Has anything changed in the six years since I published Nurturing Decent Human Beings: The Case for Moral Education in Our Schools (michaelnill.com)? In that book I argued that we needed to get back to acknowledging and reinforcing the deeper, moral purposes of education that address our shared values and experiences as human beings. Although the bulk of the book was focused on K – 12 education, one chapter was devoted to colleges. I had concerns about what was happening at the college level. These concerns have grown more acute, and new ones, so much worse, have been added now that higher education is beset with governmental demands that threaten their independence. Not always for the same reasons, I join the chorus of voices declaring colleges in crisis.
Here’s how I characterized my concerns six years ago:
The benefits and purposes of education are often being narrowed to providing personal financial gain and ensuring the country remains competitive. However, the economic focus plays out in colleges on a more pronounced level because matriculation is a choice; and for those who can secure the resources to attend, the increasingly prevalent question is whether college education leads to a better job and higher income. If it does not pay off in this way, it is now too often concluded that a college education is simply not of value….
This economic focus has also had a deleterious effect on curriculum. Given the high costs and the prospects of big debt, students and their parents are often wanting a course of studies that prepares graduates as directly as possible for employment. At least in part to attract students and assure them that education pays off economically, schools increasingly allow students to graduate without much in the way of required courses or distribution requirements in the liberal arts, substituting more and more courses that purport to train potential employees in particular industries, whether it be technology, finance, business, or health services, to cite popular choices.
Such a trend obviously undermines the traditional path to the broad purposes of education, including its moral purpose, a path that was based on a liberal arts curriculum, now generally understood as a curriculum embracing the humanities, arts, and sciences. In the context of such a curriculum, students wrestle with such questions as what it means to be human, how we best lead our lives, and how we fit into the universe. As DeNicola describes it, liberal education has as its highest purpose “the discernment of and preparation for the good life.” While aspects of such education may go beyond the confines of moral education even in the broad sense, he concludes that liberal arts education is moral education; it is normative and seeks to transform the student.
At its worst, the defense of a colleges on the basis of their return on a student’s financial investment (ROI) turns them into commercial transactional spaces, with students as clients and the colleges dispensers of a product that their clients want. But already at the time of my book six years ago, the ROI argument was becoming questionable because of the sharp rise in tuition fees.
At the same time, however much colleges appealed to the ROI argument, their mission statements generally emphasized the broader purposes of education, with nary a mention of being a gateway to desirable employment with a good ROI. The following are some examples from a range of institutions:
(1) An Ivy-League school founded in 1701, and the third oldest institute of higher learning in the country: It is their mission to educate their students “through mental discipline and social experience, to develop their intellectual, moral, civic, and creative capacities to the fullest. The aim of this education is the cultivation of citizens with a rich awareness of our heritage to lead and serve in every sphere of human activity.” (Yale College)
(2) A leading large state university: “The primary purpose…is to provide a learning environment in which faculty, staff, and students can discover, examine critically, preserve and transmit the knowledge, wisdom and values that will help ensure the survival of this and future generations and improve the quality of life for all.” (University of Wisconsin—Madison)
(3) A small private college in California for women founded in 1926: It exists “to educate women to develop their intellects and talents through active participation in a community of scholars, so that as graduates they may contribute to society through public and private lives of leadership, service, integrity, and creativity.” (Scripps College)
(4) A private college in Virginia founded in colonial times: It “provides a liberal arts education that develops students’ capacity to think freely, critically, and humanely and to conduct themselves with honor, integrity, and civility.” (Washington and Lee)
(5) A large state predominantly commuter/non-residential school: Its core values: truth, freedom, respect for diversity and the dignity of the individual, responsibility as stewards of the environment and citizens of the world, and excellence. (Florida International University)
These sentiments are in line with our founders’ emphasis on the importance of widely-available (public) education for citizens to gain the understanding, knowledge, and civic virtues that ensure successful self-rule. These virtues included the golden rule, civility, respect for others, and the habit of restraining self-interest in the interests of the common good. As John Adams wrote, “Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties.”
Perhaps naively, six years ago I held out hope that these moral and broader purposes of higher education could be sustained, even if in a more limited way. But even at that time, such mission statements were not front and center and were infrequently used to indicate a college education was more than a financial transaction. At this point, can this hope still be sustained? The short answer is that it is looking increasingly less likely, at least in the short term.
Economic benefits less certain
To begin with, what we see now is the Chronicle of higher Education publishing articles like Karin Fischer’s “Colleges Need a New Sales Pitch” (https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-the-case-for-college-isnt-cutting-it). The usual ROI arguments are collapsing because of changes in hiring, AI, and market forces. The author acknowledges that the broader, communal aspects of education had at one time been in the discussions about what makes college education valuable, but that started to falter with economic shifts in the 80s, and I would argue, partly with the arrival of Reaganomics. “College began to be seen less as a collective benefit and more as an individual advantage.”
Does the collapse of ROI arguments open up the possibility of a return to the more traditional defenses of the value of education? The author entertains the idea, only to dismiss it. The reality is, she says, faith in the broader aspects of education finds increasingly less resonance in this political and social environment. Defenses of the liberal arts “feed into cultural critiques of college as doctrinaire and indoctrinating.” As “public officials are tightening the screws on colleges to demonstrate earnings and employability,” many colleges will feel left with no choice within the foreseeable future but to find ways to adapt the curriculum to an evolving labor market and find better arguments for economic payoff, if not for each individual student, at least for the country’s economy.
Colleges are thus seemingly trapped into making a very hard sell to the public at a time when they are also facing a drop in the college-age population, a decline expected to reach 13% by 2041. 16 colleges have closed their doors in each of the last two years. A Federal Reserve study predicts rate of closures could equal 80 institutions yearly (https://bestcolleges.com/research/closed-colleges-list-statistics-major-closures). In a cost-saving approach, Indiana, for example, is cutting or merging 580 “undersubscribed” academic programs in its public universities, with liberal arts programs taking the biggest hit. These are not the only challenges facing colleges. They are now also facing a decline in public trust.
What’s behind the declining trust in colleges
In Gallop’s rather generic surveys of how much confidence people have in higher education, 57% said a great deal or a lot in 2015; that declined to 36% in 2023. But here’s the more interesting statistic. The decline among Republicans or leaning Republicans went from 56% to 19% over the same period (https://news.gallup.com/poll/508352/americans-confidence-higher-education-down-sharply.aspx). This clearly indicates that the decline in trust is based on political affiliation.
The more nuanced 2025 Pew Research survey of perceptions of higher education reveals the same trend. A large majority (70%, up from 56% in 2020) from both parties saw higher education going in the wrong direction, strongly agreeing that it did a poor or fair job of keeping costs down and preparing students for well-paying jobs. However, there was wide disagreement on items that could be construed as having political associations: 61% of Republicans and leaners said higher education did a poor or fair job of exposing students to a wide range of views vs 29% of Democrats and leaners. A similar gap appeared on the question of developing critical thinking and problem-solving skills: 65% vs 33%. (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/10/15/growing-share-of-americans-say-the-us-higher-education-system-is-headed-in-the-wrong-direction).
The results of a far more detailed Quinnipiac poll, released as I was writing this post, further pinpoint the political divide (https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3958&utm). To the general question of how good are colleges at educating their students, 58% answered excellent or good, but only 27% of Republicans said that vs 83% of Democrats. In the pointed question of whether colleges/universities had a positive, negative, or no influence on their students’ political views, 66% of Republicans said negative influence vs 10% of Democrats. The negativity of Republicans continues with questions about the influence of colleges on their students’ independent thinking, personal values, and contributions to their community.
Enter the MAGA/Trump interventions
What would cause such a huge gap in perceptions of universities between Republicans and Democrats? Half the individuals surveyed never even earned a degree and others attended an institution of higher learning many years ago. Where are they getting their information? Can we imagine this startling and rather sudden decline in trust on matters other than the economic benefits of college arising primarily from any other source than the influence of MAGA politicians, and Trump in particular?
His rhetoric from the beginning has been to paint universities as out-of-control hotbeds of antisemitism, reverse racism, elitism, and hostility to viewpoints of MAGA voters. And given that Republicans have by and large moved over to the MAGA wing, it is no surprise that Republicans in these surveys have been so negative about higher education.
Rhetoric has now moved to action. This is occurring on the state and federal levels; but given legal restrictions on what can be mandated on universities at the federal level, red states are the most vulnerable to the most direct interventions from the MAGA agenda. In Florida, for example, public universities and colleges have removed Introduction to Sociology as a general education core curriculum option. Too potentially woke. At Florida International University, some of their own student Republican Leaders participated in a group chat that came up with 31 ways to kill Black people, but faculty have felt unable to address the issue because of strictures on talking about race or anything smelling of being Woke. At Texas A&M, where course content and readings are now monitored, a professor was not allowed to have students read Plato’s Symposium. Too problematic on gender. Texas Tech now mandates faculty remove or replace any course content dealing with sexuality or gender and requires that future faculty hiring must prioritize candidates who align with these restrictions. And on and on.
To get a sense of the breadth of the current administration’s agenda for colleges on the federal level, the Chronicle of Education has compiled an exhaustive list of its actions it has taken in the areas of civil rights, immigration and international students, educational policy, and research (https://www.chronicle.com/article/tracking-trumps-higher-ed-agenda). Arguably some of these numerous actions and policies identify areas of higher education in need of reform. In Part II, I will address some of those areas; but those specifics do not tell the story of what is really going on. We need to uncover, for example, what sorts of things led over 30 associations of higher education in a joint letter regarding Trump’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” to conclude that “the dictates set by it are harmful for higher education and our entire nation, no matter your politics. We urge the administration to reverse course and withdraw the compact” (https://www.acenet.edu/News-Room/Pages/Statement-Trump-Administration-Compact.aspx).
To get at this broader picture, I will explore how Trump’s MAGA agenda is related to the issues I began this post with: the narrowing of the value of education to economic gain and the declining role of the liberal arts and the deeper purposes of education?
MAGA reinforces the centrality of the ROI argument
Project 2025 of the Heritage Society, which has served as a blueprint for MAGA in so many areas of governance, recommended a shift in focus of education from academics to workforce preparation. Among other efforts to further this goal, a policy soon to be implemented by the administration requires colleges to document publicly the median salary of their graduates for each of the majors they offer. If the median salary of graduates for particular majors is not higher than the median salary of high school graduates 25 – 34 years of age, students who in the future have those majors will not be eligible for federal student loans and potentially lose access to Pell Grants also. Preliminary analysis indicates visual and performing arts majors are most likely not to the pass the test, which would be true also for graduates of faith-based colleges and degree programs trained to be rabbis and Talmudic scholars.
This process will not just focus college, students, and curriculum even more on economic gain, but will deprive students of federal support and perhaps even their financial ability to attend college if they want majors in curricular areas that traditionally lead to low financial reward.
MAGA influence on curriculum and the deeper purposes of education
On these matters, analysis becomes challenging because MAGA rhetoric can sometimes seem lofty, even liberal-sounding; but at a deeper level, that rhetoric is belied by MAGA actions or goals. Consider the Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, a document that Trump signed off on:
Truth-seeking is a core function of institutions of higher education. Fulfilling this mission requires maintaining a vibrant marketplace of ideas where different views can be explored, debated, and challenged…. A vibrant marketplace of ideas requires an intellectually open campus environment, with a broad spectrum of ideological viewpoints present and no single ideology dominant, both along political and other relevant lines.
The first two sentences would seem to reflect a core aspect of the mission of traditional liberal arts colleges, with the possible exception of the term “marketplace.” The next section introduces the term “ideological viewpoints,” whose meaning and scope is vague, as is its relationship to viewpoint diversity, which is the usual MAGA term. Are we to assume then that any ideology, say Marxism or that of Democrats, supposing such exists, is to be explored in the university, provided no ideology is dominant? Are we also to assume that the institution itself and its faculty members are to remain among these various ideologies?
If a university exists, as the Compact states, for truth-seeking, analysis would often lead to faculty and students concluding that a particular ideology or viewpoint does not meet standards of credibility, logic, or factual evidence. Is this kind of truth-seeking that MAGA is about? If we consider Trump’s contempt for those who disagree with him and MAGA educational policies in red states, the answer is clearly no.
Project 2025, for example, called for a patriotic, pro-American curriculum, which already suggests a possible focus on a particular political point of view, rather than on truth-seeking. Perhaps J.D. Vance’s summary and endorsement of Hungary’s approach to higher education reform under Viktor Orban clarifies what the ultimate goal is for the Trump administration: “not to eliminate universities, but to give [them] a choice between survival or taking a much less biased approach to teaching” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/06/02/trump-harvard-attack-viktor-orban-ceu-hungary/). Orban, prime minister for 16 years and recently defeated at the polls, had served the MAGA world as a right-wing model for how to consolidate power by one-party rule and control of the country’s institutions such as universities and the media.
Well, what does a “less-biased approach” mean if we judge it by the actions of MAGA and Trump regarding universities? So far, this goal has played out as calls for restrictions on the teaching of and federal research funding for matters of race, gender, sexual orientation, climate change, and any perspective that casts America, now or historically, in a negative light. “Less biased,” then, seems like code for what does not have MAGA’s approval. That makes sense when one recalls how Trump describes Democrats and their policies: human garbage, the party of hate, evil and Satan, enemies of the people, the enemy within, threats to democracy, traitors. This does not sound like someone who has any interest in both parties being given equal billing and respect on college campuses.
His approach, however, is deceptively benign because everything is done for innocent-sounding reasons: fighting discrimination, upholding viewpoint diversity, protecting students from “woke” indoctrination, and defending free speech. This approach makes it sound as if he is maintaining the traditional idea of a university as a place for exploring shared values. Sometimes the approach is backed up with calls for a required course in American history, civic classes, even Classical education models of great books and ideas. Who can object?
But what is really going on here? As Gary Lynne sees it, it reflects what went on in Orban’s Hungary (https://www.metaeconomics.info/post/the-frog-the-pot-and-hungary-s-democracy-boiled). Its rhetoric appealed to shared interests like national sovereignty and Christian religion, and protection of the real Hungary. Many were enthralled until the recent election when Hungarians overwhelming said enough. The truth, however, is that Orban’s group of shared interests were only for the set of true believers in what the inner circle of power said; others were excluded—minorities, critics, independent institutions. The mechanisms for ensuring universities were in synch with Orban’s views were financial threats, the capture of governing boards by Orban’s allies, and elimination of “problematic” academic disciplines.
We have seen each of these tactics used here on the federal level and in MAGA-controlled states like Florida and Texas, with the addition of threats to punish or replace college accreditation agencies unless they reinforce governmental priorities. Since the federal government itself has no constitutional right to control universities, its chief tactic has been to withhold funds to try to force conformity.
Here’s how Lee Bollinger, the former president of the universities of Michigan and Columbia and a current law professor, sums up what is going on (https://www.chronicle.com/article/universities-need-a-new-defense):
We are, in short, witnessing a tectonic shift in America toward the use of authoritarian tactics in many sectors of society….Long-established norms and legal precedents, hard won over decades and centuries, are being cast aside. The university is among the first (along with the press) of the major independent institutions in society to feel the brunt of this new and frightening transformation….
The basic goal of the new [softer version of] authoritarianism…is to intimidate and silence the opposition just to the point that they cannot prevent you from convincingly winning every election. The pretense of abiding by the rules and norms of democracy and of basic rights and liberties is part of this version of authoritarianism.
Rather, everything…is presented in terms of democratic ideals: protecting free speech, ending discrimination, insisting on diversity of thought, and cleansing the society of traitors. Repression in the name of noble values is calibrated to chill speech enough to weaken but not destroy the opposition.
I find these assessments frightening but well-aligned with the available evidence. Moreover, all of this is being done so subtly or deceptively that the reality of what is really going on escapes many voters who do not have the time or inclination to dig into the news. At the same time, the administration’s efforts provide a group of shared values and interests, as exclusionary as they be, for people to identify with and feel part of a community, just as many Hungarians rallied around the exclusionary shared values enunciated by Orban.
As for the colleges themselves, MAGA threats of financial strangulation have definitely had the effect of making them wary of being seen as stepping out of line. And if colleges adopted the administration’s view of the liberal arts, at best it would be a hollowed-out version with MAGA beliefs as the standard of truth. Even If we grant the complaint of MAGA that universities are now indoctrinating students with leftist radicalism, the MAGA replacement would merely be a changing of the guard, with one big exception: The Democratic politicians have never to my knowledge been active in intervening in or threatening higher education if they do not comply with their viewpoints. Having universities dictated to by politicians makes a mockery of the search for truth, corrupts their deeper purposes, and establishes a path to authoritarianism.
(Part II to follow. It will explore some interim steps that can be taken to ease the crisis, including suggestions for some reforms universities can undertake to strengthen trust and address legitimate concerns.)
It is also about just who is to give content to what We the People share. It is about the content of our shared-with-the-other-interest, the content of the moral and ethical dimension, the content of the “We” The assault on American Universities by the MAGA Extreme Right is a claim lacking in truth content that only the “us-MAGA” have the knowledge and the right to give substance to that content. The key role of the serious and systematic enquiry within the social sciences and humanities in our Universities to help find the content of what We the People share is not only downplayed but often denied. It comes down to who gets to define that content … see https://metaeconomics.substack.com/p/who-gets-to-define-the-we-with-our ….