Lee Bollinger, president emeritus of Columbia University and former president of the University of Michigan, recently called for a “NATO for universities.”
“When one university is attacked, everyone commits to coming to their defense,” he proposed on a panel gathered at the headquarters of the progressive think tank New America.
Academic research, DEI programming and even syllabi are under attack from federal and state lawmakers. A security cooperation similar to NATO where institutions rally to each other’s defense is appealing and, in many ways, necessary. And Bollinger isn’t the first to suggest such an alliance. A faculty-led organization has set up mutual academic defense compacts in keeping with the “an attack on one is an attack on all” mentality. They’re mounting a united front in the fight for academic and scientific integrity and institutional autonomy.
But fellow New America panelist Dominique Baker, an associate professor of education and public policy at the University of Delaware, challenged the efficacy of Bollinger’s vision: “We need to think from a broader perspective than the Columbias and Michigans of the world,” she said. “How do we create a coalition that works for the good of community colleges and … highly resourced research universities?”
It’s true that the administration has directly targeted a slew of wealthy research universities. Arguably, those are institutions that already have the money, legal teams and political clout to fight back. Meanwhile, the other thousands of institutions in the sector are struggling to operate in the regulatory chaos and financial uncertainty created by the administration. From clambering to comply with rushed accountability regulations to scraping together support for minority students to buckling under harsher visa restrictions for international students, institutions of all types are feeling the pain.
Another way to think about a NATO for higher ed could be greater burden sharing across the sector. When they’re not defending against attacks, NATO members are fortifying their military and political resources together. During peacetime, they secure their operations, share intelligence, consult on political matters and maintain standards on equipment and military procedures.
Even if higher ed institutions don’t need help fending off an attack, they could benefit from a more unified front. They could collectively guard against threats such as low enrollment, the rising cost of back-office services or the decline in public trust.
Examples abound of where this type of cooperation is already working. The 18 R-1 institutions in the Big Ten Academic Alliance share library infrastructure and subscriptions, organize course sharing for less commonly taught languages, collaborate on leadership training, and even share a high-speed fiber-optic broadband network. For over 50 years, the colleges in the Five College Consortium in western Massachusetts have coordinated on academic programming, cost savings in operations (they, too, have their own fiber-optic network) and forming partnerships with outside organizations like local transit authorities to provide free bus services among their campuses. But the recently announced closure of one of those institutions, Hampshire College, shows that even the most established partnerships can’t protect institutions from every risk.
Collaborations don’t have to be as ambitious as spanning multiple departments and universities to fortify institutions. In a recent episode of The Key, Inside Higher Ed’s news and analysis podcast, Marjorie Hass, president of the Council of Independent Colleges, said some CIC members are experimenting with course sharing among geographically dispersed institutions that are mission aligned. Others are outsourcing the burden of business and regulatory compliance to a third party to take care of cost reviews, financial modeling or technology assessment.
Yet Hass noted that even among small independent colleges, deep-set commitments to institutional identity can often make partnerships harder than they appear. “The question I put to our presidents is this: How much autonomy would you trade for whatever the good is you think you’re getting—a firmer financial footing or a stronger ability to serve your mission or an ability to meet the needs of current students in a better way?” she said. “In higher ed, autonomy is a strong value.”
The very identities and cultures that have made institutions worth fighting for could ultimately be what undermines any partnership that could save them. But the threats facing higher ed—financial hardships, low enrollments, politicization—care little about the categories institutions put themselves in. They’re also the problems that won’t magically disappear when a different party controls the White House. Hampshire’s closure is proof that even long-standing alliances can’t guarantee insulation from pernicious challenges.
The question is whether institutions can set aside their status and autonomy to build the kind of alliances that benefit the entire sector and actually hold—in peacetime and in battle.
Sara Custer is editor in chief at Inside Higher Ed.
