EVAN GOLDSTEIN: For years, the public perception of higher ed has been sagging, especially among self-identified conservatives. Universities are on much weaker ground when making their case because they’ve lost half the country at this point. The strongest argument in defense of what the Trump administration is doing is that essentially these institutions are so far gone, they cannot save themselves. And we’ve reached a, kind of, “we need to destroy the village to save it” moment, which requires extraordinary measures. It feels more to universities like a middle finger.
BOB SAFIAN: That’s Evan Goldstein, managing editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education. In recent weeks, we’ve seen the Trump administration go after universities throughout the country directly in the cases of Columbia and Harvard, indirectly through research funding cuts to many more institutions. I wanted to talk with Evan, because he’s been speaking with university presidents as well as policymakers about this war on higher education. Is it really about antisemitism on campuses? What impact are these financial hits having on schools, and why aren’t universities putting up a more united front? Evan sheds lights on how we all got here and what it all means for the future of our economy. So let’s get to it. I’m Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.
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I’m Bob Safian. I’m here with Evan Goldstein, Managing Editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education. Evan, thanks for joining us.
GOLDSTEIN: Delighted to be here, Bob.
The fracturing partnership between government & universities
SAFIAN: So there are so many changes and crises that higher education universities are facing right now, massive cuts in federal research funding, staffing under scrutiny, threats of losing nonprofit status, lawsuits fighting every piece of it. You and your reporting team talk to leaders across schools, college presidents, deans, faculty, policymakers. What are you hearing? How’s the mood?
GOLDSTEIN: What I’m hearing from leaders is fear and uncertainty. To me, the big picture here is that we’re seeing the fracturing of a partnership between the federal government and higher education that was born at the end of World War II, has persisted for these 75 years, and put in place the structures and conditions for a monumental boom in economic and social and medical and technological innovation. And you really can’t tell the story of the American century without taking into account the role of higher education, especially research universities.
And so, the stakes are enormously high not only for universities I’d argue, but for the future of America. And in terms of college leaders right now, I think when the Trump administration began this volley of new policy changes and so forth, there was a degree of stunned silence, of being shocked by the levers that they were willing to pull, which were truly unprecedented. We had other scenarios in which, for instance, around areas like civil rights enforcement because a lot of these steps are being taken in the name of combating antisemitism.
During the Obama years, for instance, there was a real emphasis on Title IX enforcement, which prevents sexual assault on campus. And the prospect was there that federal funding would be pulled should universities prove to be non-compliant in taking the steps the Obama administration felt were necessary to protect women. This is a totally different scenario in which the almost unprecedented step of pulling massive amounts of funding is happening within days of universities being placed on notice that they’re under some kind of scrutiny. But that sort of stunned silence has given way to somewhat more coordination and activity and pushback.
Trump’s unexpected focus on higher education
SAFIAN: Many of Trump’s big initiatives were previewed in his campaign around tariffs, around immigration. I don’t remember higher ed as like a primary target. Did universities see this coming?
GOLDSTEIN: Definitely not at this scale. We currently have a vice president that gave a speech in which he described college professors as the enemy. So there was a certain, at least, rhetorical edge to what the administration was going to bring in terms of its higher ed policy. But in Trump 1, higher ed was not a major area of focus by any means. And I think part of what I was describing as the stunned silence and sort of the shock and awe here, is there wasn’t that much of an indication that especially in the first 100 days, higher ed and bringing higher ed to heel would carry this amount of prominence within the administration.
SAFIAN: Trump and Vance decry many universities as hotbeds of liberalism and woke philosophy. Are they wrong?
GOLDSTEIN: It depends who you ask. Obviously, it is true. You have survey after survey in which it’s clear that for instance the professoriate is overwhelmingly liberal, progressive, somewhere on the left side of the spectrum. There’s a reasonable case to be made that some disciplines in some parts of the academic firmament has become too much of a monoculture. I would push back on more caricatured versions of the progressive bent within universities. I think if you scratch at that surface, if you talk to more of these people, there’s more nuance variation underneath some of the more high profile incidents in which fairly non-representative folks get a lot of attention for saying some outrageous things.
SAFIAN: My perception is that the bulk of Trump’s cuts hit science and engineering, but the areas that he complains about are humanities and social science, right?
GOLDSTEIN: Absolutely. So, if some of the motivating impulse of what the Trump administration is doing is a kind of, to put it generously, outrage and horrid reaction at things like the pro-Palestinian encampments that we saw a lot of last spring and so forth, I don’t think many of the faculty supporters of those efforts came from the sciences, as you say. Most of those were the humanists, social scientists, et cetera.
So there is a way in which you’re actually seeing fractured relationships on campuses because at a place like Columbia, you’ve got scientists who are basically saying to their humanist colleagues, “Knock it off, what the hell are you doing? We want to get down to the work of doing research and advancing the frontiers of scientific knowledge and so forth. And you’re bringing a lot of scrutiny in this environment in a way that’s really jeopardizing Columbia and other universities’ research enterprise.”
Why some universities push back and others do not
SAFIAN: What drives how the different higher ed institutions and presidents respond to pressure from the Trump administration? We saw Columbia capitulate to Trump’s demand. Harvard’s president is pushing back. Is the difference about the size of the endowment, the government structure, the personality of that one leader?
GOLDSTEIN: I think all of those are a factor in some ways. I would call attention to the fact that Columbia had the unique misfortune of being first in the docket here. And so, I think there was a way in which, again, in that period I described as particularly shocked by the degrees to which the Trump administration was willing to go, Columbia was forced to make some decisions on their own. And I wouldn’t describe there being a chorus of solidarity at that time as Columbia was facing these decisions.
And I think a place like Harvard saw what took place at Columbia where essentially you had a university largely agree to the demands that were made by the Trump administration, including steps that I think six months ago, four months ago, three months ago, many of us would have thought we’d never see, including putting things like Middle East studies at Columbia under a different management structure because of a feeling from the Trump administration and perhaps from the Columbia administration that it had become ideologically too detached from a mainstream position, or it had become a fount of anti-Jewish sentiment on campus.
So someone like Alan Garber at Harvard has seen Columbia either concede or capitulate or negotiate depending on how you want to frame that. Columbia’s funding has not been restored. There’s a reasonable argument in which you could say, “However you respond to the Trump administration’s demands, they’re probably just going to ratchet up the demands.”
And so, I think the calculation for someone like Garber, especially when they were presented with a letter of demands in, I think, early April, that went well beyond even what had been asked of Columbia, that Harvard essentially had no choice but to take a legal path of trying to fight this, though it will be immensely costly. And the last thing I’ll say about it, if Harvard with their 53-billion-dollar endowment is not the institution that can sort of take this fight back to the administration and try to draw a line, I’m not sure who will.
SAFIAN: Yeah, because they’re the ones with the biggest endowment, right?
GOLDSTEIN: Correct.
SAFIAN: They have the most behind them. And I guess the proportion of their budget that they rely on government funding for is smaller.
GOLDSTEIN: Actually, I don’t know exactly at Columbia. I think in the 2024 fiscal year, I think the federal government spent something like 690 million on research at Harvard, and I think that accounts for about 10-11% of the university’s overall revenue. And so, I’m not sure where that is on Columbia. When you talk about 10 or 11%, that’s obviously still a huge number, and what the steps universities have to take now because essentially a giant hole has been shot through their budgets that they were not anticipating, are still massively upending. But yes, Harvard can probably sustain more of this or try to build a financial bridge to a hoped for settlement or some relief in the courts.
Can Harvard tap into their endowment?
SAFIAN: And schools like Harvard with big endowments, they can’t just tap those to make up the gaps even in a crisis?
GOLDSTEIN: It’s a great question and honestly, I’ve heard somewhat conflicting views here. I’ve heard some people be like, if ever there was a sort of ‘break glass in case of emergency’ moment on the endowment, this is it. Endowments typically people say, “Oh, Harvard’s got a 53-billion-dollar endowment, larger than many countries in terms of assets at their disposal.”
That endowment is something like 14,000 separate entities. And each of those entities have a set of rules on how they can be used because maybe my grandfather endowed a chair in Judaic studies 50 years ago, and there were very tight legal stipulations on how that could be used in the future. And so, for Alan Garber or the Harvard administration, to try to unwind those 14,000 different things, it’s essentially a nonstarter.
Now, there is liquidity there that they can use, and they are using. They are also trying to raise money in the bond market. Harvard and Princeton, I think, are moving in this direction. Harvard has seen an uptick in donations when there was a sense that people who probably never thought they needed to donate to Harvard or wanted to donate to Harvard, or why give to those who already have so much, feel like they’re fighting on behalf of a larger principle here, and we’re going to kick in some money. It’s not just kind of like there’s a 53-billion-dollar room that they can turn to and just offset some of these losses.
SAFIAN: They can take out a loan maybe against that $53 billion, but they’re going to have to pay that back. And interest rates are a little higher than they were before.
GOLDSTEIN: That’s exactly right.
Is antisemitism being used as a facade?
SAFIAN: Harvard’s also pushed back on some of the administration’s claims about antisemitism on campus. Is there a sense among the university leaders about whether antisemitism is a real problem and issue on campus versus this is an excuse that the administration is using?
GOLDSTEIN: I think if you get some of these folks into a private space and they’re not on the record, they might make noises more like your latter point that antisemitism is being used as a kind of facade to enact a larger agenda that’s trying to bring higher ed to heel and so forth.
That said, in all public messaging, one of the more dramatic signals of college presidents taking a more vocal stance in opposition to what the Trump administration is trying to do, was this letter put together by a major academic association. I think something like north of 600 college leaders have signed it. As part of that letter, there’s a very explicit denunciation of antisemitism, and that all of them stand against it. It’s imperative for higher ed to take these concerns seriously.
In many places, including Harvard and Columbia, in the wake of October 7th, established antisemitism task forces. Both those task forces have now released reports that paint a frankly quite unflattering picture of what campus life is like for at least some Jewish students. And depending on how you look at it, that is both a useful and necessary act of self-scrutiny by these institutions. I think some of the people who actually have served on these task forces feel like in this context, it feels like we’re handing ammo or a hammer to the Trump administration with which to bash us.
Where’s the collective action amongst universities?
SAFIAN: You mentioned some efforts for universities to band together a little bit. We didn’t see a lot of that, at least initially, as you acknowledge with Columbia. And of course back in 2023, we saw the presidents of Penn and Harvard and Columbia appear in Congress as a united front defending their handling of Gaza protests, and that did not end well. They each resigned soon afterwards. Was that sort of a lesson that limited collective industry action, maybe still limiting it a little bit?
GOLDSTEIN: I think the lesson, not unreasonably taken by some other college leaders, especially at the beginning of this Trump administration and these hundred days of aggressive action, was there are real diminishing returns and very large risks to getting into the public arena and trying to argue about these things against either Republicans on Capitol Hill or the Trump administration. And so, I think there was a sense that we can do better in quiet rooms. We should sort of be very cautious about the public messaging around this.
So I think that did lead to a kind of tentativeness at first. I would also say that look, higher ed is not built for competition. They’re not built for collective action. These are institutions and leaders and faculty members, et cetera, that are typically attuned to jockeying for prestige, for students, for donations, for federal funding and research excellence and so forth. So sort of like the innate DNA for banding together and raising the flag of higher ed as a unified front, there’s not a ton of examples of that.
SAFIAN: That means that most of the universities are in alignment, but they’re not necessarily acting aligned?
GOLDSTEIN: That’s true. And I think you’re starting to see that change a little bit. So for instance, it’s hard to keep track of all the litigation happening here. Harvard’s the big case in terms of major research institution fighting back in court. You have different groups of faculty members who have filed lawsuits to try to get in front of some of the pulling of research funds and so forth. So there’s a lot of venues and different configurations of universities banding together, or portions of universities banding together.
And then you also have things like faculty senates across the Big 10 athletic conference have passed motions that have called for a NATO-like Common Defense Pact. I recently spoke to the president of Ohio State University for instance, and asked him about this, which his faculty senate had approved. And basically, to the extent that that would require resources from Ohio taxpayers to go to the defense of taxpayers in another state in the Big 10, it’s legally prohibited. So there’s all sorts of complexities, but you’re starting to see more of a common front being formed.
The impact of research funding cuts
SAFIAN: And on the research funding, there’s huge pressure here, right? There are the direct cuts, like those Trump has pursued against Harvard. And then there are the indirect cuts as programs that NIH or the Department of Energy are eliminated by DOGE, research grants that went with them get canceled. What’s at stake with the cuts? How important is that research funding to the way higher education operates?
GOLDSTEIN: I go back to what I said at the beginning in terms of the big picture that this country has benefited from this compact between higher education, especially its most premier research institutions, and the federal government. Because no one has the pockets that the federal government has. Those applied scientific innovations were often built on the foundation of basic scientific research in which you’re not quite sure what you’re going to discover or what it’s going to lead to. So if you start to unwind that system, which was not perfect, but it was the envy of the world, it’s hard to anticipate what exactly those downstream effects are four years from now or 40 years from now. But it seems reasonable to think that if we are going to do less basic research, we are probably going to find fewer innovations on the long tail of those scientific findings.
SAFIAN: In a volatile climate, it’s hard to anticipate the long-term implications as Evan points out. And we can get reactive rather than forward-thinking. As leaders everywhere, it’s a great reminder. So where is higher education embracing a forward-thinking approach and what other draconian measures might schools be facing? We’ll talk about that and more after the break. Stay with us.
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Before the break, The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Evan Goldstein took us inside universities’ reaction to Trump’s widespread attacks on academia. Now, Evan explains how the culture wars led us to today’s college chaos, the legality surrounding the government’s crackdown on student visas, and more. Let’s dive back in.
Visas & the ‘brain drain’ phenomenon
I want to ask you about visas. Some students who are not U.S. born have been stripped of their student visas without notice, even arrested, taken to U.S. detention centers. Now court orders have led some of them to be released. I want to ask a question you asked in a recent piece: “Can Trump do that?”
GOLDSTEIN: Some of this is in a legally gray area, frankly. The Secretary of State has a great deal of discretion in terms of declaring someone a threat to national security of the country and revoking their status. There was periods in which hundreds, if not over a thousand to a couple thousand, students just had their visas revoked. There was no notification given to the university, no direct notification to that student. Colleges were essentially monitoring a database that keeps track of these things. Now those were overturned in court, and so there has been some relief for those students. So in terms of the standing of international students, it’s a bit of a mixed picture, and it’s still working through the courts. The one thing I’d add in terms of relation to international students is that for some campuses they are a very significant part of the student body and a very important part in the sense that most international students pay full tuition.
SAFIAN: So an important part of the business model?
GOLDSTEIN: Exactly. And so, when you talk about a scenario in which either international students are going to be forcibly removed from this country or have their student visas revoked, or the expectation that the general climate that has been created over these last four months is basically a big stop sign to the world to come here, you might be one of the best and brightest in India or China or wherever. And typically, we’ve been the beacon for those people. And I would anticipate that some significant portion of them will decide to look for opportunities elsewhere out of a sense of instability and unwelcoming posture from the American government.
SAFIAN: And will that hold true, I guess, for staff also for the educators, the talent that the universities look to?
GOLDSTEIN: I think, a hundred percent. I think we are staring down the prospect and seeing some anecdotal evidence of something like a reverse brain drain. Part of what that research funding infrastructure did was attract the best research talent from around the world. Because in America, you were going to get better budgets, better labs, better students, better opportunities, better salaries, too. And that’s not necessarily still the case. Some people are just sort of looking out into a very uncertain future and wondering whether this is where they want to build their careers.
A potential increase to the endowment tax
SAFIAN: There are other draconian punishments that are being discussed for universities. An endowment tax is supposedly on the table. Some universities may be losing nonprofit status, which might set a precedent for other nonprofits. Are these options likely? Are they legal?
GOLDSTEIN: Despite all that’s happened, we’re in the first act of a multi-act play here, and we’re not that far along. And anyone who claims to know how this ends is either delusional or lying. So much is caught up in the courts, and so much is actually in areas, as I understand it from talking to lawyers, somewhat gray areas. Because again, we’re just in unprecedented terrain.
I will say, you mentioned the endowment tax. This is a very live one because that’s being negotiated in the various relevant committees on Capitol Hill right now. Ultimately, that will go to some kind of reconciliation between the House and the Senate. It’s very likely that the endowment tax will go up and might go up significantly. The endowment tax is a wonky thing, but it essentially applies based on a calculation of endowment size versus full-time enrolled student population. So sort of the amount of money in the endowment per student, it’s this formula. So, only a certain number of top universities are affected.
During the first Trump administration, the endowment tax went from 0 to 1.4%. We’re seeing plans now that could bring that endowment tax up to something like 21% depending on the profile of the institution. So again, this is sort of a tens of, if not hundreds of million dollar potential hole in a university’s budget that had not been planned for.
There is another area you mentioned, NIH and NSF cuts here, and there is this, again kind of wonky notion, of indirect costs. Harvard gets a million dollar grant. They’ve negotiated a rate at which they get 69% to cover things like overhead costs. That was cut to a flat 15% for every institution, which again shot a huge hole through a lot of budgets.
Potential long-term consequences of these financial cuts
SAFIAN: The holes in the budgets that are being created from all of this action, what’s likely to be lost, to be squeezed out at universities?
GOLDSTEIN: It’s staff for starters. Basically, if you could see the internal messaging system inside The Chronicle of Higher Education, it’s just a flurry of accounts of Duke announcing budget cuts of whatever percent and preparing for layoffs. Michigan State announcing layoffs. University of Maryland, et cetera. It’s clear that whatever relief might happen in the courts, the courts are often slow. Even in the case of a resolution to something like the Harvard lawsuit that goes completely in Harvard’s favor, there’s a lingering concern that the administration still has a bunch of levers to just gum up the process, slow down, delay at which federal dollars reach these institutions. And so, they’re all girding themselves for a prolonged period of a great deal of uncertainty. I saw just a couple of days ago, Princeton’s president called on every department to model out 5 and 10% cuts. I think that’s a real indication that even at the wealthiest, they are going to have to really reduce their cost structure.
SAFIAN: Are there any ways that this cost pressure is good for the universities, getting them in better shape for the future?
GOLDSTEIN: Arguably. And again, I think I’ve been sounding like a sort of proponent of the golden age that was. It was not perfect. To go back to something like indirect costs, did Harvard need a 69% indirect cost rate? Arguably, no. That was a subject of great debate for a long time. I think the real issue here is the manner in which this is being done and the way the Trump administration is going about this. So I believe the announcement that the NIH’s indirect cost rate was just dropping to a flat 15 was tweeted out on a Friday, then it would go into effect the following Tuesday. Now that’s not really a negotiation. It feels more to universities like a middle finger.
The vibe inside of universities right now
SAFIAN: So we are in the season of commencement happening all around the nation. What’s the feeling now during what’s supposed to be a celebratory time for universities and their students?
GOLDSTEIN: I think you’ll see institutions put on a brave face. And suspect a lot of the messaging you will hear in either commencement addresses from guest speakers or from presidents of those institutions is essentially a case for the defense of what they do. College presidents come through our offices all the time, and the mantra that I always hear is that, “We need to better communicate our value.”
And so, it’s not a coincidence that on the same day that Harvard filed its lawsuit against the Trump administration, it completely refashioned its homepage to flag all the research being done on lifesaving, life-extending technologies at Harvard, cures to Lou Gehrig’s disease and so forth. I think there’s a sense from presidents that they need to be much more vocal in explaining to folks why what they do matters and makes lives better.
The thing I’d add in this vein is that all this Trump stuff is playing out in a context in which, for years, the public perception of higher ed has been sagging, especially among self-identified conservatives. And so, what used to be a fairly nonpartisan agreement, at least in terms of federal funding of research into certain diseases and so forth, has been caught up in the culture war splits that have riven so many different facets of our society. And universities are on much weaker ground when making their case, because they’ve lost half the country at this point. They’re starting from a sort of defensive posture.
SAFIAN: I had a guest on this show recently who is really exhorting business leaders to be more courageous, to be more brave, to show more character. As you have all these university presidents come through your offices, do you get a sense about whether they’re stealing themselves to have that backbone or whether they’re just trying to figure out their way through it?
GOLDSTEIN: I think more the latter. There’s concern about drawing attention to yourself and putting the crosshairs on your institution specifically. There are exceptions. Small college here, and sort of has a different risk profile, but Michael Roth, the President of Wesleyan University, has been very out front from the start in terms of making a full-throated defense of the sector while also acknowledging we have an intellectual diversity problem. We need more conservatives on campus. We need to own where higher ed needs to do better, but also make the case for what higher ed does that’s very valuable to this country.
SAFIAN: And to feel like that higher ed can make that adjustment itself without having it to be necessarily mandated.
GOLDSTEIN: That is an excellent point, Bob. And I think here the strongest argument in defense of what the Trump administration is doing, and this is a view shared by a sizable portion of people, is that essentially these institutions are so far gone, they cannot save themselves. And we’ve reached a kind of a, we need to destroy the village to save it moment, which requires extraordinary measures. And so, I think that is some of the priors that those enacting these policies bring to this.
SAFIAN: Well, Evan, this has been great. Thanks for doing this.
GOLDSTEIN: My pleasure, Bob. Thank you.
SAFIAN: I’m a big supporter of education, the role of universities, and what’s going on pains me. I think some schools did become unbalanced in their intellectual diversity on the humanities side, and some corrective on that is a good thing. But the hit to science and research and the very notion of the free exchange of ideas, I don’t think it’s good for America culturally or economically.
So what are the business lessons from all of this? Evan points out that universities took the prestige of their stature for granted. They felt they were insulated and didn’t maybe make the case for themselves strongly enough. That’s certainly a trap that businesses fall into with customers as brands. I also think about negotiation, what Trump would call, “the art of the deal.” It’s an incredibly important skill in business and in life. Now, you don’t have to be a bully to be a successful negotiator, but you do have to be strategic. Maybe we could all use a few more classes in school on that front.
I’m Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.
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