Shakeups A’Coming

Author’s Note: This excerpt is from my weekly “Top of Mind” email, sent to subscribers every Thursday. For more content like this and to receive the full newsletter each week, sign up on Minding the Campus’s homepage. Simply go to the right side of the page, look for “SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER, ‘TOP OF MIND,’” and enter your name and email.


Strap in—today’s update is dense.

As I’ve said before, “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) isn’t going anywhere. But the latest news is that the Trump administration is swinging its axe at all federal DEI initiatives.

Kali Jerrard wrote this week that the Department of Education (ED) has already dismantled its Diversity and Inclusion Council, shelved DEI training contracts, and placed DEI staff on administrative leave.

Peter Wood, President of the National Association of Scholars (NAS), welcomes Trump’s executive orders that made the ED’s DEI initiatives possible, seeing it as a necessary step in dismantling decades of policies that have corrupted academia by institutionalizing race and sex discrimination under the guise of promoting diversity. Wood also noted that ending DEI is essential not only for civil rights but also for the preservation of intellectual freedom and the purity of scholarly inquiry.

“NAS’s agenda is broader than advocating for an end to higher education’s persistent violations of civil rights. We stand for liberal education that fosters intellectual freedom, the search for truth, and the promotion of virtuous citizenship,” he wrote.

Still, some universities will undoubtedly cling to race-based policies. That much was made clear in CU Boulder’s public records, which revealed that academic departments openly favored black, Indigenous, and people of color candidates in exchange for funding. “The receipts are pretty astonishing,” John Sailer, who collected the records along with Louis Galarowicz, said on X.

Minding the Campus has also explored the continued use of race-based admissions policies at the nation’s military academies. Despite the Supreme Court’s decision in SFFA v. Harvard, which rightly rejected racial preferences in college admissions, institutions like West Point, the Air Force Academy, and the Naval Academy persist with such policies. Notably, footnote four of the Court’s majority opinion left open the possibility for race-based admissions at military academies, saying that these institutions may have distinct interests. This potential exception has been tested in the case of Students for Fair Admissions v. The United States Naval Academy, where a U.S. District Court upheld race-conscious admissions on the grounds of national security concerns.

[RELATED: Bootstraps and Bedlam Take Over Higher Ed]

But William A. Woodruff and R. Lawrence Purdy argue persuasively that the decision not only contradicts the principle established in SFFA v. Harvard but that the district court improperly deferred to the Biden administration’s justification for racial preferences—namely, that racial diversity in the officer corps is a national security necessity—without applying the strict scrutiny required by law.

Purdy asserts that there’s no proven link between national security and racial diversity in the officer corps and that the notion of America as an “endemically segregated society” perpetuates racial discrimination rather than remedying it. Woodruff further argues that the court misapplied strict scrutiny by accepting military leaders’ claims without demanding credible, objective evidence. He notes that by rubber-stamping the Navy’s justification, the court repeated the same flawed reasoning that led to Korematsu, the infamous 1944 decision that upheld Japanese internment during World War II.

I agree with Woodruff and Purdy. At the same time, all that legalese only reinforces my belief that courts conjure rulings out of thin air.

But where federal courts are lacking, states seem to be picking up the slack. In Ohio, an unexpected wave of higher education reforms is underway. Senate Bill 1, championed by state senator Jerry Cirino, is poised to significantly reshape Ohio’s public universities, with strong backing from both the Ohio Senate and House and Governor Mike DeWine, as reported by Richard Vedder in this week’s top article. The bill is aimed at countering the influence of progressive agendas in academia and restoring public trust in universities.

Key provisions include the establishment of five civic institutes at public universities, which focus on promoting the nation’s founding principles and the abolition of DEI programs. Additionally, the bill mandates the teaching of American history and civics, prohibits faculty strikes, enforces institutional neutrality, and introduces meaningful post-tenure reviews. These reforms signal a bold move to shift Ohio’s higher education landscape away from left-leaning ideologies, making it a model for similar initiatives across the country.

Whether we’ll see further challenges to racial preference and DEI in other parts of the country remains to be seen—I suspect we will. But for now, we should take a moment to appreciate that internal reforms to restore merit-based hiring and academic integrity are off to a strong start.

Equally newsworthy—though seemingly collecting dust on the internet—is Albright College’s decision to borrow up to $25 million from its endowment—nearly half of its total endowment. The move is yet another sign of how campuses will handle the enrollment decline we’ve been covering at Minding the Campus.

As enrollment continues to dwindle, I wondered whether more colleges will resort to similar tactics to stay afloat.

Andrew Gillen, a research fellow at the Cato Institute and Minding the Campus contributor, told me, “I’m not sure if other colleges will do this too, but this is certainly not a good sign for Albright.”

“Rightly or wrongly, dipping into the endowment principal is strenuously avoided, so the fact that they are doing this is the equivalent of eating their seed corn or raiding the kids college fund—not something you’d do unless you were backed into a corner.” Gillen continued. “I said rightly or wrongly because it’s not clear to me why colleges should seek to amass tens of billions in endowment that they can’t touch, but that’s how higher ed has done things thus far.”

My view: Even if Albright weren’t struggling financially, it should have been using its endowment all along. Universities exist to educate students, not hoard wealth. If the goal is an educated public, tapping into these massive funds could have offset soaring tuition costs—one of the driving factors behind the enrollment cliff. Perhaps if Albright—or any university—had used its endowment responsibly to lower tuition, it wouldn’t be scrambling for funds or students now.

In 2022, Senator Rick Scott introduced the COLLEGE Act to enforce this very principle.

The bill would have required universities with large endowments to cover a portion of tuition costs—25 percent for those with $1 billion to $5 billion, 50 percent for those with $5 billion to $10 billion, and 75 percent for those exceeding $10 billion. Unfortunately, it didn’t pass.

Still, Albright’s move may be a harbinger of things to come. Alongside Americans not attending college, foreign student enrollment is also expected to drop as Trump is likely to impose restrictions on work visas—the primary incentive for many foreign nationals to study in the United States.

Without a guaranteed path to U.S. employment post-graduation—compounded by leftist fear-mongering over Trump’s treatment of foreign nationals—many would-be foreign students may opt to stay home.

For me, this is a welcome shift.

As I’ve noted before, universities have relied on foreign nationals to fill classroom seats at the highest bidder. Campuses should be prioritizing opportunities for American students. And if losing out on foreign student tuition dollars forces schools to dig into their endowments, so be it.

[RELATED: Higher Education Fuels Corporate Profits at the Expense of American Workers]

It wouldn’t be right to wrap this up without touching on just a few more items, such as the manufactured panic over Trump’s federal grant freeze—which now appears to have been rescinded.

Contrary to alarmist reports, it didn’t freeze Pell Grants or student loans. It targeted federal funds supporting DEI, radical gender ideology, and foreign projects. Some claim that so-called minority-serving institutions would have been affected as well. But, I say again, so be it—no institution should receive federal funding based on race, even if it’s rebranding it as “minority-serving.”

Reformers should also stay tuned for a confirmation hearing date for Linda McMahon, who is expected to lead the Department of Education. Sources say a date has yet to be set, but one should be set soon.

We’ve covered McMahon at Minding the Campus, but in short, she has backed the Trump agenda since at least 2017 and has championed pragmatic, skills-based education during her time at the America First Policy Institute.

Her leadership could mean cutting red tape and further dismantling DEI. Additionally, some observers, myself included, wonder what aligning education more closely with workforce needs will look like; if this will transform colleges and universities into job-training centers. It’s an interesting topic I plan to explore in a forthcoming essay.

And speaking of forthcoming essays, I’m still compiling information on illegal students. Since last week’s “Illegal Immigration U,” where I exposed how colleges and universities aid and abet illegal migrants, my inbox has been flooded with more details on the issue. Expect more reporting on that soon.

You can unbuckle now; the ride’s over.

Follow Jared Gould on X


Image: AS Photo Family — Adobe Stock — Asset ID#: 133888378

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7 thoughts on “Shakeups A’Coming

  1. “Even if Albright weren’t struggling financially, it should have been using its endowment all along. Universities exist to educate students, not hoard wealth.”

    Prior to the Federal largess, students used to be viewed as seed corn — they were charge little to nothing and treated quite well so as to produce successful alumni who would become generous donors 30-50 years later. Alumni felt they were in debt to the institution.

    Students now graduate *in* debt with no desire to do anything other than take their degree and run.

    Academia was able to burn the candle at both ends for forty years — charging outrageous tuition to current students while benefiting from the generosity of alumni from decades past.

    Young alumni — in their late 20s and early 30s — never donated vast sums of money, they didn’t have it yet. But they were the most enthusiastic. And it should have been noticed 30 years ago when they weren’t anymore.

    And now that they have the money to donate, they aren’t…

  2. The proposal to wind down the endowment in order to fund current expenses at an unsustainable rate is about as sensible as taking withdrawals from a retirement plan, with tax penalty, until the dough is gone. This is just a nihilistic idea, like so many others that seem to have taken over at the National Association of Scholars.

    And this:

    “As I’ve noted before, universities have relied on foreign nationals to fill classroom seats at the highest bidder. Campuses should be prioritizing opportunities for American students. And if losing out on foreign student tuition dollars forces schools to dig into their endowments, so be it.”

    This is equally mindless. The tuition dollars finance precisely the “opportunities for American students” that are supposedly desired by people like this group. Some of the foreign students are terrific, too. And exposure to Americans to some of the foreigners affords to something more like the global workforce. But this is supposed to be paid by liquidating the endowment! A batty idea.

    1. What should colleges and universities do with their endowments? Should Harvard, for example, just sit on an endowment larger than some nations’ GDPs? When you look at return rates on principal, using endowments to offset student expenses seems way more plausible than you’re letting on. The average return rate on endowments is 7.7%. If a fund is sitting at $50 million, such as is the case with Albright, that’s nearly $4 million in interest annually. Could $4 million seriously not help offset tuition costs? Schools wouldn’t even have to touch the principal.

      And I don’t understand your defense of foreign students creating opportunities for Americans. How does putting a foreign student in the classroom create more opportunities for Americans? They’re taking a seat from an American student and, after graduating, staying in the U.S. to compete in the job market against American citizens. Why should Americans have to compete with foreign nationals for jobs in their own country?

      The common defense is that foreign nationals provide a talent pool that can’t be found in the native-born population, but this doesn’t make any sense when you consider that foreign students have to be trained in U.S. education systems. What makes a foreign student graduating from the same programs as their American counterparts any more qualified or talented?

      1. “What makes a foreign student graduating from the same programs as their American counterparts any more qualified or talented?”

        Two words: Affirmative Retribution.

      2. Just a very few impressionistic reactions:

        1) You seem to be against universities relieving the American balance of trade, by offering services at high cost to foreign students. This seems prima facie a good deal for the United States.

        2) Alexander Graham Bell, that famous immigrant.

        3) The allowance of black “immigrant” performers in American professional athletics.

        I think that the trade war agains skilled immigrants, including those paying to educate in America, will go as badly as Trump’s trade wars will go.

    2. Jonathan, you remind me of the men who drove the railroads into bankruptcy 60 years ago.

      First, they are “borrowing from” their endowment, at least pretending an intent to repay it.

      Second, a lot of colleges are in the process of going broke — we have too many of them and not enough children to attend them.

      Third, as to foreign students, I’d like to do something similar to what the University of Vermont does — charge a 30%-50% tax on foreign tuition and use that money to provide financial aid to Americans. It’s called “America First” and “exposure to Americans to some of the foreigners” is unmitigated bullshyte. This is America.

      1. You are so ignorant it’s pathetic. But don’t be surprised, this is America!

        But I’ll say just one thing — probably 95%, if not 99% of state universities are using high full-freight out-of-state tuition to subsidize in-state students. But I already explained that in my post, so I will end with that.

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