How to fix college by Lz Wolfe of Reason magazine

 

How To Fix College

Plus: The Dignity of Dependence, infinite scroll, ZIRP narratives, and more...

LIZ WOLFE

Trump asks colleges to get serious: Yesterday, the White House sent 10-page compacts to nine of colleges and universities—Vanderbilt University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Texas, the University of Arizona, Brown University, and the University of Virginia—asking them to assent to certain commitments in order to receive access to a wider array of federal funding. Called the "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education," most of the asks are eminently reasonable, and would make it so colleges now conform with the law instead of flouting it outright. "The memo demands that schools ban the use of race or sex in hiring and admissions," reports The Wall Street Journal. It also calls for schools to "freeze tuition for five years; cap international undergrad enrollment at 15%; require that applicants take the SAT or a similar test; and quell grade inflation."

But the memo also asks that universities abolish any departments that "purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas" and strengthen policies meant to deter such ideological conformity. Of course, "institutions of higher education are free to develop models and values other than those below, if the institution elects to forego federal benefits," reads the document. "The first round of schools received the compact along with a letter that frames the pledge as an opportunity to proactively partner with the administration and its effort to shift the ideological tilt of the higher education system," per The New York Times. Interestingly, "the demands in the compact also include providing free tuition to students studying math, biology, or other 'hard sciences' if endowments exceed $2 million per undergraduate." In a sense, this is federal government intrusion into the affairs of universities. Who is a federal bureaucrat to decide how many international students a college ought to admit, when the college should be able to decide what's in their best interest and what's not? It's not like a system of arbitrary nationality limits is especially meritocratic. But the case made by Trump administration officials like May Mailman is that we don't get to pour tons of American taxpayer dollars into the higher education system and then routinely educate the world's students; that's not a good return on investment or aligned with what's in the nation's best interest. The solution Mailman and the Trump administration more broadly offer is, I think, sound: If you're a university that doesn't want to sign onto these demands, you may forego federal funding and retain full independence. But if you'd like to dip into federal coffers, you must agree to certain standards and maintain environments that foster more intellectual diversity. We'll see whether this holds up whenever it's challenged in court. Also, I think it's interesting—and a welcome development—that the administration also snuck in some lines about tuition-freezing. Ballooning cost of attendance has been a huge problem for years, and shedding light on administrative bloat and wasteful spending is surely in the American public's best interest.