, 57% had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence and 10% had little or none.

American views of higher ed overall Gallup_2015-2024

You could say roughly one third of Americans likes higher ed, one third abhors it, and one third is “meh.”

If we decompose the polled population, we see this:

A review of the historical trends shows that confidence has dropped among all key subgroups in the U.S. population over the past two decades, but more so among Republicans. Americans who lack confidence in higher education today say their concerns lie in colleges pushing political agendas, not teaching relevant skills, and being overly expensive.

Focusing on party differences yields this:

American views of higher ed by party Gallup_2015-2024

“In 2015, 56% of Republicans had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence, and 11% had little or none. Now, 20% are confident and 50% have little or no confidence.”  So the partisan aspect is very strong.

Yet it’s not just the GOP who has issues with academia. Other political identities also see less approval for colleges and universities: “Republicans are not alone in having reduced confidence in higher education, as 35% of independents, down from 48% in 2015, and 56% of Democrats, down from 68%, are confident.”

What did respondents dislike?  Gallup helpfully broken down a bunch of reasons for the negativity:

American views of higher ed_what we abhor Gallup_2024

Note that political and/or content concerns top the list, followed by cost.  Quality, free speech, and inequality all trail.

On the other hand, what do the minority of Americans who love higher ed appreciate about it?

American views of higher ed_what we like Gallup_2024

These results are all over the place, neatly reflecting the varied purposes Americans think higher education should fulfill.

Gallup also surveyed attitudes towards two different types of colleges and universities, two-year institutions (community colleges) and four-year ones.  The result: we’re much friendlier to community colleges.

americans-more-confident-in-community-colleges-than-four-year-universities

One interesting difference among respondents is that people of color had a somewhat higher (38% to 30%) approval rating for two-year colleges than did white folks.

Why does this matter?

First, these attitudes might shape governmental support and oversight.  Roughly two-thirds of American academic institutions are public, and so growing dislike of their work might prompt states to cut budgets or impose new policies.  Further, private and public institutions alike can receive federal funding from research grants to student loans; accepting the latter entails some federal policy oversight.  Voters and donors changing their minds can lead to alterations to that support and policy-making.

Second, an increasingly skeptical public might send fewer students to enroll in our classes.

Third, that public is sometimes the neighbors of a physical campus.  Growing dislike can chill town-gown relations.

Fourth, that stark political party difference suggests we might see academia become an election issue over the next few months.  We should prepare for that possibility.  Moreover, some academics might want to reform our institutions in response to those changing attitudes.

Now, back to Amtrak.

Posted in horizon scanning, politics | Tagged | 2 Comments

Preparing for a second Trump administration

Posted on July 7, 2024 by Bryan Alexander

What might the next American presidential administration mean for higher education?

I’ve been tracking the US election closely, given the many impacts its results could have on colleges and universities. Until last month I thought the race too close to call this far ahead, with each candidate having a 50% chance of winning, taking into account various factors and metrics: polls, prediction markets, the thirteen keys model, and so on.

Now, after the first debate and its fallout, I think it’s time to plan on the likelihood of a second Trump presidency.Trump and Biden debate 2024 June_CNN

Obviously this is a chaotic moment. News organizations are increasingly asking Biden to step aside, which is inflecting their report.  A growing number of politicians, pundits, activists, and donors are openly calling for Biden to step down as well as to suggest replacements. There is a great deal of spin, leaking, lobbying, and a fierce amount of backstage scheming.  Sifting through this as best I can, I think what’s emerging is that Biden’s chances have dipped down and Trump’s have grown.  Poll-minder extraordinaire Nate Silver thinks Trump now has 2:1 odds over Biden.

Four months is a long time in politics.  All kinds of things could happen: a health crisis for either candidate; changes to either the Gaza or Ukraine wars; twists to the American economy; domestic disasters, climate-driven and otherwise.  To say nothing of Trump’s various legal processes… yet I think it’s prudent for academics to start taking a second Trump term as a serious possibility, and to start planning accordingly.

I don’t come to this conclusion with any delight.  Personally, I’ve never been a Trump supporter.  I have grave concerns about what his administration might do to the world, including higher education, and will do my best to stop such a thing from happening.  Yet I think the election is playing out in such a way that we need to prepare.  Others are making contingency plans, like NATO.

As a professional futurist, I have some practices and platforms which might be useful to academics and the academically-adjacent as they consider what Trump 2.0 might mean. After talking with my Patreon supporters and a bunch of colleagues, here’s what I can offer.

Future Trends Forum sessions First, I’m looking for academic experts on this election to meet with us.  Professors of political science, government, economics, etc. are welcome.  We can connect them with the Forum live audience to hash out a forecast of what the next presidency might mean for higher ed.

Second, I could run a scenario exercise, a virtual tabletop simulation.  We would start with positing how election night might turn out, as participants (playing the roles they currently have, or wish to have) explore how they might react. We then advance to inauguration, then to one or two potential events which impact higher ed.

An online book club reading of Project 2025 This is a Heritage Foundation book, a very detailed plan of actions for Trump to carry out.  Project 2025 has won a great deal of attention as the most clearly visualized and publicly accessible vision of what such a presidency might look like.  We can read it together, sharing our impressions, reactions, and plans.

A virtual workshop I could set up a virtual event whereby academics meet with election experts to learn, brainstorm, collaborate, and plan.  This sounds like the Forum sessions I proposed above, but this would be longer.  It might be two hours long, to allow a deeper dive.  I could also break it into a series of (say) three live sessions, giving participants time to reflect between meetings; we could also add an asynchronous venue for interstitial conversation.

Sharing information and forecasts Over the next four months I can find and aggregate information which helps us better anticipate a Trump presidency. I’ve been doing that already to an extent.  I can share the results here, as well as via YouTube vlogs and across social media.  For now, a tag: #election2024.

What do you make of these ideas?  Would any in particular be useful to you as you look ahead to November and beyond?  Please let me know in the comments.

Posted in politics | Tagged | 5 Comments

Academic closures, mergers, and cuts: June 2024 edition.

Posted on July 5, 2024 by Bryan Alexander

As June just ran its course, I wanted to share stories of academic cuts I’ve been tracking from that month.

I’ve actually been blogging this theme for months now (March 1, March 20, March 28, April, May), partly as evidence for some points in the book I’m writing.  I also hope to establish something of a record for 2024.

I’ve arranged the stories into the customary categories, with an addition, followed by some reflections.

1 Closing colleges and universities

Union Institute and University (private; mostly or entirely online) announced it would close this Sunday, June 30, following several years of financial crisis, receiving a federal Department of Education emergency letter, being sanctioned by its accreditor, and being sued for unpaid wages.  Their website, https://myunion.edu/, was down for a few days. Now the front page is a good bye message:

Union Institute and University farewell web message

Pittsburgh Technical College will close in August.  The official announcement cited reasons my readers will recognize:

Like many colleges and universities across the country, PTC has faced declining enrollment, market pressures, and inflation in recent years due, in part, to the global pandemic and changing views of higher education.

These external pressures, in addition to orchestrated attacks against the institution, have made it difficult for PTC to increase revenue generation and enrollment numbers to remain operational. Despite continued efforts to raise revenues and address the school’s long standing financial challenges, the nonprofit’s Board determined that long-term fiscal stability was no longer possible.

Eastern Nazarene College (private; Massachusetts) will close, following financial and enrollment problems:

For fiscal 2023, the college racked up an operating deficit of $4.9 million, on top of a $1.3 million deficit the year before. From 2022 to 2023, its total operating revenues fell about 18.7% to $15.5 million.

As with other struggling institutions, financial woes followed enrollment drops. Between 2017 to 2022, Eastern Nazarene’s fall enrollment dropped by more than a third to 535 students. Since 2010, the headcount fell by nearly half, according to federal data.

One campus looks like it’s about to close, but denies it.  Bacone College (Oklahoma; tribal-linked) filed for bankruptcy.  Its website states that the campus “is open for day-to-day operations but will not be enrolling students until further notice.” Yet its leadership says this move is about redesign, not resignation:

Interim president Leslie Hannah told Inside Higher Ed that while the college doesn’t plan to close, it will take the next academic year off to reorganize in hopes of attracting a partner to merge with or to acquire Bacone.

Not enrolling a new class makes me think Bacone is likely to close, unless it can convince a merger partner of some value it has which is worth obtaining.

2 Mergers

An institution facing an existential crisis has an alternative to close: merging with another, healthier campus.

The California State University (CSU) system (public) recommended merging two of its institutions, the very different California Polytechnic State University (a/k/a CalPoly) with California State University Maritime Academy. Why?  “growing financial challenges and enrollment declines at Cal Maritime.”

There’s more, including framing in terms of general trends:

Over the last seven years, Cal Maritime has experienced a 31% enrollment decline, from approximately 1,100 students in 2016-17 to just over 750 in 2023-24. That, coupled with rising employment and operational costs, has contributed to Cal Maritime’s fiscal crisis. These challenges are not unique to Cal Maritime, as colleges and universities nationally, including the state maritime academies, have been experiencing enrollment and fiscal challenges.

Then there’s a clear statement that a merger is a way to ward off personnel cuts or a closure:

Cal Maritime has implemented several actions and is considering additional steps toward reducing expenses and increasing revenues over the next three years. However, any further reductions to its budget risks compromising Cal Maritime’s critical infrastructure and unique academic mission.

How likely is this to occur?

3 Campuses cutting programs and jobs

Short of mergers and closures, struggling institutions can cut programs and positions. Alverno College (Wisconsin; Catholic; women’s college; founded 1887) declared financial exigency, which means it is in fundamental, extraordinary distress and can thereby take extreme measures. As the school’s official statement puts it, “a proactive measure to restore financial stability and secure Alverno College’s financial future.”  That means:

  • cutting 25 full time faculty members
  • ” 12 full time staff
  • reducing the number of undergrad majors from 43 to 29 and grad programs from 25 to 19

Note the curricular shift involved.  Terminated programs include: cosmetic science; creative arts in practice; education, secondary; English; environmental freshwater science; environmental science; health education; history; mathematics; mathematics/computer science; media design; molecular biology; public health, policy and advocacy; religious studies; Spanish for the professions. Graduate programs cut are Master of Arts in Music and Liturgy and a Master of Music Therapy.

What remains as Alverno’s new focus? Business, communication, education, integrated studies, nursing, psychology and social work, and sciences.  It’s a shift to preprofessional courses and a turn away from the arts and humanities, among other things.

The reason for this drastic step?  A chronic budget deficit.

University of Lynchburg (private university; Virginia) announced it would cut academic programs, faculty, and staff.  That’s 40 staff now, 40 faculty over the next three years, four vice presidents, a dozen undergrad majors, and five graduate programs.  The reasons won’t surprise any of you: declining enrollment (“Between 2017 and 2022, fall headcount declined nearly 15%”) and financial pressures.  The official announcement has some specific additions:

steadily declining birth rates that mean fewer college-aged students nationwide, the Federal Application for Student Aid (FAFSA) crisis impacting student financing, and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic that will likely shape the state of education for the next several years.

Keystone College (private; Pennsylvania) announced it would cut faculty and staff positions, along with several academic programs (“chemistry, forensic biology, and child and family studies (teaching)”). Enrollment decline seems to be the major driver here.  According to Higher Ed Dive,

The college, a 156-year-old institution, has struggled for years now. Between 2017 and 2022, Keystone’s fall headcount declined 25.7% to 1,131 students, per federal data. That number is down by even more — by 35.7% — from 2010. Its latest financials show a $2 million operating deficit for fiscal 2022.

Keystone’s accreditor has also ramped up criticism and the likelihood of sanctions:

Keystone’s restructuring moves come roughly two months after its accreditor, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, warned that the college was at risk of losing accreditation and closing.

In early April, MSCHE asked that Keystone provide it with a teach-out plan. Later in the month, the accreditor warned that the college was “in danger of imminent closure” and gave Keystone until Aug. 1 to prove compliance with accreditation standards. Failure to do that could mean a loss of accreditation — and the access to federal financial aid that comes with it.

Keystone is also trying to find a merger partner, and might have succeeded:

All of this followed a deal for the college to be acquired by the nonprofit Washington Institute for Education and Research, which fell through earlier this year.

In a separate potential deal, Keystone in late May said it signed a letter of intent with an unnamed “strategic partner” to form what it labeled an “alliance.”

In the college’s words, the deal would provide Keystone with “a more secure roadmap for a long-term path forward.” For now, the college and the partner are keeping names and details under wraps.

Lindenwood University (private; Missouri) laid off two professors and a dozen staff in order to address a deficit.  The reason?  Enrollment decline which at least one official blamed on FAFSA:

Decreased year-over-year FAFSA filing numbers brought on by the stress, confusion and doubts applicants and their parents are experiencing due to this year’s federal aid delays closely mirror the crisis higher education endured during the pandemic, says Kenneth Ferreria, director of student financial services at Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire.

“You have a group of students who, much like COVID, have evaporated,” he says. “They’re not even filing because they’re hearing from other students that this is such a mess.”

Concordia University Ann Arbor (Lutheran; satellite campus of Concordia University Wisconsin) announced massive program cuts:

Starting June 2025, the private Lutheran institution will offer just nine programs — all in medical-related fields — on its physical campus. That’s down from 53 campus programs the university currently lists on its website. It will offer another seven online programs, mostly in education fields, which is down from more than 60 currently.

The reason is financial, as the institution operates at a very large deficit.  Interestingly, its enrollment is actually growing.  No word yet on faculty or staff cuts, but those would logically follow.

Emerson College (private; Boston) announced it would cut staff and not fill some faculty positions due to an enrollment drop. The campus president offered a mix of reasons:

“We attribute this reduction to multiple factors, including national enrollment trends away from smaller private institutions, an enrollment deposit delay in response to the new FAFSA rollout, student protests targeting our yield events and campus tours, and negative press and social media generated from the demonstrations and arrests.”

Some disagree, saying that Emerson’s rising prices are driving students away.

University of Nevada Las Vegas (public land grant; research-1) announced 25% cuts to all non-essential service programs, along with a hiring freeze.  The official cause is an across the board cost of living increase in employee pay.

The Pennsylvania State University system will cut their employee numbers by 10%, after nearly 400 people accepted buyouts.  Additionally, four chancellors will supervise 11 campuses; previously, there was one chancellor per school.  “For example, the chancellor of Penn State Brandywine, Marilyn Wells, will also begin leading Penn State’s Mont Alto and York campuses this summer.”

Saint Cloud State University will cut programs, just not as many as previously announced, 42 instead of 46.

Following recent discussions on campus, including with bargaining units, officials have now opted to moderately lighten the cuts. St. Cloud State leaders elected to keep the university’s bachelor’s programs in manufacturing engineering technology and studio art, and master’s degrees in software engineering and social studies.

(I first wrote about St. Cloud in 2023, then returned to it last month)

4 Budget crises, programs cut, not laying off people yet

Six of 13 University of Wisconsin campuses (public) project having significant deficits in the upcoming year.

New Jersey City University (public) confronts a $337 million debt, according to testimony before that state’s legislature.  This follows a crisis in 2022, where NJCU revealed financial problems, leading to program cuts.

Nott Memorial on the Union College campus; photo by Alan Levine

Union College’s most famous building.

Union College (private; liberal arts; New York state) attempted to create new majors, but the effort backfired when the initiating dean would not consider new hires for them, implying cuts would be in order.  The reason is to address concerns about forthcoming financial challenges having to do with enrollment – not absolute numbers, but their composition:

Union’s challenge is not one of lowering enrollment — as it has been hovering just over 2,000 students for the last few years — but of attracting enough students to apply who do not require hefty financial aid to attend.

5 Countervailing stories

I wrote about Monroe Community College (New York) planning faculty layoffs last month.  Now it looks like MCC’s trustees have reversed course, announcing they would not cut any faculty.  That must have been some excellent faculty protesting and campaigning.

What can we learn from these stories?

First off, we need to recognize the human losses these developments represent.  The stories feature real human beings whose careers, finances, and mental have just taken serious hits.  Students, too, now face their academic records tied to institutions the world perceives as failing or collapsed.  It’s too easy to lose sight of this essential reality when discussing finances, enrollment, and the macro picture.

Second, I note the rising incidence of FAFSA playing a role in such negative events.  From University Business:

Ferreira described the pandemic and this year’s complications as a one-two punch. Greg Matthews, vice president for enrollment management at Western New England University, forecasts the second blow may be more dire for many institutions, considering they have fewer reserves to fall back on to mitigate another large deficit. Moreover, he’s hearing from more and more school recruiters that their institutions’ enrollment numbers are falling below last year’s.

In other words, we should expect more FAFSAgate fallout.

Third, the enrollment question has two levels, the first being raw numbers. Since most of American higher education is effectively privatized, depending therefor on tuition and fees, enrollment declines mean less income. Yet don’t forget the second level, namely the financial level of admitted students.  Enrolling poor or working-class students can mean the institution receives less per head than when rich students take courses.

Fourth, the queen sacrifice is very much in play. (That’s my term for when a campus sacrifices faculty to survive. The analogy comes from chess, where the queen is the most important piece.  Similarly, in colleges and universities the tenured faculty member has major advantages over other populations.)

Fifth, resistance has the ability to reverse administrative decisions, as we see in Monroe, New York.  It is by no means guaranteed or even likely to succeed, based on what we’ve seen over the past decade, but it is a possibility.

Sixth: some institutions will solve their budget problems through cuts, gifts, new revenue, and so on.  Some will not. Every budget crisis in the present day points to the possibility of cuts to come. Even through they might seem abstract or removed from the immediate work of teaching and research, we should heed them.

Seventh, I wrote this post based on public, largely open source information, relying on the good work of journalists.  Colleagues and interested parties have forwarded me such stories.  Other people have approached me quietly, sharing stories which haven’t been made public yet.  I haven’t shared these yet, either because the people didn’t want me to, or because I had no other verification. There might be another stratum of cuts going on, it seems – perhaps small, but there, below the public’s notice.  We need more transparency and better information.

Please, if anyone wants to share their news, contact me.  You can use the comments below, publicly, or reach me privately here.

(thanks to Karen Bellnier and Lee Skallerup Bessette for links; Union College photo by Alan Levine)

Posted in economics, enrollment, horizon scanning | Tagged | 1 Comment

Thoughts on last night’s presidential debate for higher education

Posted on June 28, 2024 by Bryan Alexander

I stayed up last night live-tweeting the American presidential debate, starting here, possibly for my sins.  I did that instead of finishing a post about academic cuts in June, which is still in the hopper.  I should probably spend more time with my cats… Today I’d like to share my thoughts about what that debate and its immediate responses might mean for academia’s future.

I’m not going to summarize the debate here, nor analyze it either as a debate nor for its overall political implications.  It’s easy to find plenty of examples of those around the web.  Instead, here I’m focused on the higher education implications.

This is not an exhaustive account.  I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts, as always.

Trump and Biden debate 2024 June_CNN

Short term, through January 2025

There is a great deal of discourse around the option of replacing Biden as the Democratic party’s presidential nominee. If that happens, it’s possible that competition between potential candidates and factions will involve higher education policy issues, such as who would take which approach to student debt or which person can best fix the FAFSA debacle.  It’s also conceivable that higher education policy will fall off the table, given the many other issues on tap.  Additionally, academic political scientists may come forward as public intellectuals to help us understand, and perhaps to influence, the complex candidate succession process.

Right now this process is taking place in summer, so there are few faculty and far fewer students actually present on campuses. But if the candidate replacement struggle continues into fall, as it might (the Democratic convention is August 19-22), we could see partisan activity rise in college and university communities.  This may engage students, faculty, and staff on different levels and in various ways, from racial justice to gender rights, not to mention Gaza.

On the other side of the debate, Trump clearly left open a path to oppose election results.  This could elicit political unrest, which may well take place on campuses – at least elite institutions, as the Gaza encampments demonstrated.  Political scientists and related faculty members may also play roles in on-campus education and public scholarship. Depending on how things play out at a given institution, we might see local or state police involved, or federal agencies.

A second Trump presidency

Going into the debate, Trump had an edge in most accounts (for example); it seems likely that last night’s performance might boost his chances.  This means we have to take the possibility of a second Trump term seriously.  Let’s see what his debate performance might tell us, starting with what either or both candidates said about postsecondary education.

During the debate both candidates praised funding HBCUs. Perhaps Trump will do more of this in a new administration, especially as he clearly wants to peel away black voters from Democrats.  Such support might be symbolic or perfunctory. It might also exist alongside Trumpian anti-black racism (which CNN didn’t ask about last night, weirdly).

In the context of helping black Americans, Biden cited his student debt relief efforts.  Trump didn’t respond to them, which is unusual, since he’s opposed them previously.  Perhaps this means he won’t take any actions on student debt, but I would expect him to end any Biden efforts along these lines.

Biden took care to praise jobs not needing a college degree (“Those fabs, they call them, to – to build these chips, those fabs pay over $100,000. You don’t need a college degree for them”; source) .  He celebrated such positions during this year’s State of the Union.  Trump didn’t respond to this, but I think he’d align with Biden on this, not being a fan of education.

Beyond what Trump and Biden said about higher education directly, much of the debate concerned America and the world as contexts within which our academic institutions exist.  We can derive some possibilities from that to see how they could impact colleges and universities.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the CNN staff raise climate change as a topic, and the difference between the two men’s reactions was clear.  Trump’s refusal to address global warming and instead praising clean air and water might become a rhetorical trick for some academics to use. If Trump wins and continues his practice of denying or ignoring climate change, he will energetically undo Biden’s policies. This will make academic climate action more difficult, starting with a reduction in federal funds for research, teaching, and campus operations. If Trump manages to tamp down electric vehicle deployment, it might be harder for schools to swap out their carbon burners and to incentivize visitors to drive EVs.   Will such actions depress academic climate action, or spur us on to greater efforts as part of #resistance 2.0?

Trump continually hit his points about reducing immigration.  If he resumes the anti-immigrant policies of his first term, we should expect international enrollment to drop. International collaboration of all kinds might become more difficult. On campuses, will he go after academics when he launches mass deportations?  As I asked in 2016 and 2020, will academics resist ICE when they request assistance in extracting students, faculty, or staff?

Trump spoke to economics mostly to praise his record and dun Biden’s, not revealing any changes from practice. We might therefore expect more of the same starting in 2025, including trade wars, tariffs, and tax cuts for the rich.  What this means for higher education may include: economic instability, which can impact state support, private giving, and endowment returns; side effects on international collaboration and enrollment.

Trump claimed to defend Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, but I think the reality is that he’ll weaken all three.  This may incentivize faculty and staff to work longer and/or to take on additional work in order to try making up the shortfall.  State governments may also choose to spent more to make up for federal losses, which could then pressure support for public higher education.

On abortion, Trump argued for leaving the matter to state governments.  If he adheres to this – and doesn’t support a federal abortion law – we might see a continued shift of some students, staff, and faculty away from strongly anti-abortion states.

To return to the possibility of domestic unrest, Trump claimed he would use National Guard or other federal forces on violent protestors, or would threaten to do so.  Again, to the extent such unrest occurs in academic spaces, it might encounter national forces.

Several academic topics didn’t appear, which surprised me, given their prominence in current political discourse.  Trump charged Biden with being a weak Palestinian (one of the more surreal moments of the night), but didn’t criticize campus protestors nor allege antisemitism. Critical race theory and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) never appeared.  LGBTQ+ politics in general were missing. Title IX didn’t appear, despite the two administrations (three, if you include Obama’s with Biden as vice president) fighting over laws and directives.  Neither did higher education’s cost and reputation problems merit discussion.  Last night’s debate doesn’t give us insights into what Trump’s next term might reveal on these points.  (Here are more to consider.)

Let me pause here.  I think that’s a good amount of ideas to chew on for now.

I hope I succeeded in offering a relative calm and analytic reflection. That’s not how I feel.  Last night I was aghast, horrified, depressed, hollering.  This day my friends and family have been discussing what a disaster the debate was.  I’m scared for what the outcomes may mean for the nation and my family.

I, for one, would like to help academia deal with an increasingly likely Trump presidency.  More to come on that score.

Over to you all.  What did that debate indicate about higher education for you?

 

(photo by CNN, appropriately)

Posted in climatechange, politics | 6 Comments