New survey data shows that Notre Dame’s legendary president Father Theodore Hesburgh’s wisdom for college presidents from 55 years ago is still relevant today.
“My basic principle is that you don’t make decisions because they are easy; you don’t make them because they are cheap; you don’t make them because they’re popular; you make them because they’re right,” he advised.
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Our fresh polling data from approximately 100 college and university presidents in attendance at the Yale Higher Education Leadership Summit last week reveals that higher education leaders are no longer cowering as their schools are wrongly exploited as scapegoats for political grandstanding. Challenges to higher education posed by the new Trump Administration (as well as from the far left and right of the political spectrum) include misguided assaults on admissions policies, educational curricula, endowment support, research priorities, and freedom of expression. Leaders view this attacks as dangerous distortions of facts. Now, higher ed leaders are developing shared plans to correct critics with renewed confidence and clarity. Whether they lead prestigious Ivy League schools, prominent large state universities, proud HBCUs, principled faith-based colleges, selective liberal arts colleges, fortified private universities, or pragmatic community colleges, higher education leaders are not cowering to calls for “institutional neutrality”—but are instead coming out swinging. Increasingly, college and university presidents are saying that this is not the time for such leadership cowardice and are using their voices, despite some boards mistakenly wanting to silence them.
Last week, The Chronicle of Higher Education hinted at this new survey data and here are the revealing full results. Across a diverse group of university presidents, when asked if they “believe the Trump Administration is at war with higher education,” 78% of presidents answered they strongly agree; 16% of presidents answered they agree; 4% disagreed; and 1% strongly disagreed. We have never before seen such near unanimity in believing that the American government is hostile to higher education, with 94% of respondents agreeing that the Trump Administration is at war with higher education.
One prominent manifestation of that hostility to higher education is in the form of proposed higher taxes on university endowments—a proposal which Vice President JD Vance, in particular, has been on the front lines of advocating. When asked if university endowments should be taxed at all, 83% of respondents answered no and 16% answered yes. And when asked what the right rate of taxation should be on the investment income of university endowments, 60% answered 0%; 36% answered 1.4% (the current existing tax rate); 4% answered the tax rate should be lifted to 15%; and 0% of respondents answered 35%—the rate proposed by then-Senator Vance in official Senate legislation prior to becoming Vice President.
At the same time, university presidents overwhelmingly recognized the validity of certain specific critiques of higher education, and engaged in lively, candid, off-the-record discussions with several prominent critics who joined us, including noted investigative reporter from Fox News and The New York Post, Charlie Gasparino; FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) Campus Advocacy leader Connor Murnane; Antidefamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, and Fail U author and Bullwork founding editor Charlie Sykes, among many others.
There was widespread recognition that to many, rising university costs have become increasingly prohibitive. In fact, 68% of university presidents believe the costs of higher education are too high for students, with just 32% disagreeing. In fact, when queried what they believe is the most accurate criticism of higher education, 52% of presidents responded that it is prohibitive costs and student debt; while 20% of presidents responded that it is their perceived separation from/lack of contribution to communities and the world. Meanwhile, 19% of presidents responded that the most accurate criticism of higher education is perceived faculty political bias and lack of free speech culture and 9% said unfair admissions which perpetuate inequality and fail to deliver for underrepresented groups.
Several college presidents raised alarms that the effect of increasingly prohibitive higher ed costs is to defer some prospective students from attending college at all; and 85% of presidents answered that they are concerned about the increasing number of students who choose not to attend college.
Promisingly, university presidents are not only aware of these challenges and critiques; they are already hard at work combatting them head-on. There was widespread recognition that higher education needs to do a better job of telling its own story, and not lose the narrative to misinformed and misguided critics. In fact, a remarkable 100% of respondents agreed that universities need to do a much better job of conveying their value proposition.
That value proposition remains remarkable; especially as a launching pad of socio-economic mobility for its students. In particular, several presidents pointed out that though there is still much to do, higher education has come a long way in opening doors for historically underrepresented groups. And only 31% of presidents believe that higher education is exacerbating, rather than alleviating, structural inequality within society.
Similarly, a group of partners from McKinsey, led by Suzanne Lyman and Fiyin Oladiran, joined us and presented some fresh McKinsey research findings that universities have already improved on affordability, with the pace of tuition cost increases falling below inflation over the last few years after handily outpacing inflation for several decades. These findings sparked lively discussion amongst presidents over whether they have more trouble attracting student revenues than managing administrative expenses and bloat. Provocatively, 29% of presidents even believe that some universities ripped off the federal government with excessive overhead charges on grants.
There was hope that despite the political climate of today, higher education can not only bridge, but transcend, those divisions. This optimism was shared by a diverse range of participants such as the chancellor of one of the five largest systems in the U.S. from a red state, and another chancellor of one of the nation’s largest university systems in a blue state. As these university presidents navigate the Trump Administration’s war on higher education, they hope for higher education to remain a unique, irreplaceable beacon of light and truth.
Despite the many challenges facing higher education in such turbulent times, university presidents remain largely optimistic about the future. When asked, “if I knew what I know now about university president, I would not have taken this job,” an overwhelming 86% of respondents disagreed. And many presidents mentioned the uniquely rewarding aspects of being leaders in higher education in reflective discussions throughout the Summit.
When in 1967 renowned educator Clark Kerr was fired by Governor Ronald Reagan as president of the University of California system for not yielding to political pressures, Kerr quipped, “I leave this position just as I entered it….fired with enthusiasm.” Today’s college presidents are fired with enthusiasm as they defiantly fortify their institutions with the belief that higher education is one of this nation’s most valuable successful and valuable sectors in the global competition for greatness.
