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Americanswers! What’s happening in Trump’s battle with universities?
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We answer your questions on the future of US universities.
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Justin Webb
For the last question and answer session of the year, we are going to focus on one topic because it is the topic that interests you. It interests you, apparently, more than any other. We had a massive, massive reaction from listeners to this topic. The biggest response we've ever had. I sound like Donald Trump, don't I? But it was the biggest response ever from you. The topic is universities in higher education. So as the Trump administration administration carries on with its threats to defund colleges, including of course, the most prestigious, the elite universities, some of those universities are negotiating, others are saying no. Plenty of people say it's been a long time coming and that there is no such thing as proper academic freedom and that maybe Donald Trump will help with that. And we heard from a very staunch Donald Trump supporter earlier in the year.
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Inez Stepman
Who said just that universities have departed from their central mission, which is the inquiry into truth. There's a democratic correction to that because they are, they are creatures of the state. They are not independent from the state. If, again, if they want to be independent from the state, they're more than free to do that. Harvard has a $53 billion endowment that's more than the GDP of many countries. These are not weak institutions. These are institutions that have become incredibly wealthy, not because of the particular learning that they're imparting to their students. Right. But because they, they serve. And increasingly, what they've served as are networking institutions for already wealthy, already elite people.
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Justin Webb
That was Inez Stepman so Was she right? Was she wrong? Time to answer your questions on universities and the future of higher education in Donald Trump's America. Welcome to AmericasT.
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AmericasT, AmericasT from BBC News, when Donald.
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Anthony Zurcher
Trump calls, they say, yes, sir, right away, sir. Happy to lick your boot, sir.
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Donald Trump (archive clips)
We are the sickest country in the world.
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Lindsay Davis
Oh, dear.
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Are you worried that billionaires are going to go hungry?
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Inez Stepman
Of course the president supports peaceful protests.
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Homes.com Advertiser
What a stupid question.
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Donald Trump (archive clips)
Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?
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Anthony Zurcher
Hello, it's Anthony in Washington D.C. and.
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Justin Webb
It'S Justin in the worldwide headquarters of AmericasT in London, England. Now, Anthony, before we get going and hear from both the protagonists and those who were antagonized by our protagonists, if I could put it like that, let's get a bit of context of what we're talking about here. Give us the kind of broader brush of where we are and where the universities are.
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Anthony Zurcher
Well, the Trump administration came in at the beginning of this year with a plan to use the powers of the federal government, particularly the funding powers and the investigatory powers of the federal government, to influence higher education across the board, from the Harvards of the world to the state colleges, California state colleges, colleges across this country, public and private, in a way that conservative administrations just hadn't in the past. And they did this in part by launching investigations into Harvard, other Ivy League schools, other prominent colleges on what they said were rampant antisemitism. They used the Education Department to order inquiries into whether administration policy in these different higher education facilities were anti Semitic, that they weren't sympathetic enough to Jewish students on campus, particularly in the light of all of the anti Israel protests over the past year. Beyond that, however, they used anti Semitism as one justification, but it was part of a larger effort to influence and bend higher education away from what they saw were too liberal values. And so they were trying to get rid of, say, diversity programs in admissions and hiring. They were trying to limit or have additional screening of foreign students coming into these universities to change the way, in their view, universities were becoming hostile to American values, to conservative values, and to expand and protect free speech and viewpoint diversity, as did not just among the student body, but also among the facilities. So it was a broad attempt to use federal government to pressure the Harvards on down of the world to reform and to become more open to conservative values, but also to change the makeup of their universities.
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Justin Webb
Yeah, and to meritocracy as it used to be understood. The people who are good get the best posts, and those who aren't so good, never mind the color of their skin. Don't let's listen to the Trump administration's point, because it was made to us very forcefully, I thought, by Inez Stepman, who's a specialist in education policy and actually had quite a big influence, I think it's fair to say, behind the scenes on what the Trump administration was doing. She's senior policy and legal analyst for the Independent Women's Forum and Independent Women's Law center, and she was on our pod talking to us back in October.
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Inez Stepman
Yeah. I mean, first, I'd say it's laughable that elite universities like Harvard are creating actual diversity with their student bodies. They're creating a rainbow of race, but they're not creating actual diversity, for example, of political view or, for that matter, of socioeconomic background. Schools are free to build a diverse class. They're completely free to do that. They're just not free to do it on the basis of race. They're not free to put their thumb on the scale and say, well, we're going to privilege this applicant because he's black or Hispanic, and we're going to downgrade this applicant because he's white or Asian. There is this creep of ideology. You know, universities have leaned left forever, you know, but what has been a relatively new phenomenon is two things. One, the extent of the monoculture. You used that word before. But the extent to which anybody of even centrist views, let alone conservative views, has been totally marginalized on university campuses. They really are activism training camps for the far left. And then why shouldn't the two thirds or more of the country that doesn't subscribe to that ideology say, well, why are we sending our tax dollars here? All of these major important institutions in American corporate life, these companies that are Fortune 500 or Fortune 100 companies, all of a sudden, they're having struggle sessions and they're hiring on the basis of race in a very open way. A bunch of these companies, for example, in 2020 announced that they were going to have 30% people of color as their employees by 2025. And then they went ahead and did it. They made hiring decisions based on race. So, no, it didn't stop at the campus. We didn't see people sort of grow up and take their nose ring out. What happened is that campus politics moved into all of the institutions of American life.
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Justin Webb
Okay, that was pretty forceful, wasn't it? Let's hear the other side. It comes from the Cornell president. Cornell, of course, itself a top university. Michael Kotlikoff, and the president of Penn state as well, Dr. Neeli Bendaputi, who are talking to ABC's Lindsay Davis.
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Anthony Zurcher
All of our universities are really striving to do what Ezra Cornell called the greatest good to try and add value to our country. We're not perfect. We have issues that we need to address. We are providing new knowledge, new products, impacting our economy and most importantly, transforming young individuals lives.
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Lindsay Davis
President Bendapudi, first of all, thank you. We've all talked about the return on investment which is extraordinarily important. We are not here in the business of teaching you what to think. We want you to be better critical thinkers so you can separate the noise from the signal. That is what higher education is about and it's up to, to us to make sure we keep it affordable. And your zip code should not dictate whether you have the opportunity to study at any of our fine institutions.
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Anthony Zurcher
To dive right in, we have one question, the first, which is kind of a general question and it is, are there two types of universities in the us, Public and private. What are all the sources of funding for US universities? That's from Ray Carrick in Liverpool. Justin. Two types of universities here, right? Same as the uk.
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Justin Webb
Yeah. So no. So in, in the UK there are private places you can go, but generally all our universities, including the top ones, the Oxfords, Cambridge, London School of Economics, those kind of places, they're all public. So we don't have anything like the same system nor are they the top ones, anything like as rich as the top American universities. I mean the disparity is absolutely staggering between say Oxford and, and Harvard. In many ways you could compare those two as world class universities but actually when it comes to the money that they've got in their back pockets as it were, there's no comparison at all. And the public and private thing is interesting because there are, and I know this from when I lived in the States and we thought we might stay, Anthony, because as you may remember, we rather like the place. And we were looking at universities for my youngest daughter, US citizen and I hadn't realized actually the extent to which there are very, very good public universities around the place. And obviously I suppose in a sense the most famous of them is Berkeley, the Berkeley campus of the University of California, but there are plenty of others as well. So there are top universities that you can go to that are public universities and they cost a lot less. But the kind of all the top ones, all the ones that you've heard of in, in a sense outside the United States, Anthony, it's fair to say, are private Aren't they?
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Anthony Zurcher
Right. Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Yale, University of Chicago, they're all private. So I guess it's flipped from the way it is in the UK because they are certainly the most prestigious and as you point out, they're the ones with the most money. They have these endowments that are billions of dollars. They have facilities that are world class, while there are some top flight state universities, Berkeley being one of them, Michigan being another, University of Virginia not too far away from here in Washington D.C. university of Texas. Of course they are different in size compared to smaller private schools that educate fewer people but have the same amount of resources or more to provide for them. All right, let's go on to our next question. This is from Madeline, she emailed it to us. And it is a, a two part question. Why do the elite universities get so much money from the government? It's not to teach undergraduates, but to carry out research into areas that the government has deemed worthy of grants. And that's true. The elite universities do get money from the government, Madeline. They get it in these research grants. Harvard gets billions of dollars from the federal government to carry out all sorts of research and they also get support in government help for student loans for people who attend these universities and some other forms of funding. So the federal government, Justin, they do have their fingers in higher education, whether it's elite universities or these state colleges which also get funding directly from the states and local governments.
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Justin Webb
Yeah. So the second part of Madeleine's question. Someone like J.D. vance, Vice President, of course, is very likely to get into an elite university if he has the right academic credentials and test scores and, and to be fully funded by the elite universities with their huge endowments. And that wouldn't happen at a state university. She says allowances would normally be made for someone from Vance's background. He would have gone to the front of the queue if he did well in his entrance exams. And broadly speaking, that's another big difference, Anthony, because that doesn't happen in the uk. I mean our funding system and the way you get in and all the rest of it is very different. But if you are super bright and the university wants to fund you, they have this thing called needs blind, don't they? Funding where if your parents can't pony up the money, they will.
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Anthony Zurcher
Yes. Yeah. And that's the case for both public and private schools where you get more financial aid if you have less income. And the thing to remember is a lot of these private schools are very, very expensive. Their sticker price $50,000 a semester even to attend.
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Justin Webb
That's why my daughter's at university.
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Anthony Zurcher
In Britain, you're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for a private education. But if you come from less affluent backgrounds in places like Harvard and other Ivy League schools, if your family makes under $100,000 a year, you can go there tuition free. Now, there's dramatic reductions in tuition at these state schools, as you mentioned, particularly if you live in the state where you're going. So say a Texas resident gets a big discount on going to the University of Texas if you live in Virginia. The Virginia state schools are less expensive, but they also have their own support and aid that reflects whether you come from a low income background or not. And as you mentioned, this idea of need blind admissions, and not all private schools do that. Boston University, for instance, does not have need blind admissions. They look if you can afford it before they decide whether you can get in. But a lot of schools do, and you get in. And then they say, we'll find a way to help you through student loans and subsidies and everything else to pay for it.
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Justin Webb
Yeah. And that's what would have happened with J.D. vance, given his very, very humble background. Before he got to Yale, it was, wasn't it, that he went to.
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Anthony Zurcher
Okay, he went to Ohio State. So he went in state undergrad and then Yale for law school. And the reality is, when we talk about the elite schools, the Harvards and Stanfords and Princetons and Chicago's of the world, their incoming freshman undergraduate classes are hundreds of people. They get tens of thousands of applicants. There's just not that many seats there. So not everyone can go to Harvard. Even if you have perfect grades and you've done all of this volunteer work and you've done all of this community service and you've done all of these extracurricular activities, it's still a wheel on the lottery. You spin and you gotta hope that you can get the right kind of blend to get in. A lot of people, however, do go to these big state schools which take in, in their freshman class, tens of thousands of students. University of Texas, I think their undergraduate enrollment is 50,000. Ohio State is probably closer to 60 or 70,000 students.
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Justin Webb
Yeah. Just on the subject of how you get in. Before we let Madeleine's questions alone, because they were a really interesting question. I just want to drill down on the getting in. We'll get to the race side of it in a second. But just. It really helps, doesn't it, if mommy and daddy have endowed the library or something? And that again in Britain that doesn't help, actually. In fact, we would probably get you not in. But in the United States they're quite open about it. I mean, I have friends who have kids at top American universities and at least two couples I'm thinking of gave very, very large sums for years to those universities. And it's not corrupt, it's just sort of an accepted practice, isn't it?
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Anthony Zurcher
Accepted practice, yes. That's not the case for state schools. So I give a little bit of money to the University of Texas every year. That was not going to get either of my kids special advantage on application. State schools have their own legislatively mandated admissions requirements. But for private schools, if I had paid for a wing at Georgetown University in their new library, or if I donated to endow a professorship at Columbia University, absolutely, it would help you. I mean, it all comes down to, to money, Justin. And these schools, particularly private schools, they make money by tuition. They make money from the federal government, but may make a lot of money from donations from their alumni. And so they nurture those sources of income. They try to expand it.
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Justin Webb
Yeah. Okay. Well, that brings us very neatly to a question from James. I enjoyed your recent episode about American universities, including the interviewees comments. However, your questioning could have been much more probing. I think James has got me in mind here. It struck me they simply want American universities to be even whiter. This is the Trump people. And to teach, encourage and endorse Trump type beliefs. Were these things already happening? Would they genuinely be taking the stance that they are? I doubt it. James says, Anthony, there is, there has.
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Anthony Zurcher
Been pressure from the Trump administration to change how universities are operating. And I think that is, is something that is worth looking into. Are they trying to essentially tilt the playing field a different way? They're saying, oh, it's too liberal. But are they now trying to bend universities to be more conservative, more friendly to their side, maybe even to disadvantaged liberal students? And I mean, I think they have a long way to go to undertake that. But it's certainly worth looking at what is the real agenda behind this. And for a long time, universities have been hotbeds, breeding grounds, if you want to use a loaded term for liberal ideas. They tend to produce individuals who have a more liberal worldview than people who don't go to universities full stop. And so if you talk to conservatives, they're pushing back on that and they think that needs to change. But their agenda is pretty obvious too. It's not just about free speech and openness and meritocracy. I think they want to change the politics of this country and going after universities as a way of doing it.
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Justin Webb
Yeah, I mean, I don't disagree with any of that. And I think. I think, you know, it would be naive to think, oh, Donald Trump is going into American universities and sorting them out so that they're academically free. What a wonderful thing. I don't think the man himself actually would suggest that he's particularly interested in academic freedom. And it's just. It's never been a thing for him, but I think it is a fact, and you just can't really argue with this. There have been and there have been some big cases. The case that. That comes to my mind is Carol Hooven, who was a professor at Harvard of evolutionary biology who lost her job in 2021. You can look her up. So this is before Trump's second term. It's without Trump at all. It's in the Biden era. She lost her job at Harvard because she said there were two sexes and you can't change sex. She's a professor of evolutionary biology. She's got. At the very least, she's got the right to have that opinion, whether or not you regard it as fact. Let's not even go there. So the idea that there was this sort of wonderful prelapsarian moment of academic freedom and then Trump comes in with his waders and stamps on it all, I think is also naive. So I kind of. I take your point absolutely, about the Trump administration not necessarily acting in good faith, but I do also think there's no question at all, and American academics would tell you this, at least privately, that there was something to be done.
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Anthony Zurcher
Yeah. And I think a good example of that now is you're seeing liberal professors under the spotlight and some of them losing their jobs. And conservative groups like Turning Point usa, compiling lists of what they say are indoctrinating liberal professors who are pushing their political views onto students. And so in places like Texas A and M, you see professors getting into hot water for what they're teaching and being told that they can't teach, that there aren't two genders. So, I mean, it's a flip on the other side now, and I think that kind of exposes it. You know, in this question, James talks about whether Trump wants colleges to be whiter. And I will say that the group that brought the lawsuit against Harvard and their admissions were Asian parents, not white parents, although I think there were white groups supporting that, too. But if anything, there might be an end result of all of this, that a Lot of universities have fewer Hispanic and black students at the very top, but probably have more Asian students because oftentimes they have been. And there was evidence that Harvard was downgrading their applications because they were heavier on high academic excellence and less full of volunteer activity and extracurricular stuff.
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Justin Webb
Let's talk a bit about foreign students, Anthony, and let's hear from the man himself.
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Donald Trump (archive clips)
We're getting along very well with China, and I'm getting along very well with President Xi. I think it's very insulting to say students can't come here because they'll go out, they'll start building schools, and they'll be able to survive it. But I like that their students come here. I like that other country's students come here. And you know what would happen if they didn't? Our college system would go to hell very quickly. You'd have. And it wouldn't be the top colleges. It would be colleges that struggle on the bottom. And you take out 300,000 or 600,000 students out of the system. I like having. And I told this to President Xi, that we're honored to have their students here.
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Anthony Zurcher
Yeah, that's kind of interesting. And Trump got in hot water for saying that, because in the past, he had expressed an interest in limiting foreign enrollment in American universities. And many people in his circles in his movement wanted to see limits on foreign enrollment. And in fact, the Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education that the Trump administration, the Education Department, was pushing, wanted in order to give preferential treatment to universities, they have to agree to cap foreign enrollment as well as to promote conservative ideas and to end race and sex consideration and hiring and admissions. But foreign enrollment was part of that. And here Donald Trump is essentially reversing himself.
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Justin Webb
That then takes us onto costs for US Students. And Stephen Bennett has emailed. I've just been listening to the Americas program about universities. The interview with Ines Stetman. I was very frustrated. Stephen says that you didn't ask the question, how does Trump's attack on higher education in the USA help reduce the financial burden on students? It was a point she brought up several times. You didn't really address it. Address it. Now, then, does what Trump is doing make any difference to the financial burden?
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Anthony Zurcher
I think what the Trump administration and conservatives like Inez would say is that you're reducing the overhead. You're reducing all this bloat in the university bureaucracy that is costing so much money, and that is what is driving up tuitions. And so if you control that, if you get colleges and universities back to their core mission, which is to provide education for students. Then by cutting all that other stuff out, then tuition will come down. Additionally, it's justification for some of their push to cut student loans. They say the easy access to student loans, government subsidized student loans is in fact making it easier for colleges to drive up tuition, to raise tuition. Because if all these students have access to to student loan money and they can get it really easily, then they have more money to spend on education and then the universities can charge more. So I mean, I think it's kind of a two part thing that is their justification. Whether that in reality translates into lower tuition. I think there is an active debate over that.
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Justin Webb
Yeah. And the tuition is outrageous and you don't have to be in the Trump administration to believe that. Indeed, lots of people right across the United States. I don't know if you feel you got value for money for yours, Anthony, you're in a very well upholstered BBC studio.
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Anthony Zurcher
I know it worked out all right for me, I suppose, but I went to College in the 1990s and what I paid and I got financial aid, I got Pell Grants, which is government aid for low income students to attend Georgetown University. But even then the tuition was $8,000 a semester. I think it was. And now like I said, there are colleges in the United States, George Washington University right here, I think it's $60,000. And yes, I think it's also a big problem. That population has grown so much, but what's considered elite hasn't. And there's still only 30 years ago we would talk about Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, all of the Ivy Leagues and then the seats there. And now they're so many more people trying to get into them and there's still the same number of chairs. That's a problem. Now whether the solution is for as the Trump administration has been talking about pressuring these universities to expand, pressuring these universities to use their money to spend on vocational schools and other sorts of outlets for people who don't want to go to college. It's a complicated challenge. But right now it feels like the system isn't working for a lot of Americans and you spend all of this money on education in the hopes that it translates into successful careers. But it is a pinch for a lot of families, even with all of the financial aid you can get.
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Justin Webb
We have a final question. It's a very good one, comes from Jonathan. My daughter has the opportunity of an athletic scholarship funded university education in the U.S. however, I see campus gun crime, unpredictable visa conditions, a swing to the far right policies, political interference with universities, increasing vitriolic public debate. It seems to me that this is not the time to go. Am I right, Anthony?
- [27:24]
Anthony Zurcher
I mean, a college scholarship in the United States to do sports, that's a really valuable thing. And a college education in the United States is very valuable. And I will say that it depends on where this school is. If you feel like the trends towards Trumpism, conservatism is not something that you agree with or want your child to be around, look at which state it is. If it's Texas, maybe you should look elsewhere. If it's a place like California or New York, I think your family might be very happy there. This is a big country, so don't write off the entire United States if that's your view. I would drill down a little deeper and do more research on the school and where it is.
- [28:13]
Justin Webb
I would just say go, go for goodness sake. We give the impression sometimes that America is all about politics and gun violence and there is political strife and there is gun violence, but it's about so much else as well. It's just so much opportunity. And my goodness, that scholarship, as Anthony says, if you're getting the full scholarship, are you getting health insurance? You're getting the whole package, for goodness sake. Go is my advice. Right, that's it. Thanks so much for all the questions. Really interesting and it is a subject I think we'll probably come back to.
- [28:45]
Anthony Zurcher
I think it was a really interesting discussion and as Justin said at the top, we really, really appreciate your feedback and we want to try to make this an exchange of views and call us to account if you think we're missing something or there's something you think we should pay attention to. So until next time, bye all. Bye. Thank you for listening to another episode. It's you, the Ameracaster that makes AmericasT the community. It is. If you like what you've heard, please do subscribe to this podcast on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts. We always want to hear your feedback and we look at every single bit of correspondence we get. You can send us an email americastbc co uk our WhatsApp is 44-33-01-239480 and of course you can get involved in the americast discord server. The link to that is in the description. Until next time, bye.
- [29:52]
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Inez Stepman
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