Cut, Coerce, Control: What Trump Is Doing to U.S. Universities

Alex Usher: Hi everyone. I'm Alex Usher, and this is The World of Higher Education Podcast. The single biggest story in higher education for the first six months of this year, without a doubt, has been the Trump administration's remarkable assault on science and universities. Arguably it's the largest state-led assault on higher education institutions anywhere in the world since Mao and the cultural revolution.
Billions of dollars already legally allocated to institutions have been stripped from them mainly, but not exclusively through the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Billions more are going to be cut permanently through the budget process. Individual institutions in particular, Harvard, have been threatened with a variety of punishments if they do not obey the administration's wishes on DEI and the curriculum. International students are being deported and the government has mooted a variety of policies that would see international numbers decline sharply. Low income students are looking at major cuts to both loans and grants. And we're only, as of this recording, 134 days into this administration's term, still 1,327 less to go.
With me today is a returning guest, Brendan Cantwell, from Michigan State University. He joined our show last fall to talk about what, based on his reading of the now notorious Project 2025, a Trump administration might do to higher education. And he was mostly right. Certainly he was more perspicacious than most actual higher education leaders, and so we thought just before we break for the summer, we'd invite him back on, not just to say, I told you so, but to help us understand both the strategies and tactics that the Trump administration is using and where the conflict might be headed next.
Just one note, we recorded this on Wednesday, the 28th of May. Some things such as the state of the Trump Harvard battle have changed since then, so keep that in mind as you listen.
And now over to Brendan.
Brendan, let's start with the big picture. Uh, we're four months into Trump's presidency, for four months in a week. Uh, on only three and a half years to go. Um, and Trump has, lemme see if I can if I've got all this right, he's attacked both, uh, he, he's attacked the big granting agencies, NIH and NSF and he's reduced, um, you know, uh, direct funding to individual investigators often on DEI grounds. Um, he's cut overhead payments to universities as well. He's also gone after specific universities, um, for instance, Columbia, Harvard, but also many others. Uh, and has tried to pull their funding directly in manners, which seem to me to be completely illegal. Uh, partly on grounds of being overly uh, you know, sympathetic to EDI, partly on some spurious grounds of antisemitism and collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party. We've got a budget going through Congress right now, which, uh, takes an ax to the student, uh, loan and grant system, as, as I understand it. And now, just this week, the government seems to be, um, going after international students specifically. First at Harvard, and then, uh, more generally by ordering embassies abroad to do social media checks, uh, before issuing, uh, visas to any international students. Am I missing anything?
Brendan Cantwell: I'm not sure there's been so much. It's been, it, it's been hard to keep, to keep up. I mean, there have been a, a set of executive orders that have addressed things like, uh, what we call in the United States, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Programs. Um, there, uh, some of the executive orders have addressed accreditation, um, and other topics.
So, um, uh, the, the, the thing about the administration and what it's doing with higher education is that there's so many things happening so fast. They're in various states of implementation, so they are sometimes held up by the courts. Um, sometimes it's not clear exactly how to implement an executive order, so, the president proclaims something and it's like, well, what does this mean? What does this mean practically? Um, and so I, you know, it's really very difficult even for somebody who, um, spends, uh, a lot of their time tracking this, um, to, to keep up exactly, uh, everything that's going on.
I think the overall thrust is to say that the administration is using all of the mechanisms that it believes it, it has under its control, and some that it probably doesn't legally have in its control, to coerce, um, universities to behave in a way that they think is more consistent with the President's agenda. That's not just me saying that, that's a fairly standard talking point that the administration has, you know, if you, if universities want to have funding, they ought to support the president's agenda. And then also just to generally weak, weaken the sector,
Alex Usher: Mm-hmm.
Brendan Cantwell: the sector in a position where it is not an independent political and cultural force that could present a challenge to the president or to the party. And I think that that's, what's been going on. Um.
Alex Usher: I think Linda McMahon said exactly that earlier today actually, that that universities are fine as long as they're in line with, with the president, with the administration. So I think, so you, so I think you've explained the through line across the various actions being taken, but how coherent are the administration's actions? Like, is this a, a plan, a well-oiled plan that's been, uh, you know, that they, they sort of knew that by month three or month four, this is where they'd be? Or is it more like tariffs where the president just, you know, thinks of new crap to do every day and, and wheels it out on a whim?
Brendan Cantwell: Yeah, I, I almost wanna push back at the either or. It is definitely the president and to some extent his, hi, his, his lieutenants, his his top policy creators and enforcers just throwing stuff at the wall. Uh, and in part it's reactionary. This university said no to me, so I'm extra mad and I'm gonna do something outrageous to demonstrate how much authority I have over them. So there's that erratic, incoherent aspect of it, the rationale for why they're doing something shifts all the time. "Oh, it's antisemitism, oh, it's violating, uh, you know, the terms of a Supreme Court ruling about affirmative action and admissions, oh, it's about collaboration with foreign," it just shifts, right? So there's that totally incoherent element to it.
On the other hand, if you take a step back and look at the overall, um, effect of what the administration is able to accomplish with their actions, which is to, um, get universities to become more pliant and compliant with what they wanna achieve, which is to weaken their financial position, which is to cause, um, faculty and academic staff and others to lose their jobs. Um, all, you know, the sort of thing that it, that people who say that they speak for the administration's education policy, people like Chris Ruffo, um, if you take a step back, that's really what's happened. And so while it's not tactically precise, and we can't think of this as some kind of battle plan that has unfolded in a really technically, um, a calibrated way, the, the overall plan to just kind of flood the zone with challenge for the sector, um, is happening and it's working.
Alex Usher: Okay, let, I'll come back to the strategy in a second. But, but thinking here about tactics, do you get a sense that the, the Trump, uh, team is getting smarter in its tactics over time? That, that it's been taken, that it's occasionally been taken aback and it's starting to get smarter and I'm, I'm just struck by what's happened in the last week.
So, you had an attack on Harvard, we're, you know, we're getting rid of all your international students, and then the court comes back and immediately they've got a response, right? Court says, no, you can't do that, and immediately they're like, okay, well we're pulling all the, you know, individual scholarships for foreign, uh, students or, or, or research grants for foreign students, which hadn't already been, uh, cut.
Uh, and then decided to go one step further by saying, we're gonna cut all the international students, right? We're going after not just Harvard, but everybody. Um, are they getting smarter or no, or it, I never got the sense that these guys were good at learning, but maybe, maybe? What's your sense?
Brendan Cantwell: Smarter? I, I don't know. Um, are they more determined and are the voices inside the administration that would have constrained the president's impulses during, you know, the, the first time 16 to 20? Are those voices gone? And I think the answer to that question is yes, that the president is unconstrained and that he is persistent and that he and his senior policy advisors are, really believe in what, believe in their project and wanna figure out a way to do it.
So the example that you just brought up, there's an injunction, you can't, you can't tell Harvard that they can't enroll any international students. At least we need to, you know, sort this out before, before it can go into effect. And he says, that's fine, I'm just gonna, uh, you know, say that we need to have a new process for, um, vetting, uh, visa applications for international students and we're gonna grind this to a halt for everybody. So they're definitely more willing to employ tactics that are harder to enforce, that up the ante every time you resist them. Um, and that, sort of, uh, build out the policy infrastructure, um, or the, or the tactics I, I, I would say that build out the tactics, um, that are, that are implemented, that get them towards, um, their objective. And I don't think their objective is ever precise, clear or coherent? You know, thinking about your last question, it's a generalized um, feeling. Well, we don't like foreigners. We don't like foreign students. We don't like Harvard, we don't like universities. So we're gonna get 'em where it hurts and this is a way we can do it.
Alex Usher: This a three.
Brendan Cantwell: Exactly. Now is that smart? Um, you know, it's more effective perhaps, um, uh, I'm not sure it serves the country in any particular way or even really benefits the president's agenda in the long term, but it's, um, it's happening.
Alex Usher: Uh, so let me go to the Trump administration strategy then. Last time you were on, uh, we discussed Project 2025 and, and, uh, and its implications for higher education. How closely do you think the White House's actions so far in the last four months, uh, mirror what was in Project 2025? And by the way, this is your chance to say, I told you so.
Brendan Cantwell: Yeah, I love to say I told you so. It's one of my, um, my character flaws. Um, the, uh, the, things that were in project 2025, many of them have been implemented. So the, or a very, a version of it has been implemented, the indirect cost cap. So, um, putting a, a cap on indirect costs at, um, 15% rather than having this negotiated rate, which was sometimes quite high for individual campuses, eye raising, I think for, you know, people who are unfamiliar with the US system at times. Um, and, and even the same language. We're doing this because the Marxist foundations only pay this, right? And we're not gonna subsidize this Marxist stuff. So, you know, even that carried over from Project 2025. There are other things. Many of the student loan reforms that are working their way through Congress, um, are have project 2025 fingerprints on them. The DEI executive order has project 2025 fingerprints. So there are lots of elements of 2025 specific elements that are implemented, and the, the general spirit of Project 2025 is certainly visible in the administration's general posture towards higher education.
I'll say one important difference is that Project 2025 envisioned a more, um, uh, a, a more active role for Congress. It envisioned a more deliberative policymaking process than actually is happening. It saw implicitly more checks on the president's power than the President has accepted. So in some ways, you know, while many of project 2025's policy proposals have been implemented in one way or another, how long they last is an open question, while some have not. In, in, in many ways, project 2025 was, um, more contained and, uh, know, more lawful, uh, one would, uh, you know, as a non-lawyer, that's my impression, it was a more lawful approach to this policy agenda than what we've seen the administration execute.
Alex Usher: We’re going to take a short break, we’ll be right back.
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Alex Usher: And we’re back. Let me come, so we've been talking about the Trump administration. I wanna talk now about the higher education sector because, uh, the sector seemed bewildered, I would say through most of February and part of March. Just almost unable to process what was going on. You know, this must be a mistake they can't possibly mean, you know, whatever.
And as a result, I get the impression that the sector was, was pretty slow. And, and so when the administration went specifically after Columbia, that was sort of the first institutional target, uh, a lot of institutions, you know, their instincts seem to be shut up, um, stay quiet and maybe he'll, he'll, he'll spare us.
Um, you were pretty clear-eyed, I think, and you, you and, and some others were clear-eyed from the start about how this was gonna unfold. Why didn't university leaders see it coming? Like is like, this is a colossal failure of imagination it seems to me. Why didn't they see it?
Brendan Cantwell: Well, let me start by offering a partial defense of university leaders. There are people like me and others who are knowledgeable, but also pretty pessimistic and saying bad things are gonna happen often, and a lot of times they don't happen. And there were people like myself and others who were quite concerned during the Trump first Trump administration that much of his rhetoric was going to be converted into policy and it was, yes, in some ways, but in many ways it wasn't. Congress constrained Trump. Um, uh, the courts constrained Trump. People in his administration constrained him. And so, um, I, you know, and he lost focus on higher ed. And so I think that university leaders had pretty good, um, reason to believe, hey, you know, uh, the, the data that we have is that we can just kind of remain quiet and lobby Congress and let the courts do their work. And I think it took them a little bit of time to just adjust to the new reality. Um, part of that is like individual cognitive stuff that I'm not qualified to talk about. And part of it is just moving the university bureaucracies, moving the way the associations work and function, pivoting towards a new tactic is just a logistically bureaucratically complicated process. Um, and so while I think it's completely fair to say that the sector was caught flatfooted and that leaders should have had a better sense of what to do, um, entirely fair critique, I also think that the sector responded, once they figured out what was happening, really showed a fair amount of nimbleness in, um, the associations taking a more aggressive posture, ACE, I mean, became part of the resistance, which is not something I would've guessed, uh, would've happened as quickly as it did at least. And universities are trying to find, um, their level footing for responding. And then there's the question of Red State Universities, which are really hemmed in by their state legislatures and are facing, um, challenges independent of the administration. And those institutions are in a very difficult spot when it comes to responding because they face those local conditions as well.
Alex Usher: What's it say about American higher education? That Harvard is ground zero for the resistance.
Brendan Cantwell: Yeah. Um, full credit to Harvard. Full credit to Harvard. Now here's my hedge. They had the benefit of seeing the experience that Columbia, you know, seeing Columbia's experience and um, which basically demonstrated that there was no good faith negotiation to be had in the administration. And, you know, it's a little bit, it makes a lot of sense and in some ways it's smart that Trump picked on Harvard and it's Harvard's hard to like, um, and so there's, um, uh, uh, it's a big juicy target. Um, on the other hand, it's kind of foolish because they have a ton of resources, right? And they have the capacity, um, social resources and financial resources, and they have the capacity to put up more of a fight than almost any institution in the country. And so I think that, um, you, you know, they saw what happened to Columbia, they had the resources, now was the time to strike. And I'll say what Harvard's resistance demonstrates, I think is a realization by the sector and by that institution in particular, that if you give into this administration, then institutional autonomy is gone for the foreseeable future, right? And, um, if you want to preserve the American establishment, which Harvard is often accused of doing, is reproducing elite institutions and elite, you know, the elite classes in the country, um, then, uh, uh, you know, you have to resist Trump to be to, to, to reproduce what, what, what has already existed. And, um, you know, so it's good that Harvard is doing this. It's necessary that Harvard is doing this, but I don't think that we should see this as, um, some sign that Harvard is, you know, a street fighter as much as Harvard is one of the few institutions with the resources and the capacity to try to preserve the pre-Trump order.
Alex Usher: Yeah. What about going forward though? I mean, I see more institutions, I, I don't know about acting, but sounding like they understand they all have to hang together or they're gonna hang separately. But will they, I mean, what's the, you know, I mean, you know, university of Michigan on, on DEI, they folded like superman on laundry day, but, you know, but, but that, and partly that was about Santa Ono's, uh, uh, personal, um, uh, ambitions I guess.
But there's a lot of, of institutions, both public and private, who've at least bented and bent the knee at least once already. How do you come back from that and, and can it be done exclusively through the courts? 'Cause right now that's what's holding things up are all these temporary restraining orders.
And as you said, that doesn't clarify things, right? These are all eventually gonna have to go up to the Supreme Court, of which I think four or five members are from Harvard. So they might be interested in, in what, whatever else they believe they might be interested in preserving, uh, you know, the institutions.
How do you see the resistance evolving over the next, uh, few months?
Brendan Cantwell: You know, I'd be disingenuous if I told you that I know exactly what's gonna happen
Alex Usher: Best guess.
Brendan Cantwell: Um, but I do think that the best approach for the sector is to try to get wins in the court where they can and hope that the administration abides by the court rulings, which is a, a real concern
Alex Usher: Mm-hmm.
Brendan Cantwell: at this point. And also to create, uh, a situation where they're like a school of fish, so that it's hard to take out the whole all, all of them at once, um, and wait the president out, hope that the agenda moves on to something else. Hope that the president expends all of his energy, uh, on cuts and attacks, and that you and most of the sector remain intact enough to continue to operate. Um, and that, uh, that, that he moves on to something else. And then you manage the fallout of the, of the slow decline, right?
You gotta manage the indirect consequences of what's happens to states in a recession, and if healthcare and food assistance costs are shift on, shifted onto them. You've gotta manage the winding down of your research operation because there's a smaller pool of grant, um, dollars available. And so that I think is gonna be the tactic, to keep your head down to not explicitly give in, um, and hope that the administration moves on.
I think it's the as good a strategy, good as approach as there is. I don't know if it will work, if the administration is able to keep its attention on higher education and, keep up the velocity of, of, of cuts and attacks, then it's going to be very difficult for large sectors of, you know, large portions of the sector to come out unscathed.
Alex Usher: Yeah.
Brendan Cantwell: Um, so it's, it's serious.
Alex Usher: Yeah, you mentioned back at the start of the interview, uh, about an executive order around accreditation. We haven't talked about that, and I think that often some people think that's the big sleeper issue. Um, not maybe for the, the, the big rich privates, but for the vast majority of institutions. Um, you know, changes to the accreditation system in the United States, that might be a bigger deal for the sector. What's been happening on that front so far? What's in that executive order and what could these changes mean for institutional autonomy and academic freedom?
Brendan Cantwell: Yeah, like most of his executive orders, it's not exactly clear what it does. It directs the Secretary of Education who's also been directed to unwind the Department of Education. So, you know,
Alex Usher: But she's still the direction, she's still the secretary. She, I saw her today. Yeah.
Brendan Cantwell: in, in, in, in your mind at once. But it directs the Secretary of Education to, um, co collaborate with new accreditors and to create a sort of, uh, open up competition in accreditation. Um, so that, to foster innovation and at the same time to reign in, uh, the accreditation cartel. This is the sort of language that they use that, um, uh, promotes, uh, you know, Marxist, DEI, anti-Semitic, whatever, just the string of words that they use that are supposed to mean something. And so I think that there are two, um, important, you know, take both of those, increase competition among accreditors and foster innovation. I think that they're going to recognize accreditors that would not have been a rec recognized that definitely under a Democratic administration and maybe under many Republican administrations, that will give the sort of quality stamp, quality stamp of approval to short-term programs to propriety, to for-profit programs that have, um, education quality standards that don't, wouldn't meet US or international best practices. Um, if I were being more snarky, I might call them scammer programs, so they're going to sort of move to make those more legitimate. At the same time they could use accreditors, um, say accreditors have to hold universities to DEI related standards that, um, fit with the president's agenda.
So they might demand, um, some changes to the way campus conduct is regulated. They might demand some changes to admissions. Um, they may demand some changes to faculty hiring, uh, practices. They might even try to reach into the curriculum. This is the clearest vehicle that they have through accreditation to get into the curriculum. Maybe amend the general education curriculum so that it prioritizes western civilization or something. You know, I think those are the kinds of things that are on the table. Those are the things that are, that take time and require more methodical planning. Um, and as we've already discussed, those are the things that they're, they seem less good at. Um, so we'll see what happens. It is definitely a, you know, an over time, over the next couple of years, something to keep an eye on and that could profoundly change, um, the sector. And if the universities are weakened by the, you know. All the stuff that comes before they may be less capable of sort of resisting the overtures of these new accreditation regime.
Alex Usher: Right. So the sector's had a lot thrown out over the last, uh, four months. Uh, but looking ahead, have we seen the end of, uh, you know, sabotage innovation? Um, you know, I mean, is there something new out there that, that could be thrown out? We talked about, uh, project 2025, a little while ago. Is there anything in there that hasn't been thrown at the sector yet?
Like, what should we be worried about even more than we're worried now?
Brendan Cantwell: Yeah, I don't know that there are any specific project 2025 policies that I would point to to say, Hey, watch out for that. Um, a a couple of things to, to, to, to watch out for. One is if they attempt to block, uh, any institution or groups of institutions or even the whole country from accessing federal financial aid, uh, for students, right? So Title IV of the Federal Financial Aid, or from the of the Higher Ed Act, if they try to block access to Title IV money, like they've unilaterally blocked, um, uh, research, grant money, and now they're working with the international students. That would be a, you know, a giant coercive, they could really mess things up. Um, and then the other thing I would look for is the relationship between state, um, state policy and federal policy. I think, um, there are two ways we're seeing a bunch of, a lot of legislation coming from red states that sort of reinforce the Trump agenda. Um, Utah, for example, um, just passed a bill that says, Hey, are you, take a big, uh, a big cut in appropriations, or you can restore your funding by evaluating your programs and cutting the ones that we think aren't useful. Um. And even individual boards taking it upon themselves to implement, uh, Republican, uh, dominated state higher ed boards, um, taking it upon themselves to implement Trump policies.
I think that might be what we see at the University of North Carolina at
Alex Usher: mm-hmm.
Brendan Cantwell: where they have not awarded tenure to anyone outside of the health sciences in the last year. It's unclear if that's going to be resolved. Um, I don't know for sure what they're doing, but it sure seems like they're implementing the President's agenda through their technical power as the board.
Alex Usher: Brendan Cantwell, uh, best of luck and thanks for joining us.
Brendan Cantwell: Thanks very much, Alex. Always a pleasure to be here.
Alex Usher: And it just remains me to thank our excellent producers, Tiffany MacLennan, Sam Pufek, and you, our viewers, listeners, and readers for joining us. If you have any questions or comments about today's podcasts or suggestions for future ones, don't hesitate to get in touch with us at podcast@higheredstrategy.com.
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Join us next week, week for what will be our final episode before breaking for the summer, and our special guest will be me. Tiffany gets to pepper me with questions about, uh, events in Canada and international higher education over the first half of 2025, and I'll try to make that all sound coherent. Bye for now.