Dive Brief:
- U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon called on college leaders to publicly commit to major policy reforms by the end of the year, ranging from adopting clear admissions criteria to hiring faculty who have a range of perspectives.
- In a Monday letter, McMahon urged colleges to place statements prominently on their websites detailing their commitments to those policy changes. “Only full candor and transparency can begin to strengthen the bonds between higher education and the American people,” McMahon said.
- The public call focuses on many of the same themes that were in the compact that the Trump administration shared last year with nine colleges. Although the compact promised priority for federal research funding if the colleges adopted sweeping policy changes, the majority rejected it outright, with some leaders citing concerns about losing their institutional independence.
googletag.display(‘dfp-hybrid1-mobile’)); googletag.pubads().addEventListener(‘slotRenderEnded’, function (event) { var adUnitPath = ‘/3618/highereddive/highereddivehybrid1’; var onProformative = false; if (onProformative && event.slot.getAdUnitPath() === adUnitPath && !event.isEmpty ) { var adUnitPathWithVisibility = adUnitPath + ‘-mobile’; var selector = ‘.pf-comments__ad-wrapper #dfp-hybrid1-mobile’; if (!$(selector).closest(‘.pf-comments__ad-wrapper’).hasClass(‘borders’)) { $(selector).closest(‘.pf-comments__ad-wrapper’).addClass(‘borders’) } } }); } }); }); ]]>
googletag.display(‘dfp-hybrid2-desktop’)); googletag.pubads().addEventListener(‘slotRenderEnded’, function (event) { var adUnitPath = ‘/3618/highereddive/highereddivehybrid2’; var onProformative = false; if (onProformative && event.slot.getAdUnitPath() === adUnitPath && !event.isEmpty ) { var adUnitPathWithVisibility = adUnitPath + ‘-desktop’; var selector = ‘.pf-comments__ad-wrapper #dfp-hybrid2-desktop’; if (!$(selector).closest(‘.pf-comments__ad-wrapper’).hasClass(‘borders’)) { $(selector).closest(‘.pf-comments__ad-wrapper’).addClass(‘borders’) } } }); } }); }); ]]>
Dive Insight:
McMahon, in her Aug. 3 “National Call to Action,” argued major reforms are needed in higher education to remedy declining public trust in the sector. According to the secretary, that trust has hit “record lows.”
Just 38% of surveyed adults said they have high confidence in higher education, a drop from last year, a recent poll from Lumina Foundation and Gallup found. That’s only slightly higher than the 36% of respondents who said the same in 2023 and 2024 — the lowest levels of confidence recorded since the poll began.
This year, Democrats drove the decline in the confidence, though Republicans continue to have less faith in the sector. Close to a third of respondents with low confidence in the sector pointed to what they saw as political agendas on campus and high college costs. But 8% cited the Trump administration’s interference in the sector.
McMahon’s letter resulted from months of meetings with college leaders, Jonathan Pidluzny, the U.S. Department of Education’s deputy chief of staff for policy and programs, told Bloomberg, which first reported on the letter.
Pidluzny told Higher Ed Dive on Monday that the Education Department was “quite thrilled and gratified” to find leaders who believe the sector has an opportunity to change.
“There are a lot of reform-minded presidents out there who really do believe that it’s time for higher education to do a kind of U-turn, who wouldn’t dispute that these are serious problems that are really, really imperiling the entire sector and driving public confidence down,” Pidluzny said.
Pidluzny said colleges will not face “direct penalties” tied to McMahon’s call to action.
But, he added, “Universities that refuse to engage in this sort of good faith exercise to sort of recommit to delivering for American families, I think that silence will speak volumes, right?”
Although McMahon’s letter shares many of the same concerns pointed to in the higher education compact pitched last year, its approach varies. Pidluzny described Monday’s letter as a “separate effort” from the compact.
The compact directed colleges to make firm policy commitments, such as requiring all undergraduate applicants to submit standardized test scores and freezing tuition rates for five years. The new letter instead asks college leaders to answer several questions when detailing their policy reforms.
Among those, McMahon asks colleges to consider how they will manage disruptive campus protests, contain costs,fight grade inflation, meet workforce needs, approach artificial intelligence, encourage diversity of thought across programs and ensure programs aren’t exposed to foreign influence.
“This forthright conversation with the American people is long overdue. And it is the essential first step toward rebuilding trust in the sector,” McMahon wrote.
Pidluzny said the Education Department wanted to issue a call to action that would be relevant across different types of institutions.
“There are some institutions where merit-based admissions and merit-based hiring is an urgent problem that needs to be addressed,” he said. “But that’s certainly not true of every university.”
The education secretary praised steps some universities have already taken. She pointed, for example, to a recent report from a Yale University committee that attributed much of the blame for declining trust to unclear admissions policies, grade inflation and concerns about free speech on campus.
Likewise, she cited a recent report on academic scholarship in the humanities commissioned by the leaders of Vanderbilt University and Washington University in Saint Louis.
The authors of the report argued that “at their best, the humanities and social sciences were “rigorous and as fruitful as they have ever been.” But, they added, they found signs of “a deterioration in scholarly standards fueled by the substitution of political criteria for properly scholarly criteria in the assessment of research and a more general repudiation of long-standing ideals of rigor and objectivity.”
The report drew varied criticism, including that its recommendations on improving the humanities didn’t go far enough and that the findings represent poor scholarship, Inside Higher Ed reported.
McMahon also praised colleges that have adopted institutional neutrality, though she didn’t name those institutions. Institutional neutrality means leaders and other officials don’t publicly comment on political matters and current affairs that aren’t directly related to their institutions’ interests.
Ross Mugler, president and CEO of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, said in a statement Monday that the higher education sector shares many of the same concerns outlined in McMahon’s letter but argued that addressing those issues is solely up to college leaders and boards.
“The U.S. system of higher education has been built and strengthened by the principles of board independence, institutional autonomy, and mission-driven leadership,” Mugler said. “It is vital that we protect these principles to ensure reforms are shaped by fiduciary responsibility and the long-term interest of our institutions and their students, not by political coercion.”