After a year that has tested the resiliency of a centuries-old sector, ideas for reinvention have emerged. Most agree that higher ed is in a moment of crisis, but few agree on what exactly is the cause. In a higher ed landscape rich with a diversity of institutions, agreement on a common cure is impossible. That’s where the visions for the future of higher ed diverge.
Research universities have lost billions in federal funding, rich selective universities face higher endowment taxes starting next summer, and institutions relying on TRIO grants or minority-serving–institutions funding saw millions of dollars disappear overnight. Despite polls suggesting improvements in public sentiment toward higher ed, the truth is support for colleges remains poor– confidence in higher ed is lower than the 52 percent of Americans who trust the insurance industry. What these issues reveal is a problem that forces outside and within the academy acknowledge: Higher ed’s compact with the American public is broken.
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Conservative thinkers have put forward proposals for how higher ed should respond to this “crisis.” These ideas, billed as reinvention, read less like bold visions and more like pushes for greater politicization and government intervention. Take the Manhattan Institute’s Statement on Higher Education. It proposes reforms that are “starting points” for the restoration of academia, “which can push back the forces of radicalism and create the space for real knowledge.” It also suggests that the U.S. president should require institutions to agree to terms such as merit-based decision-making and reporting on campus attitudes toward free speech and civil discourse. The White House’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education (which was widely rejected by the sector) proposed a commitment to five-year tuition freezes, single-sex bathrooms and standardized admissions tests in exchange for preferential treatment in research funding.
The Heritage Foundation’s Heritage 2.0, a sequel to Project 2025, wants to “reclaim institutions of higher education from the radical left,” principally by shutting down the Department of Education. The American Enterprise Institute launched its Future of the American University project in November, which aims to help academic institutions “regain the public trust” through explorations in conservative education, viewpoint diversity and university governance.
Higher ed’s own response to the problem, so far, has been to double down on mission. Dozens of presidents in the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and the Phi Beta Kappa society issued a list of the “enduring principles” that higher ed embraces when it’s fulfilling the public trust. The commitments included affordability, opportunity, excellence and partnership. AAC&U also launched its Advancing Public Trust in Higher Education initiative, which claims to unite higher education, business and civil society to “communicate the value of a college education in compelling ways” and “highlight liberal education as central to preparing students for a healthy democracy.”
Cornell University’s Committee on the Future of the American University, launched in September, tasked 18 academics to reimagine “where necessary” the institution’s mission in a “consequential moment in the history of higher education.” The effort to “move forward in a principled way,” as described on its website, is worthwhile, but could lead to stagnation in the face of crisis.
But between the conservative calls for greater restrictions on institutional independence and higher ed’s recommitments, some colleges are experimenting with genuine reinvention in the education students invest in and how it prepares them for life after they graduate.
In November, Drew University, a private liberal arts institution in New Jersey, launched a new college built on a “broader definition of learning” that uses evolving technology to scale access and focuses on hands-on experience and problem solving. “We’re building a radically different school—one cohort at a time,” president Hilary L. Link said. Meanwhile, Brandeis University launched its “Brandeis Plan to Reinvent the Liberal Arts” in September. The $25 million project will expand internships and career pathways, support faculty in redesigning degrees, and launch a Center for Careers and Applied Liberal Arts. And, in August, the American Council of Learned Societies, in partnership with the American Historical Association, the Modern Language Association and the Society of Biblical Literature, launched “Doctoral Futures,” a three-year initiative aiming to “reimagine humanities Ph.D. programs with new structures, policies, and academic cultures that will better prepare the next generation of knowledge producer.”
The decline in public trust in higher ed, which began 10 years ago, was driven far more by rising tuition fees, insufficient career preparation and poor retention rates than ideological concerns. The sector agrees a crisis in the compact with the American public exists; the question now is whether higher ed will reinvent itself around the right problem.
Sara Custer is editor in chief at Inside Higher Ed.
