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Trump's Actions May Benefit Elite Colleges, Critics Say
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In Short: Rolling Stone and HigherEdDive argue that Trump's policies could be enabling elite colleges while putting them under scrutiny.
The most elite colleges in the U.S., according to Rolling Stone, are enabling cyclical inequality by charging exorbitant fees, with some degrees costing up to $400,000.
Trump's executive orders targeting diversity and inclusion efforts at colleges, similar to Eisenhower's desegregation order, have placed elite universities under a state of siege, according to reports.
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- But the uncomfortable truth now is that the most elite level of higher education may be our chief enabler of cyclical inequality. (I’m talking here about the 50 or so most in-demand schools; there’s plenty wrong with the rest of higher ed, too, but let’s leave it for another time.) The most prestigious private schools are charging as much as $400,000 for a degree.
- We really have no idea, because unlike government, private colleges are under no obligation to tell us, and they take that non-obligation seriously.
- Because for some reason the best colleges in the country are desperate to impress a bunch of data nerds at U.S. News & World Report, who have decided that your school must be better if it accepts fewer students, and whose only special qualification for ranking colleges is having long ago realized that it’s the only thing keeping their publication alive.
- (I speak from experience.) Inside those stately buildings, though, the nation’s elite colleges are in a state of siege.
- The Trump administration continues to “investigate” dozens of major universities for fostering antisemitism.
- But there’s another cost, too, which is that Trump has now managed to do something I wound’t have thought possible.
- It cited Trump's executive orders directing federal officials to root out DEI in colleges and K-12 schools, which it likened to President Dwight Eisenhower's 1957 executive order authorizing the use of the National Guard to enforce the public school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas.
- U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement Thursday that the rule would set "a clear standard" for what is expected of tax-exempt colleges.
Sources
- Highereddivelink