CounterCurrent: Week of 12/30/24
On behalf of everyone at the National Association of Scholars (NAS), we hope you had a wonderful time celebrating the holidays!
As the new year approaches, education reformers remain hopeful—fingers crossed—for a renewed focus on rigor, merit, and excellence in higher education.
However, meaningful change won’t happen overnight. It requires persistence from reformers, wisdom from policymakers, and humility from academic institutions.
Last week, my colleague Chance Layton highlighted key reforms and progress in higher education over the past year. Looking ahead to 2025, reformers are focused on the Department of Education (ED), the incoming administration, the looming enrollment cliff, and the uncertain future of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) initiatives on campuses.
The ED is the bullseye of education reformers and policymakers. Members of President Trump’s incoming administration, such as Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy—presumptive leaders of the Department of Government Efficiency—have hinted strongly at plans to abolish the ED entirely, an idea widely championed by many reformers. However, David Randall, director of research at NAS, has urged caution, advising reformers to “think twice” before pursuing immediate elimination of the department. Instead, he recommends a substantial “surgery” to reform its operations:
We should eliminate spending on dozens of useless or counterproductive small programs … We also should chop the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) down to size so it can’t use ‘Dear Colleague Letters’ and case resolutions to play the enforcing thugs for America’s radical race and sex fanatics.
Randall’s suggestion offers a more measured approach compared to the “chop first, ask questions later” mindset currently making the rounds. Reformers should likely heed his advice, as to figure out how best to serve the future of higher education rather than eliminating the ED entirely and leaving behind a vacuum that could absorb other leftist activism and ideology. Don’t leave education in the lurch!
We’d be remiss in this discussion of the ED to not mention the passing of President Jimmy Carter on Sunday. President Carter leaves behind an education legacy as founder of the ED and proponent of expanding federal oversight in education. Kelly Field for the Chronicle of Higher Education summarizes Carter’s legacy,
As president, he tackled discrimination in intercollegiate athletics, segregation in the nation’s public colleges, and fraud in student-aid programs. He sought to reduce student-loan defaults, and he oversaw a sharp increase in spending on student aid.
Carter’s creation of the ED, then hailed as a boon for education, sparked decades of debate over federal overreach. It centralized control over policies, eroded state and local autonomy, and fostered an increasingly burdensome regulatory regime for colleges and universities. Furthermore, his initiatives, like the Middle Income Student Assistance Act, aimed to expand financial access but instead fueled skyrocketing student debt and tuition and deeper federal entanglement in student financing, laying the groundwork for today’s unsustainable loan system.
For reformers, Carter’s legacy highlights the dangers of government overreach and the unintended consequences of federal intervention, underscoring the need for limited government and respect for local control.
Regarding the incoming Trump administration, one should consult Teresa R. Manning’s list of education priorities. Manning’s list is a good place to start for reforming academia. One of Manning’s best suggestions, in my opinion, is to put schools on the hook for helping to perpetrate the student loan crisis by making them have equal skin in the game—i.e., “co-sign loans and therefore assume equal risk with students before they get any federal cash.”
The enrollment cliff is looming on the horizon. Those paying attention to the future of higher education know the inevitable decline in enrollments in the next decade due to the lower birth rates of the early 2000s. But what is to be done? Peter Wood in an article on Minding the Campus, says there is not much to be done about the lack of students available, except for bringing in more international students—which would not be the best solution in the long run.
He argues that this situation will likely bring about a necessary reckoning for American higher education. As institutions face shrinking enrollment, they will be forced to reconsider unsustainable business models, pare down bloated infrastructures, and focus on their core missions. Many colleges will likely shutter or rebrand themselves as vocational training centers, while others will need to elevate academic rigor to remain relevant. This transition could also pressure K-12 education to improve, as a high school diploma regains importance as a terminal credential for many students.
Perhaps there is another creative solution, but for now, Wood’s prediction is all in all a good omen for reshaping higher education.
Quota programs and DEI go hand in hand. NAS Research Fellow Louis Galarowicz unpacks the issues in the University of Illinois Chicago’s (UIC) Department of Art History. UIC has seemingly ignored the Supreme Court’s decision to do away with race-based discrimination, specifically through the Art History department’s Bridge-to-Faculty (B2F) program.
Galarowicz explains that the “B2F program is a postdoctoral recruitment program that fast-tracks ‘underrepresented’ scholars to faculty positions.” “Underrepresented,” by Illinois definition, is “African American, Hispanic or Latino, Asian-American, Pacific Islander, American Indian, Alaska Native, or an individual with a disability.” He found that all of B2F’s first cohort, who became faculty, are all considered “underrepresented” by Illinois standard. These quota programs are used to circumvent anti-discrimination law and abrogate academic freedom of professors and students alike. Cheers to Louis for keeping colleges and universities on their toes as he unearths the corruptive stains left by DEI.
On a better note, the popularity of DEI in higher education does seem to be in decline. Some colleges and universities are doing away with diversity statements, and as DEI’s overhaul is being cheered on, we can only hope that DEI as a whole meets a swift demise in the year, or years, to come. But stay vigilant—many universities claim to be shedding DEI requirements, but a closer look often reveals these initiatives buried within curriculum and orientation materials.
We look to 2025 with hope, though measured with a tinge of reality—not every higher education reform will happen within What are some reforms you are cheering for in the new year? We want to know! Email us at [email protected] to give your thoughts as we head into an uncharted new year.
Happy New Year!
Until next week.
CounterCurrent is the National Association of Scholars’ weekly newsletter, written by the NAS Staff. To subscribe, update your email preferences here.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
