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Higher education is struggling. Several factors, including a smaller youth population, increased skepticism about debt and the financial value of a degree, and the Trump administration’s reductions in international student visas, have led to a contraction in the once-rapidly growing sector. According to a recent report by NPR, about a quarter of the country’s private colleges and universities are at risk of closing or merging within the next ten years. Layoffs have spread to prominent institutions such as USC, Northwestern, Stanford, and DePaul. Syracuse University’s financial woes recently attracted the Wall Street Journal’s attention. Public colleges aren’t immune. Pennsylvania recently consolidated several smaller state universities, and Clemson is offering buyouts to more than four hundred of its 6,000 employees.
At the same time, with Democrats poised to take the House of Representatives and the Senate, their wide-open primary will dominate political discussion through 2027 and into 2028, with perhaps a dozen or more candidates vying for approval from left-wing activists. One way to get that approval might be to propose having the government financially rescue higher education.
Academia is a major source of donations and votes for Democrats. It has become a cliché to point out the disparities in political donations and party registration among professors. If you see a dark blue dot in a sea of red on a map of recent election results, you’re probably looking at a college town. The prospect of donations and votes could suffice to tempt Democrats to throw a lifeline to the academic part of their coalition, but cultural and emotional matters may be even more important.
For many in the college-educated class, their degrees are vital to their self-perception as society's natural aristocracy, and polarization is making the educated class an increasingly dominant part of the Democratic coalition. With widespread conflation of educational credentials with moral authority, expect this threat to higher education to be portrayed as a moral and social crisis.
For example, at the end of September, the Trump administration proposed to ban the use of federal student loans for programs whose graduates earn (according to IRS data) less than the average high school graduate. According to the Los Angeles Times (via The Grio), only about five percent of degree programs would fail this test, most of them in for-profit institutions. The progressive commentariat on Twitter hurled accusations of fascism, expressing shock that anyone would put a monetary value on a college degree. Writing on MS NOW’s website, Reynold Verret, president of Xavier University of Louisiana, summarized this view a bit less stridently: “Social mobility should extend beyond individual advancement. Its fullest expression involves creating opportunities for others and fostering collective progress…return on investment evolves into return on societal impact.”
College-educated liberals have become the most prominent part of the Democratic coalition just as the higher education sector is facing unprecedented fiscal strain, and the Democrats are about to start a wide-open presidential primary. All the ingredients are present for bailing out colleges and universities. Expect it to become a major issue in 2027, 2028, and beyond.
Discussion (17)
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Well, this isn't going to be a popular opinion, but maybe we need to let some of these places either fail or contract back to being manageable. Most have become just playgrounds for "kids". From Kim Strassel's article in October's Imprimis:
The "it" she is talking about is the rise of Democratic Socialism, BTW. As with a ton of other things (healthcare), the only fix is to get government money out of it, PERIOD! Not pour more into it.
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This is what "it" is, money spent on socialization instead of education. The process inhibits children from becoming adults.
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Easy federal money is what created this mess. A direct subsidy program is too naked a payoff to a constituency.
It will have to be bundled into the Research, Opportunity and Scholarship Act of 2027 on the grounds that Trump allegedly crippled science, DEI and the American dream. The funds will be conveniently structured to allow for a generous administrative overhead for implementation of silly programs so as to be a modest subsidy for the university non-teaching employees who are Dem loyalists.
Even if passed, that will not restore the golden goose. The universities got too greedy, the product too devalued and the failure of the last few generations to make enough babies for the grfit to continue.
Employers used to be able to rely on the fact of a degree from a recognized school as a signal of quality. That is clearly no longer true. Relieved from DEI obligations, more relevant criteria will evolve and that in turn will have an effect of what colleges do but dragged kicking and screaming.
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I suspect your opinion is far more popular than you believe. Colleges today are the 21st century version of the pre-Civil War 19th-century plantation. A place where a privileged few (administrators) exploit the efforts of those less fortunate (taxpayers, students left with unmanageable debt, the ABDs, and adjunct instructors, among others). They need a come-to-Jesus moment and a return to their function of real education.
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It is also a way to pay off friends with high-paying cushy low-effort jobs. Tax payers think that colleges are in the business of preparing young adults for careers, but in reality, colleges are mostly socialist indoctrination camps and payola for fellow travelers. They all need a house cleaning.
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