Colleges Wonder if They Will Be ‘the Enemy’ Under Trump

The New York Times ^ | Nov. 12, 2024, 2:39 p.m. ET | Vimal Patel and Sharon Otterman

[E. Pluribus Unum]

For many years, Republicans portrayed colleges as bastions of leftism, awash in bias against conservatives and impervious to change.

With Donald J. Trump’s victory to a second presidential term and a Congress potentially under unified G.O.P. control, Republicans are now poised to escalate their efforts to root out what they see as progressive ideology in higher education.

The return to power of Mr. Trump comes at a vulnerable moment for higher education. Universities have been under increasing pressure from lawmakers, while public confidence in colleges has fallen. Last year, two Ivy League presidents resigned following their widely panned performances before Congressional panels that grilled them about how they handled pro-Palestinian activists on their campus. Other top university leaders have resigned amid criticism over protest responses.

Mr. Trump has said he thought that colleges needed to be reclaimed from “Marxist maniacs,” and his running mate, JD Vance, has described universities as “the enemy.” (Both men attended Ivy League institutions.)

Republicans have often trained their focus mainly on highly selective campuses, but their proposed policies could have a wider impact. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — an outline for Mr. Trump’s second term that he has tried to distance himself from — calls for sweeping changes, like privatizing all student loans, rolling back protections for transgender students, and paring back diversity efforts on campus.

“This is a moment of enormity for American higher education,” said Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities. “Many of President Trump’s top advisers are the architects of Project 2025, which seeks to dismantle higher education, not reform it, and to replace what they perceive as woke Marxist ideology with their own conservative ideology.”

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Universities have become a racket whose main purpose is to bury dumb eighteen year olds in "student loan debt" for worthless degrees in imaginary "disciplines."

It's high time we reached peak "higher education."

[No name given]

Well said.

[SunkenCiv]

• Trump Reveals Plan to Reclaim our Educational Institutions from Radical Left Indoctrination [11/11/2024]
• USC President Becomes Latest to Resign After Campus Antisemitism [11/12/2024]

[nonliberal]

Nice multimillion dollar endowments you have there. It would be a shame if someone taxed them.

[blitz128]

I would say most 99%

[Da Coyote]

What’s their problem since they are ‘The Enemy’ from the majority of us already.

[metmom]

“Many of President Trump’s top advisers are the architects of Project 2025, which seeks to dismantle higher education, not reform it, and to replace what they perceive as woke Marxist ideology with their own conservative ideology.”

Hey! No fair!

Now they're horning in on our territory.

They can't do what we've always done. It's not fair.

[No name given]

Obviously.

[Da Coyote]

Oops, had a Biden moment. Should read “...’The Enemy of...”

[Lockbox]

You think? Colleges have supported the hater’s of America. Don’t blame Trump, blame yourselves because of your hate of America!

[Nextrush]

The outpouring of Anti-Israel protest has put Higher Education in a bad light if nothing else did before Trump intends to control accreditation on a national level for colleges-universities.

At the same time he is decentralizing control of Primary and Secondary Education back to the states.

[Fledermaus]

I knew it was a scam in 1977 in my freshman year when half of my entering class were taking remedial classes. Stuff they should have learned in high school. I did.

I filed my first degree as a junior. Mist were still changing majors.

[eyedigress]

Colleges and Universities should cosign every student loan.

Taxpayers should not be on the hook for indoctrination centers for socialism.

[blackdog]

They are no matter who is the president.

[EnderWiggin1970]

Academia is one of the key institutions that needs to be brought to heel in any renewal of America. The propagandists and their brainwashing must be thoroughly driven out; but this will basically empty many departments in their entirety. Which will be no loss from the standpoint of actual education. Even 30+ years ago when I was in college the non-STEM classes were all brainwashing, with each prof having a clear and distinct emphasis - the anthropology prof pushing Marxism, the socialist economics professors, the anti-imperialist Indian history prof, the very atheistic astronomy prof, the post-modern English literature teachers and so on. I’m sure it’s even worse now.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Just make all loan contracts with anybody under 21 null and void.

Put the student loan predators out of business.

[nvskibum]

Tax all income earned by university endowments. Deny tax deductions for gifts made to universities.

Let them pay full freight without taxpayer subsidies.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Forgive all student loans by taking it out of university endowments.

[Prole]

Most “University Faculty” are the sworn enemies toward anyone in his right mind.

In a sane world, they would all be FIRED and the Faculties would be forced to start from scratch.

This goes DOUBLE for the “Tenured Professors” who are nothing more than rabid leftoids and school-yard bullies.

[Tell It Right]

Colleges Wonder if They Will Be ‘the Enemy’ Under Trump

I already voted for Trump. You don't have to sell it to me.