Against Trump's New Higher Education "Compact"

A joint statement and a solo analysis of the Compact's problems

The Trump administration recently announced a new "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education." The "deal" was initially offered to nine universities, and of those MIT and Brown have already said no. The administration is now rolling out the offer to more universities. Only a fool would take this deal.

The Compact marks a new tactic in the administration's effort to massively transform American higher education. The substantive demands remain much the same as the administration has pushed before, and it continues to rely on threats to financial vulnerabilities of universities. Now the administration promises not only to withhold federal grants from dissenting universities, but to strip them of nonprofit tax status, deny them access to international students, and prevent their students from receiving federal loans. Universities that "voluntarily" agree to the Compact will put themselves under permanent oversight of the Department of Justice, which will be empowered unilaterally to declare them noncompliant at any time and impose devastating financial penalties. It is an extraordinary bid to put essentially every university under the control of the federal executive branch. The Trump administration does not lack for boldness.

The Joint Statement

I have joined a group of five other scholars in a statement urging universities to reject this deal. The signatories are a politically diverse group known for their writing and work on free speech issues relating to American universities. They include Robert George (Princeton), Jeannie Suk Gersen (Harvard), Tom Ginsburg (Chicago), Robert Post (Yale), David Rabban (Texas), and Keith Whittington (Yale). We all speak on this in our individual capacities, but it is worth noting that two of the signatories were former leaders of the American Association of the University Professors and four are in the leadership of the Academic Freedom Alliance.

The joint statement can be found here.

From the conclusion of the statement:

Much has been gained, and much more is to be gained, by a partnership between the federal government and universities as institutions of teaching and research. Both partners need to behave responsibly. On the one side, universities must strictly comply with reasonable grant conditions, including non-discrimination requirements and civil rights laws. On the other side, governments must strictly respect the legitimate autonomy of universities and the academic freedom of their faculty and students.

Read the whole thing.

The Solo Analysis

Separately, I have my own analysis of the Compact at The Dispatch. This piece reviews the several components of the Compact, the mechanisms of enforcement, the radical changes it would make to how higher education has worked for decades in the United States, its willingness to cast aside existing legislative commitments and requirements, and the threat it poses to anything like academic freedom or independent civil institutions in the future. It is rife with unconstitutional conditions on First Amendment-protected speech but seeks to avoid any judicial scrutiny of those constitutional violations by forcing universities into a "voluntary" agreement with the federal executive branch.

From the conclusion of the piece:

There are real problems on college campuses, and the compact at least gestures toward some of those problems. Gesturing toward real problems does not make good policy, however. The compact is vague in its demands, but extraordinary in the amount of control that it wants to claim over the academic, intellectual, and political life of private and public universities. It effectively conditions the continued existence of universities on their ability to satisfy the current policy and political preferences of whomever occupies the White House at any given moment. This is not only incompatible with the existing law and Constitution; it is incompatible with any liberal conception of civil society. Universities are extremely resistant to needed reforms, and some would argue that a sledgehammer is needed to get them to see the light. Well, this is certainly a sledgehammer. If the hammer drops or opens the door to more such demands by this or future administrations, it will be an unmitigated disaster for American higher education.

Read the whole thing here.

As I write there, the Compact is a "sucker's deal." Worse yet, there is no reason to believe that the administration is a good faith partner in any such agreement, and its own terms leave the administration with essentially unfettered discretion to demand more down the road. We have seen this movie before. "I am altering the deal; pray I do not alter it any further."

Comments

[Frank Drackman]

I wouldn't offer any of these Screw-els even a Pubic Hair from Martinned's King's Scrotum (so is it King Philippe of Belgium? Grand Duke Henri of Luxemburg?(not really a "King") Dutch King Willem??)
Love how they call it "Benelux" like it's this culturally significant place when any random Amurican "Tri City" has a higher standard of living. (and Jews didn't have to hide during WW2)
Wait till the Antifa funding trails get "Elucidated" those Ivy League Presidents gonna have "some splain'in to do!!!" (HT D. Arnez)

Frank

[Stephen Lathrop]

Good. Very good. Now give thought to the question whether Executive initiatives to enforce unwilling university compliance can find legal remedies the Supreme Court will openly endorse.

Is there anyone who supposes Trump/MAGA will not try election rigging experiments, to see how far they can be pushed? Elections are events fixed in time. At that foreseeable-by-all critical moment, a Supreme Court stay from the shadow docket, open-ended in time, will not deliver due process. If it happens, it will deliver capitulation.

Thus the question: what legal process can be used to force the Court's critical decision to a far earlier moment? Some time in the next few months, for instance. That would clarify what kinds of initiatives may be necessary to redress either a Court capitulation, or a Court remedy which the Executive defies.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Good luck to you and the others at convincing universities to fight this authoritarian administration. Seems like things get worse and more repulsive and more un-American every day.

[Frank Drackman]

Yes, the Ivy League is really repulsive, try an All-Amurican Screw-el like Auburn or Ole Miss. Sad when I'll get more Shit at Brown or Penn than at Terror-Anne University. Did you know Ear-Ron has more Synagogues than Vermont? (OK, last I checked no Jews in the Ear-Ronian Legislature (Or Executive, or Judicial....)

Frank

[Botaglove]

Remember Frank, his name was Charles Kirk and he would not be thrilled by your descent into gibberish.

[Frank Drackman]

Wrong, his name IS Charlie Kirk, and you not understanding more than simple language is a sign of Alzheimer's, might want to get that checked. (or not, it's Incurable)
OK, I'll try again
How many speakers have been assassinated at Terror-Anne University??

Frank

[M L]

"Seems like things get worse and more repulsive and more un-American every day."

That has been the state of higher education for some time now, yes.

[Sarcastr0]

You HATE America as it's currently set up, to the point of thinking the Confederacy was right and we shouldn't have a Union.

What counts as un-American to you?

[thesafesurfer]

You voted for a Biden administration that forced Lia Thomas into women's athletics and post about authoritarian administrations. How pathetic.

[jb]

Well that's just completely wrong. Thomas was banned from women's events by FINA in June 2022. The Biden administration's proposed rule on trans athletes was announced at the same time, but was blocked by the federal courts. In any case, it would have allowed approaches such as FINA's to determining eligibility.

[Brett Bellmore]

Have the universities considered being, I don't know, maybe genuinely private? Rather than existentially dependent on federal funding?

They might profitably talk to Hillsdale.

[bernard11]

You want them to sink to the level of Hillsdale?

Drop the blind ideology, Brett, and realize that the US higher ed system as it exists is a jewel, and a very important contributor to American society.

The notion that it would be better if the government stopped funding it is insane.

IIRC, you yourself went to a state school.

[Frank Drackman]

Hillsdale MI is 1159ft elevation
Cambridge MA is 39ft.
Hahvud is already over 1100 feet lower.
I'd add another 6 feet for any Ham-Ass Terrorists (No, that's not a "Threat", I'm just a DemoKKKrat Attorney General Candidate)

Frank

[Brett Bellmore]

You can dislike Hillsdale all you like, but they achieved independence from federal control the only way you can reasonably expect it: By being financially independent.

He who pays the piper calls the tune. If the piper doesn't like that, they better get used to paying themselves.

It didn't have to come to this, frankly. But as Whittington admits above,

"There are real problems on college campuses, and the compact at least gestures toward some of those problems. ... Universities are extremely resistant to needed reforms, and some would argue that a sledgehammer is needed to get them to see the light."

An institution like a university can't decide to go all in for one end of the political spectrum, one party, and not get in trouble when the other ends up in office. They really should have thought about that before deciding to be only half the nation's educational system.

And, yes, I went to a state school. It would never have presumed to be independent of the state government, having been founded by it, and being a budget item in the state budget. It was closer to a state agency than an independent institution.

[Dr. Ed 2]

...a university can't decide to go all in for one end of the political spectrum, one party, and not get in trouble when the other ends up in office."

A LOT of MAGA would like to simply close the spigot and say "sucks to be you."

And this issue is going to get a lot of working class districts to go MAGA next year.

[bernard11]

He who pays the piper calls the tune. If the piper doesn't like that, they better get used to paying themselves.

And here I thought Congress, not Trump, was the payer. You are accepting a view of Trump as an uncontrolled dictator. Guess what, he doesn't get to dictate what the schools have to do to get grants.

I also thought the payer had the responsibility not to have the piper lead the dancers off a cliff.

Brett, you are destroying the university system because you decline to realize that results matter more than your silly theories.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Remember when Nobama required the preponderance standard?

[Brett Bellmore]

Look, Trump might be a bit more aggressive than Congressional Republicans, but the latter are losing their patience with institutional academia, too. So they were going to do the same sooner or later, too.

It really is as simple as I said: These universities, if they're really dependent on federal funding, should have thought twice before hitching their wagons to just ONE party. They should have remained at least vaguely politically neutral.

[Sarcastr0]

Telepathically, Brett knows Congressional Republicans have the secret intent was to do basically the same thing.

This is different than his telepathy on how Congressional Republicans secretly want to undermine immigration enforcement.=

[Brett Bellmore]

What is it with you, thinking that listening to and reading what people say is "telepathy"?

[Sarcastr0]

You never refer to anything, you just pronounce the intentions.

Intentions most other people have not figured out somehow.

[Nelson]

“ You can dislike Hillsdale all you like”

Whether someone likes or dislikes Hillsdale is irrelevant. The fact that it is an inferior education is their problem.

If the choice is between being Hillsdale (self-funded, but poor education) or Cal Berkley (state funded, but an excellent education), which one serves the country better?

The problem with the “defund the universities” crowd is that they place a lot of value on money, but no value on education. We have one of the best, if not the best, college educational system in the world. It leads to the most talented from around the world coming to us to learn, exposing them to American businesses and job opportunities.

We literally have the best entry-level, college-educated worker pool in the world because we have the best university system in the world. That is a direct result of public finding.

And no, the average non-college educated people couldn’t do the same or better job than the average a college graduate in the jobs of our advanced economy. No one wants to spend a year or two paying a high school graduate to learn what a college graduate already knows.

There is this weird religion on the right that says a college education has no value. And yet the market continually proves otherwise.

When the average high school graduate can provide the same level of work for a lesser price than the average college graduate, then and only then will a college degree be worthless.

Until then, a college degree proves that you will begin as a better, more knowledgeable, more ready-to-go employee.

[Rossami]

That is astonishingly wrong, economically. Literally no one is saying that no value. What they are saying is that it has a value that can be measured and that we are not getting good value for the price.

We emphatically do not have "the best entry-level ... worker pool in the world". US recruiters routinely have to deal with college graduates who can't put a coherent sentence together, much less write a report for management or carry out a financial analysis. They are manifestly unqualified for their jobs and require extensive on-the-job training before they can do anything productive. The evidence is that more and more companies are removing college degrees from their job requirements and more and more prospective students are skipping college entirely - and doing quite well in the process.

Again, no one is saying that a good college education has no value. But some degrees have quite limited value and, except STEM and some medical fields, most are not worth the price.

[Nelson]

“ economically. Literally no one is saying that no value. What they are saying is that it has a value that can be measured and that we are not getting good value for the price.”

On an individual level, that sometimes is correct and sometimes isn’t. On the level of the entire economy and skilled worker pool, we are absolutely getting good value.

US recruiters routinely have to deal with college graduates who can't put a coherent sentence together, much less write a report for management or carry out a financial analysis.”

Then they are looking in the wrong place or failing to attract quality applicants. I hired dozens of people over the years and never had that problem. And the skills I was hiring for were ranged from accounting to supply chain management to marketing to bog-standard/generic mid-level management, so it wasn’t even like we had established a pipeline for a specific type of worker that assured us of superior applicants.

Perhaps, because it was my money, I was more focused on attracting quality applicants, but I turned away more qualified applicants than interviewed the losers you seem to think are the norm.

“ The evidence is that more and more companies are removing college degrees from their job requirements and more and more prospective students are skipping college entirely - and doing quite well in the process.”

There is, in fact, no such “evidence”. The initial salary, lifetime earnings, and career advancement of college graduates, on average, is significantly better than non-college graduates.

Removing the requirement is one thing. And, personally, I think that is a good thing. You shouldn’t limit your talent pool artificially like that. But that hasn’t led to any noticeable difference in who *gets* the jobs. A college degree, even when not required, gives a significant advantage.

Referring to my comment above about my experience hiring people, I did hire a few non-college grads (three, if I recall correctly). But I did that when the applicant, during the interview process, displayed their superiority as a candidate. And one of those three was the worst hire I ever made.

Comparing the 90th percentile of non-grads to the 50th percentile of college grads is faulty analysis. The average college applicant is more knowledgeable, more prepared, and more competent than the average non-college applicant.

“ But some degrees have quite limited value and, except STEM and some medical fields, most are not worth the price.”

This is another one of the false arguments. The insistence that if the major doesn’t match the job, the degree has limited value is ridiculous. Unless it is, as you pointed out, a specific requirement (STEM, accounting, medical school, etc.) for a job, the actual degree isn’t particularly important. An english major is as likely to succeed in marketing as a marketing major. A poli-sci major is as likely to succeed at sales as someone with a finance/economics-based degree.

For most jobs, the things required to succeed at college (like deadlines, broad and varied subject knowledge, writing skills, and study habits) are the same thing that are necessary to succeed in the work world.

Whether or not it’s worth the price is determined by each person, but an increased chance to get a job, the higher initial (and total) earning potential, the advanced career path (“working your way up” to the entry point of a college grad often takes a decade, give or take a couple years), and the network of contacts that alumni groups provide have a great deal of value, albeit largely unquantifiable.

And while trades like plumber, electrician, roofer, or contractor might pay better initially, there is little opportunity for that income to grow, they don’t typically involve benefits, and the physical toll often limits the worker to a shorter career in the prime-income window.

[bernard11]

What they are saying is that it has a value that can be measured and that we are not getting good value for the price.

Both of these statements are wrong. Which shows that conservatives, especially Trumpists, simply don't understand the value being created.

[Lee Moore]

I disagree with virtually all of this.

The college educated worker pool is generally of higher quality than the non college educated worker pool, because smarter people go to college. If there were no such thing as college, the cohort who now go to college would still constitute a higher quality worker pool than the cohort whch does not go to college.

The question is - does college add anything to that natural advantage ? And the answer is - sometimes. In the past, when fewer people went to college, and so the average college student was of higher quality than now, the odds were greater that at least a STEM college education would add something to natural advantages. Now - not so much. And as for non-STEM; extremely rarely.

So we should shrink back colleges to the size they were in say 1965, which adjusting for population growth would involve cutting the student population in half. And the easiest way to achieve that would simply to end all federal funding of college - no grants*, no guaranteed loans, no squat.

For those horrified by the risk that lower income, but high quality, students might miss out - write to Bill Gates or any of a string of billionaires who may wish to splash out to fund this sort of thing. I feel sure that Elon would be happy to contribute, except for the fact that he'd probably think - rightly - that a poor but brilliant young man or young lady would actually do better to join Space X or some other part of the Musk Empire than go to college.

Or you could start a Go Fund Me program for this purpose.

But, aside from the poor but brilliant, what about those 50% who wouldn't go to college ? Well, mostly they'd be 50-75th percentiles of ability, who would most usefully be trained on the job. Yes, employers would have to fund this, like they used to. Why should somebody else pay ? The advantage - obviously - is that employers would be incentized to provide useful education and training, efficiently - ie not the inefficient slop spread out over four years that you get in college, in between parties, larded with irrelevant minors and compulsory nonsense. If you want to broaden your education, read a book or two.

The second advantage is that moving directly into work from high school, you avoid the current 4-6 year opportunity to form the bad habit of lazing and playing and not working. College for many - particularly lower quality students - is the continuation of childhood by other means. It is not a serious preparation for actual work. It makes graduates less ready to go to work.

When the average high school graduate can provide the same level of work for a lesser price than the average college graduate, then and only then will a college degree be worthless.

No, because you are ignoring the confounding with ability as mentioned above. But unfortunately as I discussed with Sarcastro a while back it is already the case that a substantial class of graduates earn less than the average non graduate (typically those studying psychology, the humanities, general fluff and grievance studies etc.) And this despite the presumptive fact that these people are more able than the average non graduate. As well as sucking actual cash out of these clueless children, by the bucketful, college is actually sucking earnings potential from them.

There is also, of course, the sex thing, which it is indelicate to talk about. But real nevertheless.

Time to go back to square one. But because I am famously moderate, I'll meet you at 1965.

* I would say that during federal funding detox, the federal government should stop giving any grants at all to colleges. To the extent that say the DoD needs some research done it should enter into a contract with a private sector corporation, which can if it wishes subcontract some of the work to a university. That way one can be a little more confident that things are being done for a useful purpose, in a businesslike fashion.

[thesafesurfer]

Thank you for posting.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Lee Moore — U.S. population in 1965 was about 60% of what it is now. You are thus calling for a sharp reduction in college enrollment percentages from 1965 levels. Seems a peculiar thing to do. Even seems peculiar from a STEM-reasoning standpoint.

Your pro-STEM bias is the usual special pleading to leverage hiring math talent ahead of generalist talent. That is enjoying its run, but it has no more basis than any other sociological fashion.

Today's pro-STEM fashion is reminiscent of the early spread of computers into business, when programmers who knew programming technique, but were without subject-matter expertise, hampered efficiency long-term at all kinds of enterprises. The programmers, abetted by senior managers afraid to show they knew nothing about computers, bullied line managers into inefficient concessions chosen for no purpose except to facilitate programming.

You can still find that kind of counter-productivity gnawing away—it's like a tax on productivity inflicted long ago—but still hanging around to create continuous drag. It is writ large in the nation's near-impossible-to-modify air traffic control system. It cost academic scholarship the benefits of a century or more of subject matter insight preserved in research library card catalogs. Most of that got discarded to make it less complicated and more efficient to computerize collection records.

Looking at the governance crises, civic crises, economic crises, and even intellectual crises which lie ahead, likelihood that stem techniques will solve more problems than they create seems vanishingly small. Assuming that solutions to those problems would prove valuable, the liberal arts talents better suited to cope with problems STEM does not address are currently being underpaid. In your advocacy, those talents are unjustly discriminated against.

That discrimination is demonstrably making corporate America stupider than it previously was, even in terms of your own less-education advocacy. B-schools are, of course, embodiments of the STEMification of management. Their principal contribution has been to financialize management, at the cost of hands-on management types, and even at the cost of this nation's typically best source of entrepreneurs—the practically-minded inventive talents who developed initially inchoate engineering challenges into major businesses. The downfall or decline of great corporations such as HP, Morrison-Knudsen, and Boeing (along with a host of other transportation-related companies), example what I am talking about.

Even this blog examples why that pro-STEM discrimination you favor is unwise. Most of the lawyers are, of course, not STEM educated. A disproportionate share of the legal stupidity published here gets supplied by self-described engineers.

[Lee Moore]

I confess I am not a STEM graduate, but I did do High School math. You obviously skipped right past "which adjusting for population growth."

College enrolment is currently about 20 million. In 1965 it was about 6 million. So cutting the student population in half - to 10 million - would involve a two thirds increase compared to 1965.

And - according to you - the US population has grown by two thirds since 1965. So my "cutting in half" the 20 million would arrive at precisely the same percentage of the population going to college as went in 1965.

In fact your numbers are off because the population has actually grown by more than two thirds, but balancing that the population structure has got older, so there are relatively fewer college age Americans. So it works out that two thirds is about right after all, when it comes to the college age population.

Stick to history. It's not that I suspect you of being more accurate about history than math, it's just that your strange assemblage of historical fiction does less harm than if you were carrying a similar mathematical confusion into a profession in which a nodding acquaintance with math is required.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Lee Moore, I did not skip past, "adjusting for population growth." You left the adjustment part ambiguous. I had the advantage of attending college at exactly the time you mentioned, and knew the campuses were full to bursting, with 4 students typically assigned to 2-person dorm rooms (note, leading edge of the baby boom).

Thus, I rejected as implausible the interpretation you assigned to your ambiguous adjustment—which seemed to me (and based on your explanation, apparently also to you) to involve cramming yet more students into already overcrowded buildings.

Also, I don't mind the typical STEM-advocate condescension about math skills. I'm used to that. It comes from a nice mix of presumption, and pride in personal achievements that may have been hard to master.

Compared to my own public high school math classmates, my math performance fell just short of disgraceful, but it was still good enough for a ~ 94th percentile SAT math score. It did not, as I feared it might, impede my admission to a pretty good college.

[Lee Moore]

Looking at the governance crises, civic crises, economic crises, and even intellectual crises which lie ahead, likelihood that stem techniques will solve more problems than they create seems vanishingly small. Assuming that solutions to those problems would prove valuable, the liberal arts talents better suited to cope with problems STEM does not address are currently being underpaid.

🙂

On the whole, the advantage of a STEM education in the matter of "governance crises, civic crises, economic crises, and even intellectual crises" is that STEM is good at helping you appreciate how much you do not know.

Disastrous government stems [sic] largely from the inhabitants of the political world and the bureaucracy possessing mostly liberal arts degrees, and so lacking an appreciation of how little they know or understand.

[bernard11]

To the extent that say the DoD needs some research done it should enter into a contract with a private sector corporation, which can if it wishes subcontract some of the work to a university. That way one can be a little more confident that things are being done for a useful purpose, in a businesslike fashion.

If defense research does not have a useful purpose, ISTM that that's the fault of DOD, not the researchers.

[Lee Moore]

Of course. But passing research through a private corporation, ensures that at least somebody involved is a serious person, aware that a complete, and predicable, fiasco carries risks. Risks of not getting paid, risks of not getting another contract etc.

Involving a for profit corporation in the chain is no panacea - the DoD's procurement contracts are hardly models of sanity.

[Sarcastr0]

passing research through a private corporation, ensures that at least somebody involved is a serious person

As though civil servants are not serious people? Market worship at a level Ayn Rand couldn't dream of.

This is some empty prejudice. And it leads to not just bad policy, but idiots wanting to burn good things to the ground.

[bernard11]

I think university researchers are as likely to be "serious people" as corporate execs.

You have to be pretty damn serious to earn a science Ph.D. and spend your career teaching and doing research.

[Lee Moore]

Plenty of university researchers, at least in STEM (plus medicine) are likely to be serious people. In the social sciences the odds are quite a bit lower. In the civil service, well yes there'll be some serious people, but in a world where hiring and promotion is significantly political, merit and seriousness are not really the discriminating factors.

But in the corporate world, there's an algorithm which weeds out lack of seriousness. The bottom line. It's not perfect, of course. But it's an algorithm largely absent from the apparat and the ivory towers.

[Nelson]

“ If there were no such thing as college, the cohort who now go to college would still constitute a higher quality worker pool than the cohort whch does not go to college.”

That’s awfully speculative while also being sophistry. The smarter/better people might still be the superior candidates, but the knowledge and skills of the higher-skilled workers would be lowered, while those of the lower cohort would remain the same. So the total talent pool would be worse, even if you accept the premise that the stronger candidates would be the same people. In order for your premise to be accurate, you would have to assume that college adds no skills, growth, or competitiveness to a candidate and they would be the same level relative to the non-college cohort if they didn’t spend four years in college. That seems unlikely.

“ the odds were greater that at least a STEM college education would add something to natural advantages. Now - not so much. And as for non-STEM; extremely rarely.”

This is the religious belief that I referred to. And the available data doesn’t bear out that belief. My personal experience, while anecdotal, doesn’t bear out that belief.

While there may be a generational shift in terms of work ethic (although I remember that the Baby Boomers were supposedly lazy and entitled. Then my generation, Gen X, was lazy and entitled. Then it was Millennials. Now it’s Gen Z), the knowledge and skills of college grads (and, for that matter, high school grads) is superior to that of the 1950s or 1970s or 1990s. The baseline high school education today in, for example, math and economics would have been college-level in the 1950s. The baseline college education today is deeper as well.

“ So we should shrink back colleges to the size they were in say 1965, which adjusting for population growth would involve cutting the student population in half.”

Why would we want a smaller white-collar-level worker population when our economy is much more advanced than it has ever been, with a much higher demand for skills developed in college? The character of the available jobs isn’t static through the years and many (if not most) of the jobs of the 1960s didn’t require a college-level education. That is not the case today.

“ And the easiest way to achieve that would simply to end all federal funding of college - no grants*, no guaranteed loans, no squat.”

If we assume your premise, that wouldn’t be a bad strategy. But the required skills in the job market of the 2020s is very different than the 1960s. And the skills of an advanced economy with much, much fewer manual labor positions (like manufacturing, for example) largely aren’t taught in high school. They are taught in college.

“ For those horrified by the risk that lower income, but high quality, students might miss out - write to Bill Gates or any of a string of billionaires who may wish to splash out to fund this sort of thing.”

The idea that increasing the difficulty of obtaining enough funding to go to college would lead to a superior labor pool is counterintuitive. The idea that the smarter/more motivated/more desirable students would still be able to go to college and the “lesser” ones don’t deserve the chance is about as elitist as it gets. “If you really deserved it, you would work harder” is nonsense.

“ Well, mostly they'd be 50-75th percentiles of ability, who would most usefully be trained on the job.”

Trapping that worker in the industry they were trained for. One of the most important changes in the modern workplace is that workers possess fungible skills that can (and do) transcend not just jobs, but industries. The average white-collar worker today will not only work for multiple different companies over their work life, they increasingly are likely to work on multiple industries. That is because the skills they develop through the college education process are broader than a company would develop. Your suggestion would regress us back to the days when companies had the upper hand and employees had to like it or lump it. Freedom of opportunity is just another advantage of a broad-based college education, rather than an task-specific employer-provided education.

Plus, of course, employers have no interest in spending the time and money to educate workers. They want plug-and-play employees, not unskilled workers that might eventually become skilled.

“ you avoid the current 4-6 year opportunity to form the bad habit of lazing and playing and not working”

This is another unsupported belief of people who dismiss the value of college. Granted I was at one of the best colleges in the country, but the fact that we partied and played and had fun didn’t mean we weren’t working our asses off to learn what we needed to.

College isn’t just going to class and studying, just like adulthood isn’t just going to work. The fact that college students simultaneously work hard at school and enjoy their free time doesn’t make them lazy or indicate they don’t work hard. Such a reductionist interpretation is completely flase.

There is a word to refer to someone who “ form[s] the bad habit of lazing and playing and not working”. It’s “expelled”.

“ As well as sucking actual cash out of these clueless children, by the bucketful, college is actually sucking earnings potential from them.”

As I pointed out before, there is no data supporting this assertion. The average college graduate enjoys higher initial salary, higher lifetime earnings, and faster career advancement than the average non-college-grad. Even the average college-educated (as in attended but didn’t graduate) worker enjoys lesser advantages, but still outperform those with no college.

“ typically those studying psychology, the humanities, general fluff and grievance studies etc.”

So basically every non-STEM student? Your bias is showing, and not just due to your loaded and dismissive language.

“ But because I am famously moderate, I'll meet you at 1965.”

That would be five years before I was born, plus the country is much better now than then. Why would anyone want to go back to a lesser world?

I am by no means a person who thinks that colleges are all great or that they are doing everything right or that they are flawless paragons of virtue. They are clearly not, especially in regards to their “free speech zones”, heckler’s veto on controversial speakers and ideas, and breadth of perspectives in faculty. Of course the disdain of conservatives for academia probably lends itself to fewer conservatives in the applicant pool, but that doesn’t excuse anything.

The reality is that a college education gives graduates a superior ability to get, hit the ground running, advance in, and excel in an advanced economy like America’s. It gives a worker more flexibility and ability to change jobs or industries if they discover they don’t actually enjoy what they thought they would when they were 20. It provides superior earning potential, lifetime earnings, and appeal to employers. It isn’t perfect by any means, but it has been a significant and important factor in America becoming the greatest, richest, most economically powerful nation in history.

I would also like to thank you for a detailed and thoughtful response. I disagree completely with you, but deeply appreciate the time, effort, and thought you put into your post.

If you want the data on income:

https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2025/median-weekly-earnings-by-educational-attainment-first-quarter-2025.htm

[Lee Moore]

Thank you for responding to my comment at such length, and intelligently. I am way too lazy to respond to you in an organized fashion – ideleness did not begin with Gen X - so I’ll just pick up on a few points.

1. I think we are agreed that the essential question is what, if anything, college adds to the earning power* of any particular college student. So it is very likely that most college students learn something in their four years at college, even if some is subtracted by the postponement of learning the habits of paid labor. The question is how much of that something is relevant to their earnings power, and how does that compare with what they would have learned on the job. And obviously the answer will be different student by student.

2. This means we have to distinguish some students from others. You have offered some numbers for students across the board. Which is not the point. I cannot be bothered to dig out the stats I got for Sarcastro a while back, but they were broken down by major. And they showed what I said they showed. Graduates in psychology, the humanities and sundry grievance studies – feminist, racism and so on – earned less that the average non college worker. Since these folk are presumably from the top 50% of the ability spectrum, the fact that they earn less than the non college folk is astonishing. And depressing.

So simply showing that college grads as a whole earn more on average than non college folk is irrelevant to my point. Which is that lots of college grads earn less. And given that they are presumptively smarter than non college folk that implies that for these folk, college is destroying earning potential, not creating it. It’s not bias that has me pointing the finger at the non STEM stuff, it’s the numbers. In reality, for many students, college graduation does not betoken any useful additional employment skills, it is merely a credential of ability. And a stupendously expensive one. Much the same credential could be acquired for fifty bucks by taking an IQ test at age 18. But the lawyers have manouevred to cut that one off at the pass, thereby increasing the price of the credential a thousand fold.

3. “Your suggestion would regress us back to the days when companies had the upper hand and employees had to like it or lump it.”

Employees have always been able to change jobs – if they’re useful. Companies only have the upper hand over mediocre employees, who haven’t the ability and experience to command love and rewards from an employer who doesn’t want them to leave. Again if there were no college, the same people would be available to employers; and earlier. The companies would just have to train them, in some kind of apprenticeship. You’re really saying that the workers position ought to be strengthened in bargaining with the employer. But that’s not an economic point, it’s a social / political point, and there’s no reason to believe that it enhances productivity. Indeed there’s reason to doubt it. Productivity is enhanced when employers can discriminate easily between workers of different productive quality. And when employees can discriminate easily between employers they like working for and those they don’t like working for. Discrimination is the name of the game. Enhancing the bargaining position of all workers – even if college achieved it – is irrelevant to that.

4. “Plus, of course, employers have no interest in spending the time and money to educate workers. They want plug-and-play employees, not unskilled workers that might eventually become skilled.”

Obviously. Who does not like a freebie ? The point though is that subsidized college takes lots of high ability workers out of the labor pool for four years. The only way to find out how many kids would go that route unsubsidized, as opposed to going to work straight from school – increasing the labor pool substantially – is to get rid of the subsidies. Or to consider how things worked 60 years ago. And of course the kids most likely to go unsubsidized to college are (a) the rich – and who cares what they do with their own money and (b) the talented who can see a serious pay off from four years in college. That would not include the 63rd percentile ability psych major, who finishes up as a childminder.

5. “as elitist as it gets”

Unless you favor the entire population going to college, I’m afraid you’re going to have to accept that the whole concept of college is ineluctably elitist. The financially elite can pay for their pleasures, which may include college, as they please. But if the taxpayer is to support the intellectually elite going to college, the taxpayer is reasonably interested in what payback he’s going to get. That is he the taxpayer not he or she the student. But whatever view you take, the question is about government help to the elite.

* I restrict it to earning power as we are having an economic discussion. Of course all sorts of social goods, or evils, might arise from who goes to college and what happens there, but that is a subject for another day.

[Nelson]

“ what, if anything, college adds to the earning power* of any particular college student”

The range of possibilities for a particular college student is endless. You have to consider the average student, since it’s the only realistic way to judge a college education as a factor.

“ subtracted by the postponement of learning the habits of paid labor”

What are the “habits of paid labor” and why wouldn’t a college student learn that through a job before or during college or even through the requirements of classes? It seems like a euphemism for “people who work for a living”, which is itself a value-based opinion about working vs. learning, with the former being virtuous and the latter being slothful.

“ And obviously the answer will be different student by student”

True, but it is an easy thing to measure.

Probably the most significant part of the data in my link was that the earnings of those who merely attended college, but didn’t graduate, are significantly higher than those who didn’t. The clear and significant gap between the four categories (no HS diploma, HS graduate, some college but no degree, college graduate) show that there is an unambiguous value add from education in general and college education in particular.

“ Graduates in psychology, the humanities and sundry grievance studies – feminist, racism and so on – earned less that the average non college worker.”

I’d be interested to see your data. I found an interactive site that lets you compare annual as well as lifetime income based on major and compare them to someone with no college. I picked the closest to what you dismiss as “grievance studies” (Area, Ethnic, and Civilization Studies) as well as two majors that lead to poorly-paid positions (Art History and Criticism, Community and Public Health). Both of them earned more. A significant amount more.

Granted, the article (and I’m assuming the data) came from 2020 and is measured in 2018 dollars, but I doubt that a HS diploma closed the $13k gap ($19k vs $32k) between it and “grievance studies” in the last 5 years.

https://www.hamiltonproject.org/data/career-earnings-by-college-major/

If you can find the data you referenced I would be interested in seeing it, but from what I have found (that site was consistent with the two others I looked at), I would guess your source either had a methodological error or had a story they were interested in telling.

The average salary for a non-college worker is $37k with a 4.3% unemployment rate. The average for ethnic studies is 45k with a 2.6% unemployment rate.

https://www.cnbc. com/2025/05/16/college-majors-with-the-best-and-worst-employment-prospects.html

So unless you have some data, it seems like your “no college workers earn more than …” claim isn’t supported by data.

“ Since these folk are presumably from the top 50% of the ability spectrum”

I don’t see any reason to assume this. Opportunity and ability are completely unrelated.

“ It’s not bias that has me pointing the finger at the non STEM stuff, it’s the numbers.”

The numbers I have been able to fond show the exact opposite of what you are saying. And that’s just when you compare non-college workers doing non-college jobs compared to college workers doing college jobs. If the two were to compete for the SAME job, the college grad would undoubtably get it. That is the market placing value on a degree, for better or worse. If you start to consider the higher unemployment rate of non-college workers than college workers, the advantage becomes even clearer.

“ Employees have always been able to change jobs – if they’re useful”

Perhaps, although the idea of being able to leave one entire industry and gain a comparable position and salary in a completely different one -industry, not job - was inconceivable when I began my work life. And I’m only 54, so it wasn’t THAT long ago.

If you were only educated on the things that your present employer chose to teach you, such mobility would be impossible. You would be defined by your narrow education because you wouldn’t have the opportunity to learn beyond the narrow swath of knowledge your employer chose to provide. College allows you (hell, many require you) to study a broad range of topics.

“ Again if there were no college, the same people would be available to employers; and earlier.”

Perhaps, but they would have less knowledge. So a worse employee. And the employer doesn’t care about a few years of age for someone in their 20s. They aren’t hiring an 18-year-old today or waiting for a different 18-year-old to finish college, they are choosing between an 18-year-old without a degree and a 21-year-old with one. There is no delay hiring either.

“ You’re really saying that the workers position ought to be strengthened in bargaining with the employer.”

Not at all. I don’t care about the +/- a few percentage points an individual can negotiate. I’m talking about the market value of a type of employee and a specific job, which are related.

If a company thought that they would get a similar employee for a similar price and the degree made no difference, there wouldn’t be any difference in the earnings potential of college vs. non-college workers. But there is, because there is.

“ Obviously. Who does not like a freebie ?”

It isn’t a freebie. As we have extensively documented, college-educated workers cost more than no-college workers and college grads cost even more. If we use the no-college workers as a baseline, the some college costs more and the graduate costs a lot more. And yet employers keep choosing the more expensive options. And, as you pointed out, since productivity is increasingly traced and measured, they are obviously getting a return on that investment.

“ The point though is that subsidized college takes lots of high ability workers out of the labor pool for four years”

So what? It isn’t 18-year-olds vs. 18-year-olds that you have to wait for. Hiring is an instant proposition, with a pool of applicants of different ages and experiences (work and otherwise). They don’t care that one of them took 4 years to learn more than someone else, ghey just want the best employee they can get for the salary they’re willing to pay.

“ increasing the labor pool substantially”

No, the labor pool wouldn’t grow or shrink in the long term, since you can’t suddenly create workers out of thin air. It would merely shift some workers that would have entered the labor pool later and moves them up. Which, of course, would be matched by a corresponding decrease in the size of the near-term labor pool. And wouldn’t impact the 5-year-out labor pool (and future years) at all.

“ That would not include the 63rd percentile ability psych major, who finishes up as a childminder.”

Whether someone ends up in the field that is relevant to their degree is a completely different conversation, unrelated to this one. I would note that if major mattered, I would be a teacher with years to go until retirement rather than a retired entrepreneur and white collar manager. What you think you want when you’re 20 is often very different than what you actually want.

“ I’m afraid you’re going to have to accept that the whole concept of college is ineluctably elitist”

The less it costs, the less elitist it gets. At zero, it is completely egalitarian. At full price, it is completely elitist, as only those who already have the means can afford to improve themselves. College isn’t inherently elitist at all, it is the economics of college that is. Public K-12 education is a good example.

“ But if the taxpayer is to support the intellectually elite going to college, the taxpayer is reasonably interested in what payback he’s going to get.”

I would again quibble with the assumption of “intellectually elite”. They are merely the ones who have the opportunity. That is very different. Now you’re changing the entire subject of the discussion from microeconomics to macroeconomics. And macroeconomic impacts are much harder to quantify.

If a country’s various employers need 100 white collar managers (to use a number for easy math), how many potential workers would they need to efficiently fill those positions? Certainly a minimum of 100, but that would leave you with exactly as many people as needed. And if you’ve ever hired for 1 position from a pool of 1, you know how bad that is.

So you need more. Preferably a lot more. The government has a vested interest in a stable, thriving, broad-based economy. And that means skilled workers. And that means, on a macro level, college graduates. And more than the job market requires because some people may be educated, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be any good at their job.

Incidentally, this is an argument in favor of expanding H1B visas, but I don’t find it compelling. We have set up our education system to provide sufficient technically skilled workers.

So the government has a valid interest in assuring a large pool of workers capable of filling the millions of jobs in the white collar job market. Hence, the carious programs to expand the pool of people in college.

[Brett Bellmore]

"No one wants to spend a year or two paying a high school graduate to learn what a college graduate already knows."

You mean, as opposed to paying them for having spent 4-5 years coming to know it? Because your employer is paying for that education one way or another...

Look, I LIKE higher education. I think STEM degrees are economically valuable. Not so sure about "studies" degrees.

But if there is a more bone headed move a university dependent on public funding can make than picking a side in our politics and going all in for it in the expectation of being funded by the people it has chosen to make enemies out of, I can't think of it.

And that's what too many universities have done, picked sides in our political fights, decided to be, not the nation's system of higher education, but HALF the nation's system of higher education, and screw the other half.

Did they really think the other half would never get around to saying, "No, screw YOU."?

[Lee Moore]

What they thought was - "we are immune, you can't touch us !"

I still think that fiddling around with compacts and so on is a waste of time. Just turn off the faucet.

[Nelson]

“ I think STEM degrees are economically valuable. Not so sure about "studies" degrees.”

It may surprise you, but the vast majority of white collar jobs aren’t in STEM. And, astonishingly, most of those jobs are competently filled by the people who earned the “studies” degrees you are so dismissive of.

The employees (so non-entrepreneur working for someone else and, to be fair, not a c-suite executive or a doctor/lawyer type job) that I know who make the most are an art history major (University of Texas) who makes almost $400k as a sales manager for a medical technology company, a poli-sci major (George Washington University) who makes about $350k as an executive at a paper and packaging company, a criminal justice major (University of Central Florida) who makes the same at a financial processing company, a women’s studies major who makes almost $300k at a logistics company, and a history major who makes over $500k as a broker. The STEM types make a good living, but high-level, high-dollar executives often come from the majors that conservatives in particular dismiss as useless.

A college degree is the beginning, not the end.

“ And that's what too many universities have done, picked sides in our political fights, decided to be, not the nation's system of higher education, but HALF the nation's system of higher education, and screw the other half.”

Nonsense. There is a vast difference between having a workforce that leans liberal and picking sides in political fights. They aren’t fighting a war against half the nation. That’s an absurd statement, even if we accepted the false premise that half the country is so conservative that they are fighting against the contents of the average college education.

“ Did they really think the other half would never get around to saying, "No, screw YOU."?”

Did they ever think the fringe would engage in a scorched-earth ideological holy war against anything from Mitt Romney or George Bush and left? No. No one did. Because that sort of extremism is specifically what our system was designed to prevent. But the faith that the Founders had that the government would govern for all Americans, not just their supporters, was apparently misplaced. We are living through such a faithless time right now.

[bernard11]

And that's what too many universities have done, picked sides in our political fights,

That's ridiculous. You want affirmative action for Republicans?

[Dr. Ed 2]

What dimension of reality do you live in?

Not only are over half of college graduates doing jobs that don't require/use a college degree but employers are increasingly frustrated with how little college grads actually know.

It's only the EEOC and the _Griggs v. Power Systems_ decision that they value college degrees at all.

[Nelson]

“ Not only are over half of college graduates doing jobs that don't require/use a college degree”

Really? Where did you find such a statistic? Was it circling the bowl after you flushed?

“ but employers are increasingly frustrated with how little college grads actually know.”

Same source, I presume?

[bernard11]

And, yes, I went to a state school.

So your education was partly funded by taxpayers. Not that I object. In fact I approve.

[M L]

"as it exists is a jewel, and a very important contributor to American society."

Not really. A leftist who likes the marxist and other programming of the youth would think that, though, as would someone whose salary depends on the trillions of taxpayer dollars being sucked down, and various others.

Here's what the average college experience has come to consist of, minimal to no learning or education, just waste of time, money, and youth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYx7YG0RsFY

[Sarcastr0]

Anti-intellectualism always comes from the highly educated, who haven’t been in a campus in decades.

Nice 2009 reference, very hip!

[M L]

I am pro-intellectualism.

[Nelson]

You aren’t even pro-facts, never mind pro-thinking.

[M L]

Re your edit: 2009 was around the peak. Things have actually been turning, more and more people are wise to the fact that the college is a scam in many cases. But yes we millennials are getting old, har har! What generation do you belong to by the way and what is your DL/squat/bench? Hope you're staying healthy and strong and still have some testosterone, brother.

[Sarcastr0]

2009 was around the peak

You are low-key the craziest person on this here website.

[bernard11]

A leftist who likes the marxist and other programming of the youth

Where do you get this crap? From Breitbart?

How many Marxists are there teaching at universities? Here's a clue - not many. And nobody is "programming" youth. You're spreading RW bullshit you probably got from some radio screamer.

[Nelson]

“ They might profitably talk to Hillsdale.”

Why would anyone want to be like an obscure, third-rate college?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Think "value added" -- if they started with students where Harvard's students start at where would they end?

[Nelson]

They can’t, because their end product sucks. They’ve had plenty of time to establish a good reputation, they just failed miserably.

[Brett Bellmore]

Because they're an obscure college that runs entirely independent of federal control, so they know how to do that.

[Sarcastr0]

I noticed getting a good education kinda fell off your metrics of quality there.

Similarly, you can live off the grid; let us not discuss the quality of that life and focus only on the independence!

[Brett Bellmore]

I'll be blunt: Hillsdale not providing a good education is a conclusion driven by your politics. They're decently rated by US News and World Reports.

[Nelson]

Their four year graduation rate is 76%. Even their overall score from US News is 74/100. This is what a bad college looks like. That isn’t politics, it’s metrics. From your source.

Perhaps you believe a low C is good, but I would be ashamed of such a grade. But I guess a bad score for a college that shares your beliefs is the same thing as a good score for a college that doesn’t.

It seems like you are the one shaping your opinion to your politics, not me.

[Nelson]

“ Because they're an obscure college that runs entirely independent of federal control, so they know how to do that.”

That, however, isn’t even the smallest part of what the purpose of a college is. The purpose of a college isn’t to run independent of federal subsidies, it’s to educate students. And they suck at that.

[MollyGodiva]

Why don't companies like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics go genuinely private rather than existentially dependent on federal funding?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Because people like you won't let me have an AAA battery in my back yard.

[Frank Drackman]

I've got a bunch of AAA batteries, they're in a desk drawer and not the back yard, maybe that's your problem.

[y81]

I don't know, have Lockheed and Northrop considered it? What about New York Hospital or Sloan Kettering? JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs? Intel? Why are you so focused on universities?

[Rossami]

I agree that accepting the compact would be a bad deal for universities. That's the point. It's a poison pill to start weaning universities off of federal funding. And that, if it works, will be a very good deal, both for us taxpayers and ultimately for the universities.

[bernard11]

No. It would be a terrible deal.

It would devastate research and restrict attendance to the very wealthy. Equality of opportunity would no longer even be an ideal to strive for.

[Rossami]

Yet that was not the reality before the feds started shoveling out cash to universities in truckloads. Turning off the spigots could require some choices about administration, extracurriculars and maybe programs but would have negligible impact on attendance.

And most research should be conducted by those who have an economic incentive to make sure the research is done properly. Eisenhower speech about dangers of the military-industrial complex is famous but almost nobody remembers that he warned against the dangers of the "scientific-technological elite" in that same speech.

[bernard11]

Yet that was not the reality before the feds started shoveling out cash to universities in truckloads.

Yes, but so what? The issue is whether things improved, or whether we want to go back to those not-so-glorious days of yesteryear.

And most research should be conducted by those who have an economic incentive to make sure the research is done properly.

Well, people working on grants would like to get more grants, which is an incentive. And research, especially basic research, can be quite expensive and yet have huge benefits that may not be easily captured by the researchers themselves. IOW, it can be quite beneficial while still being unprofitable.

[Rossami]

So what is that things have not improved. Those days of yesteryear may or may not have been glorious but they are absolutely no worse (on the dimension of educational availability) than today.

Getting grants is an economic incentive for writing good grant proposals, not for doing quality work. Any review of the recent articles on the "replication crisis" will demonstrate that fact. But yes, basic research is quite expensive and has generally very long-term and often uncertain benefits - and for centuries (right up to WW2), such research was primarily conducted without any significant government funding. Your claim that the status quo funding model is essential and that any threat to it will result in disaster is contradicted by history.

[Sarcastr0]

What a shiny new goalpost.

You went from, no public funding to let’s consider new funding models.

Quite a change!

[bernard11]

Your claim that the status quo funding model is essential and that any threat to it will result in disaster is contradicted by history.

Not exactly. I think the current funding model works, but if there is a better one, I'm open. My actual claim is that there are any number of research projects which produce useful and valuable results which will not be funded privately. Why:

1. (Very important) Because private firms may not be able to capture all the benefits. This means a project may be quite beneficial to society as a whole, but still unprofitable from the firm's point of view. Consider scientific research which does not produce a product or any marketable outcome, but nonetheless advances the state of knowledge, and makes further advances possible, leading to a variety of benefits. Or imagine research that evaluates some medical treatment. Will that be "profitable?" Probably not, but it may improve the way certain problems are treated, and be of enormous benefit to many patients.

2. Similar to #1, there may be substantial positive externalities from an interesting but not immediately profitable project.

3. Some projects are expensive and risky and, despite being profitable on a probabilistic basis, are outside the risk tolerance of private industry.

4. Because the payoff may be far in the future, outside a reasonable time horizon for private industry. That may also reduce the ability of the researcher to capture a lot of the benefit.

What you are doing is measuring value, of both research and education, purely in terms of fairly short-term payoffs to private individuals or business. That's a mistake.

[Sarcastr0]

There is no ROI for fundamental research.

There is no technology without the foundation of fundamental research.

Your market worship would kill America's innovation engine in about 20 years.

[Brett Bellmore]

If there's no ROI for fundamental research, it's a luxury good.

You mean there's no direct and predictable ROI for it, not that it has no return on investment.

[Sarcastr0]

There is no measurable ROI for an individual research endeavor. Too much uncertainty on to many levels.

That means we can't privatize it; the market doesn't and shouldn't fund stuff with that level of risk.

[M L]

Incorrect. Any endeavor that the government, in its infinite wisdom! deems worth doing, is something that a private individual might also deem worth doing and paying for.

Unless of course, government is doing things so incredibly stupid that nobody would ever consider it a good idea, which can't possibly be.

[y81]

So Bill Gates and Elon Must (or maybe George Soros, what do I know) will be funding the US military endeavor from now on?

[Glaucomatose]

Weird that no private individual thought the interstate highway system was worth doing and paying for.

Or the Department of Defense.

But I salute you for getting everything you needed to know from some right-wing fortune cookie.

[bernard11]

Incorrect. Any endeavor that the government, in its infinite wisdom! deems worth doing, is something that a private individual might also deem worth doing and paying for.

This is just wrong. An endeavor may have many benefits, and the private individual may well not be able to capture enough of them to justify the investment.

Among other things.

[Sarcastr0]

Some school failed you bad.

This is an ideology that should collapse within moments of any kind of evidence-based critical thinking.

But here you are, blindly believing in it.

[Bob from Ohio]

"That means we can't privatize it; the market doesn't and shouldn't fund stuff with that level of risk."

It did before federal non-defense funding started.

Why can't Harvard fund some basic research? Or Yale? Or MIT? Universities, before they became welfare queens,used to do that.

[Sarcastr0]

before they became welfare queens, used to do that.

Grants are not charity.

Universities didn't do it themselves before WW2, it was privately sponsored. And quite applied.

I did my masters on this - there was a Congressional speech in 1919 about how American science builds things and grows things, while European science was impractical head-in-the-clouds stuff.

[Rossami]

America's innovation engine was going quite strongly before government started meddling. You and bernard are claiming that the status quo is essential merely because it is the status quo and ignoring history.

Yes, there would be short-term disruption as the market adapted to the loss of goverment subsidies but the long-term results would certainly be no worse and might likely be substantially better.

[Sarcastr0]

The status quo as in there is public funding for research.

No one went deeper than that,

Quit weaseling around.
Whatever this compact is, it isn’t going to do shit about replicability.

Pick a thesis and argue it.

[thesafesurfer]

You should read "Dealers of Lightning" about the Xerox PARC research facility recruiting scientists, frustrated by higher education's stifling of research, to work for them, and became disillusioned with corporate America ignoring their research findings to found their own companies that led the computer revolution. Innovation does not come from college campuses it comes from the private sector.

[bernard11]

You and bernard are claiming that the status quo is essential merely because it is the status quo and ignoring history.

I am claiming that the status quo works very well, and we should be cautious about upending it, especially with no idea of what to replace it with other than Randish fantasies.

And by what metric can you claim things haven't improved?

The first American to win the Physics Nobel was Albert Michelson in 1907. Over the 59 year period from 1907 through 1965 there were 27 American winners, including Michelson.

From then to today, 60 years, there were 79.

Of the 108 winners in Medicine nineteen won before 1967

The numbers in Chemistry are 12 pre-1967 out of 85 total.

Pretty crude metric, sure, but it at least suggests that your imagined golden age was not so golden after all.

[Frank Drackman]

Vermont has 7 Synagogues, Ear-Ron has over a 100.
Funny what you can do with Statistics.

Frank

[Dr. Ed 2]

Frank, try synagogues per 100,000 population.

Vermont's current population is approximately 648,493 people. It is one of the least populated states in the U.S.

The population of Iran is estimated to be around 92.4 million, making it the 17th largest country in the world by population.

[Frank Drackman]

Thanks for my point going over your pointy haid' like a Nuke Laloosh Heater into the backstop, I was pointing out how misleading peoples can be with Statistics.
For Example,
John Paciorek, Outfielder for the Houston Colt .45's finished his MLB Career with a 1.000 Batting Average, 2.000 OPS, and also a Perfect Fielding Percentage.
He's NOT in the Hall of Fame
Willie Mays only went .310/.940/and fielded .981 (OK, that catch in the 1954 World Series should count for more than 1 putout)
They have the Glove "Say Hey" used to make "the Catch" in Cooperstown, I think my glove first year in Little League was bigger.

Frank

[bernard11]

Thanks for my point going over your pointy haid' like a Nuke Laloosh Heater into the backstop,

Nice reference, Frank.

[Swede425]

This is a Golden Opportunity!
Universities can finally get off the government tit and be truly independent.
Imagine how absolutely batshit crazy you can become then!
Who doesn't win here?

[MollyGodiva]

Then why does every company such as Northrop Grumman not finally get off the government tit and be truly independent?

[Swede425]

Ooh! I know this one! Pick me! Pick me!
It's because roughly 86% of Northrop Grumman's business is actually with the government.
That's not just the tit; that's both tits, the ass, and the lady bits, too.

[Poxigah146]

Yes, only a fool would take these deals, because they know that they can just find a Slick Willy, Obongo, or Pedo Joe judge to come up with some reason to enjoin anything Trump does.

[Frank Drackman]

"Obongo"??
I like that, I really like that, is it yours or did you steal it like I do with most of my material??
Have you noticed how he, I mean "He" looks like he's sucking on a Lemon since Comes-a-lot lost???

Frank

[ReaderY]

At least the traditional Faust gives you something you desire in exchange for your soul. This one seems to be giving you nothing but a vague promise not to take away what you already have.

[Frank Drackman]

They should take the deal, crawfish, and nail Trump in the ass.
Or maybe not, his current SS Agents look a tad more competent than that fat Lesbian at Butler who couldn't unholster her weapon (I'd expect a Lesbian to be pretty good at unholstering weapons)

Frank

[Brett Bellmore]

But, that's kind of the point: A continuing income stream from the federal government isn't something you "already have" It's something you've gotten in the past, and hope to continue getting in the future, but it's not something you can "have".

Every day is a new day.

[Sarcastr0]

Not getting kicked in the nuts is not something you already "already have" It's something you've gotten in the past, and hope to continue getting in the future, but it's not something you can *have".

Every day is a new day!

[Brett Bellmore]

Not getting kicked in the nuts isn't something you "have", you dweeb, it's something you're hoping to not have.

The administration is threatening to stop funding the universities, not fine them. To stop giving them money, not take away anything.

[Sarcastr0]

You're playing with positives and negatives. Untrammeled nuts are as positive a good as getting your competitive research funded.

The unconstitutional conditions doctrine exists for exactly this reason - to prevent authoritarianism via use of funds.

You are just the worst libertarian.

[M L]

Taxpayers have been getting kicked in the nuts by universities for many years. Now it's time for universities to get kicked in the nuts. But, do note that merely putting a stop to universities kicking taxpayers in the nuts (stopping their funding), does not constitute kicking universities in the nuts. More will be required for that. Hope this clears things up for you.

[bernard11]

Taxpayers have been getting kicked in the nuts by universities for many years.

Research grants are not kicks in the nuts. I'd guess they have overwhelmingly paid for themselves. Tax exemptions are no different than they are for churches, and loans and scholarship money are, IMO, worthwhile expenditures, at least for a country with our professed ideals.

[Poxigah146]

If you're researching nuclear power, yes. If you're researching the role of women in some uncontacted tribe in the Pantanal or the interplay between gay anal sex and climate change, then no.

[bernard11]

A. It's not a "continuing income stream from the federal government."

It's grants designated for a specific purpose.

And while it's true that the grants are not guaranteed, it's also true that university researchers should not be deprived of otherwise available grants for reasons unrelated to research performance, especially purely political BS - which, c'mon, you know this - is what Trump is acting on.

[M L]

LOL, What an attitude to think that because you stole trillions of dollars from taxpayers in years past, you are entitled to more trillions of taxpayer dollars, in perpetuity, in the future!

"What you already have" . . . indeed.

[Sarcastr0]

Research grants are not theft, you weird weird dude.

[M L]

❌Taxation = theft
✅Taxation = kick in the nuts

Better?

[Sarcastr0]

That's right, I forgot you're a housecat.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Whittington apparently thinks that the colleges and universities have a choice here -- they DON'T!

Or can he show us where in the US Constitution it says that the US taxpayers have to subsidize the largess that higher education has become? Perhaps show us where the Constitution mandated federal grants, nontaxable status, visa privileges and student loans?

All Trump is really doing here is what a half century of leftists have done before him. Ever hear of "Title IX"?

If you choose to accept Federal funds, you have to deal with all the regulations that whoever is in power in DC at the time wants to make you comply with. Trump's doing the same thing that Obama did -- Trump's just doing it in coherent English so that everyone can understand what he is doing.

But the Trump Compromise is really an attempt to avoid doing what a lot of MAGA wants to do -- simply say No Mas to higher education. To make all of its income fully taxable, to eliminate all grants and student loans, along with all preferable visa sponsorships.

To essentially make Harvard the same as Walmart, to treat it as the private for-profit business that it really is.

And as to the AAUP, it now is the AAUP/AFT -- a union like the other public sector unions such as AFSCME.

[Josh R]

can he show us where in the US Constitution it says that the US taxpayers have to subsidize the largess that higher education has become?

The taxpayers don't have to. But when they do, they cannot condition those subsidies on how a university speaks using it's own money.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The US Dpt of Ed's Office of Civil Rights would beg to differ...

[Josh R]

Do go on (with a citation, please) ...

[Glaucomatose]

"Trump thinks a thing" is not actually a legal defense.

[thesafesurfer]

No doubt a Democrat appointed judge will find exactly what you suggest, and then a group of 51 Democrat law professors will sign a public letter supporting that court's decision.

[Bob from Ohio]

Shrug, the Vance offer will be worse.

The current "elite" university system cannot survive the active hostility of one of the two parties.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Remember that the Higher Ed Act has not yet been reauthorized.

Remember too that the GOP is currently split between RINO and MAGA, with MAGA on the ascendancy, much like the FDR wing was in the Democratic party in the 1930s.

So it's not even 18% that support higher education as most of the MAGA/Big Business Republicans do -- very few MAGA do. And while Vance has his Yale degree, he is a populist William F. Buckley and the wise institutions will lock in the Trump deal while the can.

[windycityattorney]

Really love the MAGA leaders in govt who themselves went to so called 'elite' universities and law schools rail against the 'elite' AS IF THEY ARE NOT BENEFICIARIES.

Pull up the ladder behind you! You got your connections, money and now power. Fuck everybody else.

There is no way this could all potentially backfire. Nope. Burn it all down. The only thing that matters is the next election cycle.

[Sarcastr0]

Wisdom and legality can suck it, I guess.

Will to power, eh Bob?

[Bob from Ohio]

The non biblical Golden Rule, rather.

[Sarcastr0]

Same diff, really.

The key is that you're ignoring sound judgement and rule of law.

So much for make America great again - America can be collateral damage so long as the libs get owned.

[y81]

Then I guess we'll have to send our children to Oxford and the Sorbonne, while yours go to Ohio State, LOL. They'll still make more money than you. And we'll have to go to Zurich or someplace for quality medical care, while you go to Toledo General. I don't have a problem with any of this.

[Nelson]

“ Shrug, the Vance offer will be worse.”

I would like to say that I, for one, am looking forward to the ‘28 primaries between Vance and DeSantis. The race to the bottom will be epic.

While I feel like Trump can’t possibly be topped as worst person to ever run for President (and yes, that includes Andrew Jackson and Richard Nixon), I think those two will see that as a challenge and rise (or lower?) to the occasion.

[Josh R]

Even though I am a left-center normy, if Trump had ran as a Democrat in 2016 (*), I would have voted for Vance, DeSantis, or Cruz if I lived in a swing state.

(*) Apart from himself, there are only two issues Trump cares about: immigration and trade. The former puts him more at home in the GOP, the latter with the Democrats (before Trump took over the GOP). He could have been liberal on everything else including appointing more Sotomayors or Kagans. But, because of his narcissistic personality disorder which leads to authoritarianism, he still would have been far, far worse than Vance, et al.

[MollyGodiva]

This is nothing more than the fascist MAGAs allergy to reason and knowledge.

[Swede425]

LOL!
From the boys can be girls crowd.

[MollyGodiva]

LOL!
From the too stupid to understand modern biology or gender crowd.

MAGAs are massive dumb shits.

[M L]

Sorry, but . . . He who pays the piper calls the tune.

Just end all this taxpayer money. Every penny of it.

[Glaucomatose]

So a future President Rashida Tlaib can demand that government contractors pledge that There is no other God but God and Mohammed is the Prophet of God, or else they get no funding?

Sure, I'm positive MAGAs would view that as totally legal.

[dwshelf]

The asymmetry between Trump and Biden isn't that Trump wants more control of Universities.

Rather, it's that the Universities wanted to support Biden's agenda and collected financial rewards for doing so, while they oppose Trump's agenda, but still hope for financial rewards.

[Sarcastr0]

These are research grants, what agenda?

Just reflexive partisan resentment without needing any opposing partisanship in evidence.

[Glaucomatose]

When conservatives are anti-science, scientific research becomes partisan.

[MollyGodiva]

What "Biden Agenda" did the Universities support? What part of the Trump agenda do they oppose?

[Social Justice is neither]

Yes, please reject this to prove that your (personal and institutional) racism, sexism, hatred of the West and indoctrination agenda is more important to you than your continued existence.

[Sarcastr0]

Hated of the west sure seems code for something!

[M L]

On a related note:

Politicians not meeting their fundraising goals for the first time because of one little change…
https://www.facebook.com/NickFreitasVA/videos/politicians-not-meeting-their-fundraising-goals-for-the-first-time-because-of-on/706762445678093/

[thesafesurfer]

Thank you for the link.

[Dr. Ed 2]

It will be interesting if this affects the 2026 elections...

Why wouldn't it?

[thesafesurfer]

Universities are no longer institutions of higher learning. They are employment agencies for the tsunami of superfluous graduates churned out by degree mills. Higher education views undergraduates as individual revenue streams to public and private capital pools. Faculties will do anything to keep enrollments as high as possible. This includes getting rid of entrance examinations, lowering standards, mandating pass and fail rates, prostituting themselves for foreign funding from America hating sources, and admitting as many illegal aliens as possible. The only way to fix these hopelessly corrupt institutions is to drastically reduce their access to foreign funds and federal government money. This will force them to eliminate the myriad of "fill-in-the blank studies" departments and the like. It will also lead to a drastic reduction in administrative bloat. Hopefully a twenty-year regime of Trump-Vance-Rubio will get this job done.

[M L]

This is the way.

[MollyGodiva]

Tell me you have no idea how a university works without telling us you have no idea how a university works. Have you ever even been to one? Even as a visitor to a sport or event? Driven by one? Know where one is on a map?

[Glaucomatose]

Sure, if there's one thing everyone knows these days it's that it's too easy for kids to get into Harvard.

[Life of Brian]

financial vulnerabilities of universities

Stopped reading here. Let me know if things have inexplicably turned on their head since the last time I looked, and even a single one of these whiny babies is no longer sitting on a literal mountain of cash.

The audacity it takes to say I must nonetheless pull out my wallet to "fund" them so they can continue to build their warchests, while simultaneously demanding those dollars to be free of any pesky limitations on how they conduct themselves, is simply stunning.

[Bob from Ohio]

They could even, gasp, pay smaller salaries.

https://www.ivycoach.com/the-ivy-coach-blog/the-rankings/highest-paid-college-presidents

And think how much all the other VPs and Asst VPs, deans and asst. deans et, make.

[Sarcastr0]

That wouldn't fund much research, but it is a good talking point for the haters!

[Bob from Ohio]

Its a start. A million here and a million there ...

[Sarcastr0]

I'm all for cutting administrative bloat at schools, but you hate all schools, right down to wanting to go after their endowments.

You acknowledge this won't solve the issue at hand, and I don't think I trust your sincerity give your radicalism.

[Bunny495]

Historically higher education was viewed as a public good. Even as late as when I went to college to a large extent this was true. More to the point it was affordable. True I had the benefit of the GI Bill. I also worked construction in the summer, drove a cab in Miami over Christmas break, and had a job as a bouncer at a local bar weekends. The bouncer job was a double benefit as I not only made money but Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights not only did I get a free meal but I also was not pissing away money on social activities. I had more money in the bank when I graduated than when I started school.

The cost to attend school has exploded since the 1960s when I was an undergrad. Not to mention many students today enjoy things that simply did not exist in the past. Student centers, recreation centers, air-conditioned dorms, and the like are more like resorts than universities. I would also note that parking lots seem to be tenfold more common than when I was a student. To compound the problem many degrees only prepare a graduate to put on a paper had and ask, 'do you want fries with that'.

Point is lots of folks don't view higher education as providing enough value for what it costs. Sure there are programs like STEM where grad but many programs are basically worthless. Whatever you think of Trump there is no question higher education needs a reset.

[MollyGodiva]

You might want to have a perpetual stupid and ignorant America, but the rest of us do not.

[ducksalad]

This is almost a caricature of the traditional WIWYWWTOSUBW (When I was Young We Walked To School Uphill Both Ways) speech.

Even as late as when I went to college to a large extent this was true.

Your degree is good, but then it got bad right after you left. Such luck.

I also worked construction in the summer, drove a cab in Miami over Christmas break, and had a job as a bouncer at a local bar weekends.

You were a real working man, not like the slacking limousine liberals that populate the colleges now. (Odd how we still have new houses, Uber drivers, and local bars even though there's no real working men anymore to run them.)

Student centers, recreation centers, air-conditioned dorms, and the like are more like resorts than universities.

Yeah that air conditioning is an unfair advantage, they never had their paper spoiled by sweat stains. Also, you forgot to mention access to modern medicine. So unfair that kids can get antibiotics for their STDs instead of swallowing mercury compounds like y'all had to.

I would also note that parking lots seem to be tenfold more common than when I was a student.

Is that because working students need to commute? Is it because the city grew up around the campus and there's not much on-street parking anymore? Hell no! It's because kids these days are limousine liberals who expect valet parking!

'do you want fries with that'.

Even my long-gone grandpa thought this one was too old to use in his version of the speech. Either you're 105 years old or it's having a comeback.

[Moderation4ever]

Colleges and universities are engines of progress. Many things we have or use today started out in the research laboratories of schools of higher learning. That is alright because the colleges and universities of other countries will step up and take the lead. America will move on to mediocracy.