The Remaking of the American University

Parents Forum
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I read “The Unmaking of the American University” by Nicholas Lemann that was recently published in The New Yorker and think that the some of the issues raised would be interesting to be discussed by the CC community.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/03/16/the-unmaking-of-the-american-university?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

The author posits that higher ed will look different in the future, no matter what administration is in office. My curiosity is about how the community thinks higher ed will look different and how it should exist in the future (and sadly, those two things aren’t always the same).

The piece is long, but below are some selections that get to the heart of some of the questions I’d love discussed, though topics based on other parts of the article are welcomed, too. And for context, I didn’t include a specific quote, but the bulk, of research-heavy fields get most of their research funding from the federal government. So for all those STEM departments, there’s a heavy reliance on the feds.

“How may the contributions of the élite be made clear to the egalitarians, and how may an aristocracy of intellect justify itself to all men?”

The above is a quote from Clark Kerr, who helped devise the California higher ed system of research universities, state colleges, and community colleges.

Universities’ vulnerability is internal, as well as external. Schools require the support not only of the federal government but also of faculty, students, alumni, parents, donors, and trustees. As in the fable of the blind men and the elephant, they don’t all have hold of the same thing. “It’s tremendously hard,” Eisgruber said. “They all see the university in a different way.”

“as Gruenbaum sees it, why should the federal government enter into lucrative contracts with partners who are out of step with the … administration’s priorities?”

And as this is purposely NOT placed in the political forum, it’s about whether the federal government should limit grants to institutions that align with that administration’s priorities.

Many presidents were aware that their trustees, the legal owners of private universities, would not have supported resistance. “It begins with trustees. Our job is to be fiduciaries,” Andrew Bursky, a businessman who is the chair of the board at Washington University, told me. Universities, he said, have not kept up their relationships with politicians: “We were engaged with the community, but not with the state legislature or the Feds. Like, zero. We need to build relationships. If we don’t get it fixed, it’s going to be fixed for us.”

Should it be necessary for colleges to build relationships with state and federal governments, or should they be viewed as apolitical? Does it matter if the college is private or public?

In reference to the Association of American Universities (A.A.U.) Christopher Eisgruber said,

“The presidents are not all aligned. One group, of which I have been an advocate, believes that higher education has drifted away from its core purpose—that it has become politicized. And, then, there are other influential voices who think there’s nothing wrong, that it’s just a political takeover. That position leads to the resistance language.”

So what is the core purpose of colleges? Is the core purpose to (at a minimum) remain apolitical? Or should the advancement of a particular ideology (and not just political ideologies) be a part of a university’s purpose?

Oklahoma, Utah, Florida, Kansas, Iowa, and Texas have attempted to intervene in the operations of their public universities, through measures such as influencing curricula, increasing teaching loads, and restricting tenure.

How are schools that are recognized as publicly-funded different? Does the role of state politics and administrations’ ideologies change if it is a “public” college? How so and to what degree?

Conservatives are likely never going to be able to create universities they approve of that are anywhere near the level of the universities some of them would like to destroy. But that does not mean that universities are going to get beyond the crisis of the past couple of years intact—that a truly effective collective resistance will emerge, or that the moment will pass, or that the public will become aware of how valuable the universities are…The golden era of autonomy for universities is probably not going to return.

What do we think the future higher education landscape is going to look like? What should it look like?

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Dual Academy
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Here are a few thoughts:

Universities are being criticized political, by both sides -

Right - DEI, Political Activism…

Left - High tuition, Elitism..

With both sides attacking you, your political power erodes pretty fast. While the American university system is strong, it is financially weak - too reliant on the government, so they can’t completely ignore. On the other hand, universities have endowments, strong networks in high places, and some control of credentialing.

I see universities getting through this but becoming less of an authority on thought-leadership and more of a voice that gets considered among many. We will see a lot more compromising.

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To be blunt, no entity looking to get money from others is immune to the need to stay on the good side of those who have that money. In business, in government, in the non-profit world, in whatever combination of those a modern research university might represent, it is ALWAYS a concern.

Looking at the broad sweep of US society in particular, this is really just one facet of a much larger trend where there was an unusually low level of polarization at the top levels of US society from around the 1930s through the 1980s. Not that there were no divisions, but powerful elites in many areas found it relatively easy to work with each other, in their main area and across areas. Lots of analysis of all that is available, but I think it is clear the Great Depression followed by WWII followed by very clear opportunities for the US to become the leading “Western” superpower made that possible.

But there were always lots of underlying tensions, some getting worse. And somewhat ironically, as the great enemy of Soviet Socialism decayed, and the US achieved a largely stable position in the world at large, it allowed attention to reorient to those “internal” issues. And that has led to a demonstrable increase in polarization among US elites.

The thing is, ask any side of these polarized issues, and they will say it is better to fight for what they believe than capitulate to an other side which is itself polarized and demanding total capitulation. And I think it is hard to take issue with that. In fact, people will point out that relative consensus among wealthy and powerful elites was often coming at the cost of less wealthy and powerful segments of US society. The trick is different people have different ideas of who were the worst served . . . .

And then in a polarized culture, it kinda isn’t possible to keep everyone with power and money happy at the same time. They will notice what you are doing to keep the “other side” happy. And that will make them unhappy.

OK, so higher education has gotten caught up in all this, but in my mind no more so really than anything else. I don’t have the ability to predict the future, but I certainly don’t think we can assume we are quickly heading back to the 1930s-to-1980s dynamic, which is more an historical exception than a norm. Institutions which intend to last for centuries may just need to adapt to navigating such an environment as best they can–which they have done before, in US history and elsewhere.

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Education and research themselves can be political.

Even if not politicized at an overall level, certain aspects can get politicized. For example, starting at elementary school, each level of schooling typically has fewer larger schools, each with a larger region to draw students from. Universities draw from larger regions than high schools or community colleges, for example. Often, they draw from entire states, multistate regions, or the entire country (and internationally when it comes to PhD students). Hence, most* universities and their students will typically encounter greater diversity than elementary or high schools, so they effectively must promote the idea that diversity is favorable or at worst neutral so that their students can get along with each other (same for faculty) and to maintain marketability to as many potential students as possible. But anti-diversity politics then sees universities as the enemy for this reason.

*There are, of course, exceptions where universities are demographically limited, sometimes by their own choice. The most obvious examples are those where a specific religion is a significant part of the curriculum and/or campus life. However, some universities are or were involuntarily demographically limited in the past or present.

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Education elevates people. Our country has a history of restricting education for some, but the Civil Rights movement and the Women’s Liberation movement forced changes, allowing marginalized groups to become educated. In order to achieve access for these groups, as well as for those traditionally kept from higher education due to the cost, government intervention (to make sure that students were not turned away because they were minorities or women) and government funding assistance (to make sure poor students could afford to attend college) became part of the higher education landscape.

Somewhere along the line, politicians realized that society was becoming widely educated. The highly educated people in power started casting doubt on the value of education. It became important to the powerful that they limit access to power by limiting access to education. Destabilizing educational access through removing government assistance in providing access appears to be the goal of those seeking to limit education for those they deem undeserving of a seat at the table. Note that these same people value higher education (at elite institutions) for their own children.

We are where we are. Remaking higher education depends on society, as it did when minorities and women were given greater access. Higher education will be what our citizens decide it should be, even if it acts as a pendulum over time.

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Undergraduate degrees will be compressed into a 3 year, instead of the current 4 year, norm due to increased costs, awareness of loss of income, and easier access to resources.

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Massachusetts is already heading in that direction.

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Seems like the possibility of a 3 academic year (90 credit) bachelor’s degree would depend on how voluminous the major is, and how long a sequence of prerequisites is. Lower volume majors with prerequisite sequences no longer than 6 semesters would be most doable in 3 academic years, assuming a typical or lower volume of non-overlapping general education requirements.

Majors where that is the case seem to be most likely to be liberal arts majors, excluding arts and those requiring advanced foreign language study, although some science majors may be at the edge based on prerequisite sequence and requirement volume (depending on general education requirement volume).

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Perhaps general education requirements will be decreased to accelerate the degree track.

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There are quite a few colleges already offering three year degrees. One college, New U, only offers three year degrees (school is new and has very low enrollment.) There is a College-in-3 exchange, here are the current members:

At some colleges, one still has to come in with AP, DE, and/or CLEP credits (graduating in 3 or 3.5 years with credits from HS has always been possible at a number of colleges, mostly publics.) Not sure I would call that innovation/change, just a new marketing emphasis.

I haven’t seen data yet whether most employers have any issues with hiring students from three year degree programs (obviously multinational companies have always hired people from certain countries where bachelors degrees are typically three years.) I expect these programs to grow more quickly if hiring and outcomes are similar/same to those with four year bachelors degrees.

Here are some selected links to some of the three year programs.

Miami Ohio

U Montana

Butler

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However, these all show 120 credit bachelor’s degrees earned in three years by some combination of adding summer courses, AP/etc. credit on entry, and/or greater than typical course loads per semester. That is different in concept from the 90 credit bachelor’s degrees being proposed.

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Geez, my bachelor‘s degree required 144 credits & a thesis.

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I didn’t get past the paywall, but does Lemann discuss demographic issues at all? Politics will come and go, but low birth rates would seem to be the far bigger factor IMO.

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Birth rates were not mentioned. Apologies about the paywall…I don’t have a subscription to The New Yorker and was still able to access it, so I thought others would, too.

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re: the idea of doing a college degree in 3 yr -
Universities all over the UK do this already. US colleges & universities would need to greatly reduce or eliminate all of the GE requirements though.

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As do universities in most European countries, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, South Africa, etc. And those are just the ones I know of.

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Yeah, I think this is really it. The idea of electives outside your area of specialization would be reduced pretty dramatically. I actually think a lot of today’s students (and perhaps parents) that are focused on outcome/ROI would likely want this.

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The educational system in some of these other countries is quite different than our own. My D did a study abroad in Scotland, and she said that the college didn’t have a lot of graded assignments - and exams were graded quite differently. Instead of starting with x-number of points and losing points for getting questions wrong, students started with O and amassed points by demonstrating understanding in responses. This requires truly learning the material and being able to apply it.

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But also, don’t UK universities expect students to enter at a more advanced level (A-level), analogous to US universities requiring significant AP or similar advanced placement on entry?

However, many liberal arts majors are typically low volume enough that even with typical US general education requirements, the course requirements could be completed in 90 credits, even without advanced placement (so a 120 credit degree in such a major would have 30+ credits of free electives). But higher volume majors or those with longer prerequisite sequences may not fit in 90 credits, at least not without substantial advanced placement.

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I don’t know. Others here are smarter than I am about that. All I know is that UK universities’ programs are 3 yr long. :slight_smile: Neither of my kids were/are interested in going to college overseas, so we never dove into the details.