Harvard and other elite universities in the USA are targets of Donald Trump and his administration, accusing them of biases in their treatment of students based on their ideological views. This attack builds on efforts to control the governance of private universities, such as members of the Ivy League and other top ranked universities. In a letter to the President of Harvard, Dr Alan Garber, and the Lead Member of the Harvard Corporation, Penny Pritzker, the federal government claimed that Harvard had recently “failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment” and sets out reforms the government expects to retain the university’s “financial relationship with the federal government”.[1] Harvard, one of the world’s top-rated universities[2], along with other universities and their associations have challenged these threats to the very governance of university education – public and private.[3]
Harvard had the courage and resources to stand up to the federal government, with Harvard’s lawyers arguing that the university would not surrender is constitutional rights as a private university. I applaud the university for standing its ground, but many others closer to this case will be discussing Harvard’s defence in far more detail, as it deserves. I simply want to mark this, and similar demands on other universities, such as Columbia University, to be among the most blatant attacks on higher education in the United States in decades, and emphasize its risks.
Many academics and journalists will tie this to a growing number of unhinged and self-defeating actions of the Trump administration, which is arguably the case. But I want to draw a connection between this assault on higher education and a far more general and longer-term questioning of the value of higher education in America and in other high-income nations.
Over recent years, growing criticism has focused on the increasing costs of a university education and the problematic value of a university degree, most often tied to whether universities prepare students for valuable careers. Added to these concerns are the more recent questions that have arisen over how some universities have handled some student protests over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. These are fair and important questions to address, but they might well have reinforced an even more worrisome sea change in public attitudes toward higher education rather than foster more constructive engagement with the issues.
When I went to university in the 1960s, I was achieving one of the primary visions of my parents, neither of whom had a college education. My sister was the better student in high school and went to a private college in Claremont, California, while I later went to our state’s major public university, the University of Missouri in Columbia. In those days, every family seemed to want their children to go on to college or university for their education. Today, there are more people challenging the value of a university degree and its relevance to careers. I’ve long thought this was a worrisome trend, but the recent attacks on some of the very top universities in the US have led me to think more seriously about what can be done.
Most importantly, I’ve been led to wonder: Why is the public across the United States so silent? Why are parents and the public not speaking up against this assault? I see that there have been protests on campuses over the attacks by the Trump administration as well as excellent responses from universities, as noted above, and that is promising. But I’m not aware of any major movement engaging a large segment of the public. There should be. Maybe they are too quiet and restrained to be heard across the Atlantic.
Students do not learn from a ‘university’, they learn and are inspired by teachers, such as their professors and instructors at whatever institution they enrol. They do not have a set curriculum as universities create a platform for a huge array of options in disciplines, fields, subjects, courses, and instructors. Particularly in the larger universities, no student necessarily has the same curriculum as other students. For example, going to a public state university, I could choose from hundreds of courses and faculty each term. That was decades ago, so I just went online to see how many faculty are at the University of Missouri today. I found that in addition to a Nobel Laureate and members of the National Academy of Sciences, the University of Missouri has nearly two thousand faculty, specifically 1,824 faculty.
When I went to college way back in the 1960s, I had several professors who were inspiring and supportive. I remember them fondly to this day. These teachers read my work, encouraged me, and gave me confidence in pursuing a career in academia. I variously considered going into medicine, then law, and various other directions, but later moved into and stayed in political science. It was in this field that I sensed I had the most potential to contribute in the use of computational approaches to the study of politics. The university was a ladder for me to move on to graduate studies and a rewarding career in a field I did not even know existed before entering university.
Of course, higher education varies greatly across nations and regions. A very telling joke in the UK is that ‘you can get a good high school education in the US, but you need to go to college to get it.’ Whether or not you agree, it is arguable that universities in the US have been world leading. How can we keep them that way?
You may think Trump is attacking elite universities and are not relevant to you or your family. That would be wrong. The top universities cost a lot in part because they raise funds to admit the most promising students whether they can afford their tuitions and costs. More generally, the Trump administration’s attacks are on the fundamental freedoms of governance and education that underpin all universities in the US and other high-income nations that have often emulated the practices of top-ranked universities.
If you want universities to continue to provide opportunities for anyone to find a ladder to a career, even one they did not imagine before college, then you should be supporting the expansion of university education for more if not all of those who wish to pursue higher education. Speak up against destructive attacks by supporting constructive efforts to address genuine concerns over the quality, costs, and expansion of higher education.
[1] https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2025/04/Letter-Sent-to-Harvard-2025-04-11.pdf
[2] https://www.topuniversities.com/student-info/choosing-university/worlds-top-100-universities
[3] For instance, the Association of American Universities, American Council on Education, and the Association of Public & Private Land-Grant Universities have taken legal actions against funding cuts to university research, such as on energy. See: https://www.aplu.org/news-and-media/news/aplu-aau-ace-legal-challenge-to-cuts-to-critical-energy-research/ Eighteen major universities in the US, including the Big Ten, have created a ‘Mutual Academic Defense Compact (MADC) to respond to attacks on academic freedom and the missions of universities. https://thehill.com/homenews/education/5255943-big-10-universities-trump-rutgers-nebraska-michigan-state/