Trump Vs Non-Harvards

Judging by the headlines, Trump’s attacks on American universities are centered on prestigious institutions like Harvard, Columbia and Tufts, where the administration has arrested students and demanded obedience from administrators. But these attacks obscure what the administration is doing to the colleges that serve most students in US, and most students who come to US from India.Harvard is a big university, but those like Arizona State or Texas A&M serve far more students than any of the Ivies. These institutions have far fewer resources than a Harvard or Columbia, but are much more central to American higher education, and are under much greater threat.To date, Trump’s attacks on major universities have been made ineffective by a combination of strident demands and a refusal to accept surrender. In his attacks on Columbia, Trump demanded that departments be shut down and that campus rules be changed to disallow certain protests, threatening to (illegally) withhold federal funds if they refused to comply. But when Columbia did comply, the administration withheld the funds anyway – and insisted on another round of demands.So, when the administration demanded that Harvard end all affirmative action programmes, initiate an affirmative action programme for conservatives, remove political concerns from decision-making and give Trump loyalists decision-making powers, Harvard didn’t see any upside in complying with the contradictory demands. Columbia’s experience taught them that Trump was going to attack them anyway, so they’ve started to push back.Harvard and Columbia aren’t much like most other universities in US, but they face the same underlying problem. It costs more money to educate undergraduate students than those students can afford to pay in tuition, even with the uniquely American system of subsidised student loans.Up until about 20 years ago, state-run universities filled in the gap between tuition and costs with tax dollars, giving cheap education to residents, and charging more to students coming from other states or countries. But states gradually reduced their transfers to the universities, shifting the costs onto students, forcing the universities to find other ways to make up the difference.Universities adopted three strategies to stay afloat; the Trump administration has threatened all of them.* Many universities were able to survive by aggressively recruiting international students, who, on average, pay much greater tuition fees than local students. In effect, students from India or China subsidise lower rates paid by Americans.This strategy has been wildly effective. College education has been one of the leading US exports for decades – generating between $40bn and $50bn a year.But applications to US universities dropped during the first Trump administration – and have cratered in the second. After all, who would want to come to a country where writing a newspaper article or minor crimes like jaywalking can get students thrown in prison?* The most prominent universities are able to make up some of the gap through a combination of donations and investment returns on their endowments. Trump administration has threatened to tax these endowments, and Trump himself has said that universities disagreeing with him should lose their tax-exempt status, which would make raising donations much more difficult.* Universities have also been able to survive by taking advantage of research funding. In US, govt research grants include what’s called ‘overhead’, money that’s used to pay for the university that surrounds the research – facilities, administration, electricity and the like. These additional costs are substantial, so having faculty that can bring in research grants helps to subsidise everything a university does.Universities, therefore, do their best to recruit faculty who can do research, and bring in grant money – something that’s good for these institutions, as well as for society, which benefits from the advances made in the subsidised labs. Few advances made in science in the last half century haven’t come from this sort of federally funded research.But this, too, has been threatened by the Trump administration, which has not only held back research funding from prominent universities, but has also (illegally) attempted to severely limit overhead funding. This threatens not just research, but the financial model of the universities where the research is carried out.Until recently, universities made up some of the gap by selling students add-ons (like dormitories or meal plans or graduate degrees), which cost enough to make up for tuition losses. But the post-Covid shift to online classes – caused by the failures of the first Trump administration – has threatened even this strategy.For decades, conservatives have been lambasting universities as elitist and out-of-touch. So, many of Trump’s supporters don’t see attacks on them as an issue. But not only do US universities bring in enormous numbers of foreign students, helping to correct the trade deficit that Trump is apparently so worried about, but those students benefit all Americans.Most students who get degrees in US go home afterwards, taking with them connections to and affection for US. Others stay, giving us a bigger pool of educated workers. Either way, America is better off.Given the extent to which Trump’s policies – from tariffs to deportations – have wound up backfiring, making US weaker and more isolated, rather than great again, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that he’s going after a higher education system that’s the envy of the world. But whether they come from malice or incompetence, the net result is a US that’s poorer, less educated, and farther than ever from being great.The writer teaches at Fairleigh Dickinson University, US | Illustration: Chad Crowe