Education
“A Nation At Risk”
More than forty years ago, the US Commission on Excellence in Education, published its scathing report, called “A Nation at Risk.” It concluded that “Our Nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world.” The Commission stated that
“If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. We have even squandered the gains in student achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik challenge. Moreover, we have dismantled essential support systems which helped make those gains possible. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.”
Most public education is controlled by states and localities, but in recent decades the federal government has tried to come up with solutions to the deteriorating educational foundation. Federal programs like No Child Left Behind, the Every Student Succeeds Act, and the Race to the Top have met with limited success and plenty of criticism.
Teachers feel unappreciated and underpaid, they are faced with increased criticism and scrutiny of what they teach and how they teach. The long-standing residue of racial exclusion and discrimination continues to haunt public education programs and attempts at reform.
American higher education, boasting some of the most important facilities in the world, are under attack by the Trump administration. Declining enrollment, fewer international students, and declining support from the public have impacted many universities and colleges.
Source: “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Education Reform,” The National Commission on Excellence in Education, April 1983, https://edreform.com/wpcontent/uploads/2013/02/A_Nation_At_Risk_1983.pdf
Update on Trump Education Actions
The unprecedented assault on America’s most prominent private universities
👎 Trump administration withholds $400 million in federal funding from Columbia University (February 2025)
The rationale? The reason for this massive cancellation? The pro-Palestinian, anti-Jewish protests on the university campus following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel. Just days into her service as US secretary of education, Linda McMahon stated that the “Since October 7, Jewish students have faced relentless violence, intimidation, and anti-Semitic harassment on their campus—only to be ignored by those who are supposed to protect them . . . Today [March 7, 2025], we demonstrate to Columbia and other universities that we will not tolerate their appalling inaction any longer.” Sixty universities were under investigation by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.
In March, Columbia University bowed to the pressure, stating that it would, among other things, hire 36 officers to empower student arrests, appoint a senior vice provost to oversee the Departments of Middle East, South Asian, and African studies, and commit to “greater institutional neutrality,”
Sheldon Pollock, a retired former chair of the university’s Middle Eastern studies department, said in a text message that “Columbia faculty are utterly shocked and profoundly disappointed by the trustees’ capitulation to the extortionate behavior of the federal government.”
👎 Johns Hopkins University was compelled to lay off more than 2,000 workers (February 2025)
The university had $800 million in federal grants cut by the Trump administration. Hopkins was hit hard by the slashing of USAID funds. Harvard University and University of Pennsylvania were among many universities that have frozen hiring for faculty and staff, thanks to the uncertainty of the Trump funding policies
👎 Executive Order abolishing the Department of Education (March 20, 2025).
Trump signed an Executive Order seeking to abolish the Department of Education, while acknowledging that this would require congressional action. Trump states that the E.O. would be “returning education, very simply, back to the states where it belongs.” There was no indication which functions or funding would be moved from federal to state control.
👎 Trump administration withholds $175 million in federal funds from University of Pennsylvania.
The reason? The university allowed a transgender athlete to participate in its women’s swimming program. Trump had earlier signed an executive order intended to ban transgender athletes from competing in women’s and girls sports.
👎 Trump administration threatens to withdraw $2 billion in federal monies from Harvard University; Harvard sues the administration; Trump threatens to withdraw tax-exempt status from the university.
Trump proclaimed that the federal government would deny visas to international students going to Harvard; that order was blocked by a federal judge the following day.
👎 Trump takeover of Kennedy Center; attempted whitewashing of history at the Smithsonian (February, March 2025)
Trump appointed himself president of the Kennedy Center, Washington’s premier arts and culture center, dismissed prominent board members, and urged that the Kennedy Center feature more conservative viewpoints. Later, through an executive order, he ordered Vice President Vance to scrub “anti-American” messages and themes from the Smithsonian Institution’s displays and programs. The Smithsonian is the largest collection of museums in the world.
👎 Public school systems threatened with withholding of federal funds unless they rid themselves of DEI programs (April 2025)
State public education programs will be required to verify that they have eliminated all programs that promote DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) that the Trump administration deems unlawful. At risk was the funding from Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which provides funding for schools that have high percentages of minority students.
👎 The BBB: Increase taxes on university endowments, roll back student loan protections, and cap the amount students can borrow in graduate programs.
The Big, Beautiful Bill (Act) piles on against higher education. The endowment of the most wealthy universities, like Harvard or Princeton, will be subject to an additional tax, going from 1.4 percent to 8 percent. Student loans will now have to meet a new threshold: degree programs will be ineligible to use federal student aid if their graduates fail to meet certain income thresholds. (Hey, philosophy majors!) Further, students will not be able to take out more than $100,00 for MA programs and no more than $200,000 for doctoral programs. And who will be hurt? As usual, mostly low income and minority students. The BBB makes “colleges less affordable,” observed Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities. But maybe there is one good thing about the BBB: students attending short-term training programs (such as credentials for welding, computer coding) are now eligible for Pell Grants.
👎 Trump’s proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” No thanks say leaders from at least 12 universities.
On October 1, 2025, the Trump administration sent to nine major educational institutions (Brown U., Dartmouth College, MIT, U. Arizona, U. Pennsylvania, U. Southern California, U. Texas-Austin, U. Virginia, and Vanderbilt U.) These universities would get preferential treatment in government funding if they signed on. One of the big sticking points the requirement that conservative ideas be boosted. It was roundly criticized by education leaders. The AACU (American Association of Colleges and Universities) rejected the Compact, stating that university administrators “cannot bargain with the essential freedom of colleges and universities to determine, on academic grounds, who to admit and what is taught, how, and by whom.”
Source: Jamal Watson, “Higher Education Leaders Reject Trump Administrations ‘Compact for Academic Excellence.’” The EDU Ledger, October 5, 2025,
Higher education presents a different and mixed story. The elite American universities, both private and public, are the envy of the world. In a 2014 survey conducted by US News, American institutions of higher education dominated, with sixteen of the top twenty universities worldwide found in the United States; 134 American institutions were among the 500 top universities worldwide.
Altogether, there are nearly 4,000 degree-granting colleges and universities in the United States. The top 100 private schools enroll only about 500,000 students; the remaining 10.5 million students attend the other state-supported and private institutions. Included among them are hundreds of weaker institutions: those relying heavily on tuition, having little endowment, and increasingly dependent on a diminishing supply of both US and international students.
Many such institutions are hanging on by a thread, admitting 80, 90 or even 100 percent of the students who apply. In a 2022 study, the American Enterprise Institute found that in 355 colleges accepted between 80-90 percent of its applicants; 303 colleges accepted 90-99 percent; and 226 colleges accepted 100 percent of its applicants. These are the bottom-tier schools that rarely crack the top 200 in the US News rankings. The Pew Research Center found that 57.4 percent of colleges admitted at least 70 percent of its applicants in 2023; just 0.4 percent of schools (the most elite schools) accepted less than 10 percent of its applicants. The fate of these schools is compounded by the harsh reality of a declining American student population. In the 2011 academic year, 24.8 million undergraduates were enrolled in American colleges and universities; in 2023, enrollment had dropped to 20.3 million. Between 2026 and 2031, the number of high school graduates is expected to drop by 9 percent, translating into a loss of 280,000 American students enrolled in four-year colleges. In addition there have been cuts in state funding, the drying up of private support, and increased competition from other schools.
Many more schools are predicted to fold or merge. A headline in the April 26, 2024, Washington Post declared that “Colleges Are Now Closing at a Pace of One a Week.” In 2023, the rate of college closings was a little more than two a week, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association. The educational consulting firm EAB predicted that by 2030 some “449 colleges are expected to see a 25 percent decline in enrollment and 182 colleges are expected to see a 50 percent decline.” Schools received federal emergency relief funds during the pandemic years, but those funds—a lifeline for many institutions--have mostly dried up. In addition, student enrollment has not rebounded in all sectors, and many institutions face significant enrollment pressures.
Compounding these demographic and financial difficulties was a growing sense that college simply wasn’t worth the time and effort. In a recent Wall Street Journal poll, conducted with the independent research institute NORC of the University of Chicago, some 56 percent of Americans didn’t think college was “worth the cost”; that figure was up by 16 percent since the same question was asked ten years ago.
Seth Bodnar, president of the University of Montana, noted the skepticism among many on whether a college education was worth the time and money, and he was particularly worried about those who encourage young people to forgo high education. “Our competitors are certainly not advising their youth, ‘Don’t get an education.’ They’re playing a long game, and they’re playing to win.”
Indeed, the United States is the outlier among OECD countries when it comes to higher education goals and aspirations. On average, notes journalist Paul Tough, OECD countries “have increased their college-attainment rate among young adults by more than 20 percentage points since 2000, and eleven of those countries now have better-educated labor forces than we do.” It is not just Japan, South Korea and Britain, but also smaller countries like the Netherlands, Ireland, and Switzerland.
Sources: “Best Global Universities Rankings,” US News, October 2014, http://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/rankings; George F. Will, “Colleges Hide the Truth About Tuition,” Washington Post, August 30, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/30/high-college-tuition-marketing-tool/; Preston Cooper, “After Decades of Competitive Admissions, Getting into College Has Finally Become Easier,” AEIdeas, September 11, 2024, https://www.aei.org/education/after-decades-of-competitive-admissions-getting-into-college-has-finally-become-easier/; Jon Marcus, “It’s Becoming Easier to Get Into Many Colleges,” Washington Post, November 18, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/11/18/college-acceptance-rates-easier-to-get-in/; Drew Desilver, “A Majority of US Colleges Admit Most Students Who Apply,” Pew Research Center, April 9, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/04/09/a-majority-of-u-s-colleges-admit-most-students-who-apply/; “Undergraduate Enrollment in US Universities, Statista, n.d., https://www.statista.com/statistics/235406/undergraduate-enrollment-in-us-universities/; Jeffrey J. Selingo, “Despite Strong Economy, Worrying Signs for Higher Education,” Washington Post, August 3, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2018/08/03/despite-strong-economy-worrying-financial-signs-for-higher-education/?noredirect=on; Preston Cooper, “After Decades of Competitive Admissions, Getting into College Has Finally Become Easier,” AEIdeas, September 11, 2024, https://www.aei.org/education/after-decades-of-competitive-admissions-getting-into-college-has-finally-become-easier/; Jon Marcus, “It’s Becoming Easier to Get Into Many Colleges,” Washington Post, November 18, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/11/18/college-acceptance-rates-easier-to-get-in/; Jon Marcus, “Colleges Are Now Closing at a Pace of One a Week. What Happens to the Students?” Washington Post, April 26, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/04/26/college-closures-student-impact/; EAB report cited in Olivia Sanchez, “Experts Predicted Dozens of Colleges Would Close in 2023—and They Were Right,” Hechinger Report, January 12, 2024, https://hechingerreport.org/experts-predicted-dozens-of-colleges-would-close-in-2023-and-they-were-right/; Josh Moody, “A Harbinger for 2023? Presentation College to Close,” Inside Higher Ed, January 18, 2023, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2023/01/19/more-colleges-will-likely-face-closure-2023-experts-say; Douglas Belkin, “Americans Are Losing Faith in college education. WSJ-NORC Poll Finds,” Wall Street Journal, March 31, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/americans-are-losing-faith-in-college-education-wsj-norc-poll-finds-3a836ce1.
In June 2023, the US Supreme Court ruled that Harvard College and the University of North Carolina had violated the equal protection clause of the US Constitution through their affirmative action admissions programs. For the six conservatives in the majority, Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the student “must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race. Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”
In a blistering dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote, “The devastating impact of this decision cannot be overstated. The majority’s vision of race neutrality will entrench racial segregation in higher education because racial inequality will persist so long as it is ignored.”
The immediate partisan and ideological reactions were predictable. President Biden declared “I strongly—strongly disagree with the Court’s decision. . . I believe our colleges are stronger when they are racially diverse. Our nation is strong because . . . we are tapping into the full range of talent in this nation.” On the campaign trail, Donald Trump calling it “a great day for America.”
Now with Donald Trump in the White House, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs are also under attack at colleges and universities, with critics arguing that such programs lead to reverse discrimination, violate free speech, and are simply attempts promote affirmative action by another name. The University of Michigan, a leading voice in promoting DEI programs, has spent a quarter billion dollars over the past decade on such efforts, only to find students, faculty, administrators, and alumni, of all political stripes frustrated with the implementation, educational and societal ramifications, even the fundamental premises of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Sources: Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf; “Remarks by President Biden on the Supreme Court’s Decision on Affirmative Action,” The White House, June 29, 2023, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/06/29/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-supreme-courts-decision-on-affirmative-action/; Neil Vigdor and Jonathan Weisman, “The GOP Presidential Field Is Hailing the Dismantling of Affirmative Action,” New York Times, June 29, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/us/politics/affirmative-action-republican-reactions.html; Nicholas Confessore, “The University of Michigan Doubled Down on DEI. What Went Wrong?” New York Times, October 16, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/16/magazine/dei-university-michigan.html.