Trump Will Likely Win His Battle With Higher Education

Trump Will Likely Win His Battle With Higher Education

If the battle comes down to funding, even a rich school like Harvard has nothing on the federal government.

From City Journal:

Trump Is Likely to Win His Fight with Universities

The Trump administration is trying to fix what ails American universities by freezing billions of dollars in pledged research grants due to be paid to Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Cornell, and other prominent institutions, on the grounds that the schools have not done enough to counter anti-Semitism on their campuses or have evolved into left-wing hothouses with little diversity of opinion. The administration froze the funds as the first step in negotiations designed to address practices that conflict with federal policy or impede the effectiveness of federally supported research. Trump took the confrontation further by calling on the IRS to suspend Harvard’s tax-exempt status because, he said, the institution has turned into a partisan political operation.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the task force handling the negotiations for the administration told Harvard that to unfreeze the funds, the school would not only have to address anti-Semitism but must also begin “to reform the campus culture by making structural changes to governance, student admissions and faculty hiring.” Harvard’s leaders, apparently taken aback by demands that went beyond addressing anti-Semitism, rejected the administration’s approach. Attorneys for the university replied to the task force by letter, declaring that the school would “not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.” Harvard president Alan Garber promised to take the battle to federal court, where he hopes a judge will order the administration to unfreeze the money—and he might get his wish, since the funds have already been pledged (though not yet paid)…

Harvard and other universities are likely to find that they are fighting a losing battle against the federal government. Harvard has an endowment of $53 billion, by far the largest among the nation’s universities, but that’s little more than a rounding error in the government’s $7 trillion budget. Here the government negotiates from a strong position because, while federal grants loom large in university budgets, they are only a small fraction of the government’s budget.

The government has other weapons at its disposal. There is the tax exemption, for starters, which, if lost, will mean that schools cannot receive tax-deductible donations.. The government can stop the flow of international students to the schools, a move that would be costly in terms of foregone tuition payments. Trump can also ask Congress to slap a hefty tax on university endowments, another step his administration is already considering. At some point, Harvard and other elite institutions will have to sue for peace rather than continue an argument they cannot win.

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