Letters from Academia

Maher

For many, the conservation of nature is seen as an essential component of human wellbeing. Its value is oftentimes referred to in relation to the four “Es”: economic, environmental, esthetic and ethical values.

From an economic viewpoint, we know that the entire pharmaceutical industry is built upon known natural substances we find in plants and animals, as are the varieties of many domesticated animals we use for food. On the environmental front, we know how essential it is for human health to have an abundant availability of clean water and air.

Esthetically speaking, natural areas represent one of the major attractions for the American public as evidenced by the huge number of visits (330 millions just last year) to national parks alone. From an ethical perspective, we also know that we, as a generation, have a responsibility for bestowing upon future generations the same clean and diverse environment that we ourselves have enjoyed.

Now all that may change. On July 19, the Trump Administration proposed major changes to the Endangered Species Act. Why is that of vital interest?

In 1973 President Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act (ESA) aimed at protecting critically imperiled species and their habitats from extinction as a “consequence of economic growth and development untampered by adequate concern and conservation.” This law, administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the Commerce Department’s National Marine Fisheries Service, was deemed constitutional in a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill. The court decided that “the plain intent of Congress in enacting” the ESA “was to halt and reverse the trend towards species extinction whatever the cost.”

This law has been instrumental in saving endangered species such as the bald eagle, the grizzly bear, and the gray whale, among 2,000 or so others. Ninety-nine percent of those species are still around thanks to the ESA.

If you think that these results, and the fact that in 2015 a national poll found that 90 percent of registered voters supported the ESA are enough to keep its original intent, think again.

In the last few weeks, Republican members of Congress (afraid of losing their majority in November), an unhinged White House, and greedy, irresponsible industry leaders, have been working feverishly to weaken the ESA. In the past two weeks, they have introduced more than two dozen pieces of legislation, policy initiatives and amendments designed to weaken the law.

While under the changes in the law proposed by the Trump Administration species that remain on the endangered list would still see their habitats protected, it would become more difficult to list a new species for protection and easier to remove those now on the list. And since decisions as to which species to protect are based on science, and given the little respect conservative legislators and the White House have for science, we will likely see a serious deterioration of our environment to favor of oil and gas companies and ranchers in Western states, who have long sought to overhaul the law.

All these efforts have been coordinated by David Bernhardt, deputy U.S. Department of the Interior secretary and a former oil lobbyist and legal representative of groups such as the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

One strategy they are working on is to attach amendments to the ESA to mustpass bills such as the National Defense Authorization Act, which specifies the annual budget for the Pentagon. Anyone voting against it will be labeled as “unpatriotic,” and given that virtually all U.S. representatives and senators have defense-related financing in the areas they represent, they will feel the pressure to vote for the law.

Legislators’ efforts are being coordinated by Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe, who has long advocated on behalf of the oil industry, and who is well known for denying the science of human-caused climate change.

In addition to changes in the law, part of the strategy to weaken the ESA through a departmental regulatory process that includes a public comment period.

The USFWS budget has seen reduced by Republican administrations and is no longer sufficient to support the agency’s ability to comply with the law.

The proposed regulatory changes include the deceptively dull title of “elimination of blanket 4(d) rule.” The ESA prohibits the “take” (harming) of species designated as endangered, while Section 4(d) of the law allows the agency to establish special regulations for threatened species. In 1978, USFWS used this authority to extend the prohibition of “take” to all threatened species. This is known as the “blanket 4(d) rule.”

Another change has to do with the definition of “foreseeable future,” crucial in the ESA-related decisions when determining conservation measures. According to these proposed changes, the “foreseeable future” definition used in making ESA listing decisions will extend only as far as officials “can reasonably determine that the conditions posing the potential danger of extinction are probable.” Thus, the decision of what the length of that “future” will be is in the hands of political appointees who will not have to rely on science for their decisions.

Besides the economic and ecological impacts the loss of species and their habitats will have on this country, we should not forget that ideological and private interests, once again, would sidestep science. A lot of the science generated in support of conservation measures is produced in colleges and universities, and they will be seriously impacted both intellectually and economically by the lack of attention by government officials who will not consider science in making decisions.

Thus, these actions should not only concern the general public – whether they are “tree-huggers” or just plain responsible citizens – but also people in academia. Unfortunately, they have been absent in this debate for the most part.

More importantly, let’s never forget the old saying that extinction is forever.

Let’s Never Forget: Extinction is Forever

Two weeks ago, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos made an announcement that can have serious implications for students registering for classes at for-profit institutions of higher education in particular, and colleges and universities in general.

In a written statement posted on the Department of Education’s website, DeVos announced plans to eliminate the so-called gainful employment rule created during the Obama administration in 2011. That rule was aimed at holding for-profit and career college programs accountable for graduating students with poor job prospects and overwhelming debt. The rule penalized programs if their graduates had student loan payments that exceeded a specific percentage of their incomes. The teeth behind that rule was to revoke federal funding and access to financial aid for poor performing schools.

For almost a decade now the federal government has been trying to hold schools accountable for promising to prepare students for specific careers but failing to prepare them for the job market, leaving taxpayers on the hook to pay back their taxpayer-backed loans. One of the catches used by these for-profits was that they offered financial aid – aid that did not come from their coffers, but from taxpayers.

For-profit institutions of higher education are the main culprits for the increasing student-related debt crisis we have been facing for years. Another is diminishing financial support from state governments for public institutions. The for-profits are also the most involved in scandals regarding the disparity between what they claim to offer and what they actually deliver.

After a 30-day comment period, the gainful employment rule is expected to be eliminated July 1, 2019.

This move was not unexpected. DeVos has been a great cheerleader for for-profit institutions. Since she took office, she has also been stuffing the ranks of the Education Department with people who have connections to the for-profit higher education industry, resulting in the de facto halting of government oversight over them. In fact, after Trump was elected, the value of the shares of the for-profit companies owning these institutions saw a surge after years of decline directly related to the attention federal oversight brought to their abuses. Many of those for profits, such as ITT Technical Institute and Corinthian Colleges, went bankrupt because of mountains of complaints and lawsuits for using misleading and deceptive practices.

These DeVos policies are facing some legal challenges. Eighteen state attorneys general have sued the department for delaying the enforcement of the Obama rule based on the premise that the Education Department’s duty is to protect students from exploitation and taxpayers from the waste of federal funds.

Yet, in order to cover her tracks, DeVos claimed in her announcement that the new rules would provide students with more data about all of the nation’s higher education institutions (and not just career and for-profit college programs), including rates of student debt, expected earnings after graduation, completion rates, program costs, accreditation and other measures. In other words, she is putting both for-profits and nonprofits in the same basket although there is no way you can convince anyone that both sectors operate the same way or have the same mission. The sole purpose of for-profits is to make money for shareholders.

“Students deserve useful and relevant data when making important decisions about their education post-high school,” said DeVos. “That’s why instead of targeting schools simply by their tax status, this administration is working to ensure students have transparent, meaningful information about all colleges and all programs. Our new approach will aid students across all sectors of higher education and improve accountability.”

The strategy followed by the Obama administration had been to encourage the expansion of community colleges, which are cheaper (and in many cases even free) and more serious when it comes to academic quality. During the Obama years, the federal government forgave at least $450 million in taxpayer-funded student debt for for-profit graduates who could not find decent jobs with the degrees or certificates they had earned.

Although as many as half of all for-profit colleges closed during the Obama years because of the gainful employment rule, the fact of the matter is that we should not be stunned if we see a resurgence of these predatory colleges. They know that they can make money off of taxpayer-funded student loans, and will no longer be watched over by the federal government.

The move by DeVos, to no one’s surprise, has received totally different reactions from Congress, pretty much along party lines. Republicans have applauded it. Democrats have condemned it. There is even talk that the Republican majority is working on eliminating the gainful employment rule by law out of fear that they may lose their majority standing after the upcoming November midterm elections.

Given recent actions by the Trump Administration against private institutions of higher education for alleged discrimination, as well as its criticism over their handling of their endowments, it is not inconceivable that they may use this new policy to castigate private colleges and universities which they see as “too liberal.” This will be consistent with their aversion toward higher education in general.

These new policies are consistent with others by the administration that tend to favor the executives and shareholders of predatory for-profit institutions of higher education over protecting students and taxpayers from abuses. The reason we all should be concerned is that now federal funds will go to benefit these for-profit colleges through federal subsidies and loans to students who will be ill prepared to get a decent job after graduation. In fact, the reputation of these for-profits is so bad, many employers refuse to even consider applications from their graduates.

At the end of the day the anti-tax party, which has always denounced “big government,” is ok with taxpayers footing the bill for subsidizing private businesses that deliver a poor product.

Losing Protection from Predatory Colleges

After a 19-month delay, the Trump Administration has nominated someone to be the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, or as is more colloquially known, the science adviser to the president.

Congress established the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in 1976. President Gerald Ford, a Republican, signed the act creating the agency into law. That took place after President Nixon disbanded the then-called “President Advisory Committee” in 1973.

The mandate for the agency is to provide the president and others within the Executive Office of the President with advice on the scientific, engineering, and technological aspects of the economy, national security, homeland security, health, foreign relations, the environment, and the technological recovery and use of resources, among other topics.

Therefore, it is an agency that can have a tremendous influence on U.S. politics and policies since before making any decision on the above-mentioned areas, the president is supposed to hear what the science adviser has to say. However, in recent actions, including how to deal with nuclear threats from North Korea, natural disasters, and the withdrawing of the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, Trump has acted without the advice of any scientific expert.

“The dismissal of scientific evidence in policy formulation has affected wide areas of the social, biological, environmental and physical sciences,” read a statement signed by more than 1,000 members of the National Academy of Sciences last April.

More than a year and a half since becoming president, and with the OSTP staff reduced from 135 to just 45 people, Trump has finally nominated Kelvin Droegemeier, a meteorologist with a long research record in the area of predicting severe storms, to head the Office. Droegemeier, 59, will still need to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Droegemeier has been working since the 1990s in applying radar technology and computer technology to predict the development of thunderstorms. He went on to co-found the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Science and Technology Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms, as well as the NSF’s Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere. He is now vice president for research at the University of Oklahoma and the state’s secretary of science and technology.

Under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, he served on the National Science Board, which sets the priorities for the National Science Foundation and advises Congress and the president.

The nomination has been well received within the scientific community, which was anxious about a potential nomination of someone with ties to industry (as has happened at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Education) or just some kind of witch doctor from the lunatic fringe. Yet, there is an area for which there is no paper trail on Droegemeier’s position: climate change. And he will be the one reporting to a president who has publicly called climate change “a Chinese hoax.” Politically speaking, Droegemeier is a conservative whose web page is emblazoned with “God Bless America!!!” something quite unusual for people in the academy. He leads a state science advisory panel named by Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, and has advised former Oklahoma Rep. Jim Bridenstine – both Republicans – in a very red state. Bridenstine is now the administrator of NASA.

But the question is, even if he agrees with the scientific consensus on climate change and other matters, will he be heard?

From a practical viewpoint, the president’s science adviser is supposed to get various government agencies to agree on research priorities, and then help to make sure those strategies are reflected in federal funding. And the Trump Administration is notorious for ignoring scientific advice and has proposed deep cuts in science and technology budgets at the national level. At some point, they proposed a 20 percent cut in the budget of the National Institutes of Health, the primary generator of scientific information in medical matters.

The administration proposed an EPA rule that would limit the use of science for crafting regulations where all underlying data aren’t publicly available. The new rules “would ensure it pursues its public health mission in a manner the public can trust and understand.” In other words, if the science is too complicated for the general public to grasp, then ignore it. Such a proposal would open the door for unscientific information generated by interest groups to influence public policy.

The Trump Administration has also proposed slashing the budgets of a public-health preparedness fund at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, climate change programs at the EPA, and NASA’s WideField Infrared Survey Telescope. Droegemeier does have a record of supporting federally funded research. In an opinion piece published last year in the Des Moines Register, he called for the White House and Congress to shore up federal research funding. “Though the benefits of short-term savings in the yearly federal budgets may be appealing, they result in insidious, long-term consequences,” he wrote. “Due to underfunding, we risk losing an entire generation of researchers.”

During the confirmation hearings, we will get to know more about Droegemeier’s stances, as well as about the skepticism of some Republican senators about science informing policy. But the real question is, will Droegemeier be heard by a president notorious for making decisions without consulting appropriate people even within his ideological camp?

Furthermore, it is not clear whether the White House intends to appoint Droegemeier as an assistant to the president, a position held by several recent White House science advisers. The title, which is separate from that of OSTP director, essentially signals close ties to the president and his top aides. An OSTP staffer told reporters that any decision about whether to give Droegemeier an additional title would be made after his confirmation by the Senate.

Now we will have to wait and see.

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Adviser Nomination Spurs Questions

In previous columns I have reported how a number of external factors, such as funding, demographics, politics and the like have been hurting higher education. In many other cases – overblown athletic programs, misguided marketing, and plain bad leadership – the injuries have been selfinflicted. To these cases we can now add the race for the rankings.

I have argued in this column in the past that rankings like the ones by U.S. News & World Report and its copycats make little sense. To begin with, many of the things they claim to measure, such as athletics, facilities, and “reputation,” have nothing to do with the quality of the education students receive. Besides, improvement in all those areas costs money, money that could be used to actually improve the quality of the education for the students or the productivity of the faculty. In the last few months, a new case emerged that demonstrates how these rankings are built on very shaky ground, and furthers the reasons why we should ignore them.

Temple University is a public (formerly private) institution located in Philadelphia. It has had a distinguished history since its founding in 1888, and currently serves about 80,00 students. For some time now, the school has appeared obsessed with improving its rankings. Until the beginning of this year, they were ranked 118 in the nation by U.S. News. Yet, in the last few months a number of incidents have placed its reputation in serious danger.

Just two weeks ago we learned that Moshe Porat, dean of Temple’s Fox School of Business, resigned after the university discovered that multiple programs in its business school had misreported data to U.S. News. Curiously that program had been ranked No. 1 by the magazine for the last four years, including 2018. Temple not only lied about statistics of the Master in Business Administration (MBA) program, but also about the entire school. After the scandal was brought up in the national media, U.S. News reclassified the program as “unranked.”

Because of the allegations of misreporting, Temple hired the law firm Jones Day, which issued a report showing that the business school had inflated metrics, including the number of entrants who had provided GMAT scores, the average undergraduate GPA of new students, how many offers of admission it had extended, and how much debt its students had incurred related to their M.B.A., global M.B.A., part-time M.B.A., master of science in humanresource management, and master of science in digital innovation in marketing programs.

Interestingly enough, the falsification of data was discovered after some Temple employees disclosed to U.S. News that the university had inflated the data they had provided previously.

This shows the vulnerability and unreliability of all the data used by the magazine. Not only are they based on self-reporting (and we don’t know how many other cheaters are out there), but the magazine has no way to verify the accuracy of most of the data they receive, which feed the algorithm they use to rank programs.

Because of this and many other issues, an increasing number of colleges and universities refuse to provide any data to U.S. News, and the magazine has shown how unscientific and vindictive it can be.

One of the schools that refuse to provide data is Reed College, a good quality private liberal arts institution in Oregon. They stopped providing data in 1995 and asked the magazine to simply omit Reed from its listings. According to an article published in The Atlantic in 2005 that was authored by Colin Diver, former Reed president, the editors of U.S. News, “arbitrarily assigned the lowest possible value to each of Reed’s missing variables, with the result being that Reed dropped in one year from the second quartile to the bottom quartile. After the predictable outcry, U.S. News purportedly began to rank Reed based on information available from other sources. In subsequent years that procedure usually placed the college somewhere in the middle of the second quartile, with a footnote stating that we ‘refused to fill out the U.S. News statistical survey,’ and claiming to base the ranking on data from published sources. But since much of the information needed to complete the magazine’s ranking algorithm is unpublished, one can only guess how the editors arrive at a value.”

Temple and the magazine may be facing more than public shame for these practices. We also learned through The Wall Street Journal that the federal government began an investigation into Temple’s use of deceptive marketing practices to recruit students to its online M.B.A. program.

The Department of Education’s investigative unit is looking at whether federal student loans and grants from taxpayer dollars have been improperly used to fund school programs, or if students were misled when deciding where to attend. In the past, the department has obligated colleges found guilty of these kinds of violations with reimbursing student tuition costs and paying steep fines (sometimes in the millions of dollars). They decided to investigate after an online M.B.A. student had filed a lawsuit alleging that Fox School administrators had engaged in fraud and deceptive business practice. The Pennsylvania attorney general is also investigating.

The question is, when will colleges and universities stop playing the rankings game? Once I asked that question to some higher education chief executives and the said that they couldn’t, citing issues of “pride,” “marketing value,” and/ or “because the board says so.”

One of the functions of college presidents is to educate their constituencies –including their board of trustees and donors – on the realities of higher education. The sham concerning “rankings” should be no exception. They may encounter some resistance, including from their marketing departments, but the reality is that by participating in unscientific surveys for rankings, their prestige will suffer severely in the long run.

It is time for the leadership of institutions of higher education to show some vision and courage.

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Rankings can be Bad for Colleges’ Health

The concept of “fake news” is not new by any stretch of the imagination. Over centuries people have invented stories of all types and dimensions. From dragons to the “fake” moon landing, from the Masons behind every political conspiracy to the Jews trying to control the world, there have been complex stories that try to indict entire peoples or nations with all kinds of atrocities. One of the most famous is the “black legend” (or leyenda negra), according to which Spain has been the culprit for everything bad that happened in the western hemisphere for centuries.

As Alfredo Alvar described it in his book “La Leyenda Negra,” the black legend is “a careful distortion of the history of a nation, perpetrated by its enemies, in order to better fight it. And a distortion as monstrous as possible, with the goal of achieving a specific aim: the moral disqualification of the nation, whose supremacy must be fought in every way possible.”

Unfortunately, not only countries but entire human activities, like higher education, can be the victims of black legends.

For years, conservatives have been mischaracterizing what is going on regarding higher education. When describing the problems with that sector they emphasize issues such as political correctness, uselessness of degrees, misuse of taxpayers’ money and the like. They never talk about actual problems such as extremely diminishing financial support (which translates into higher costs for the students so these groups can pursue their anti-tax ideology) or bad leadership (so they can continue to place on boards of trustees and executive positions their acolytes instead of qualified individuals).

They have been persistent and effective in advancing this narrative, and they don’t care how outlandish their claims are. Take, for example, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who in a speech last Tuesday said that colleges are performing “a disservice to their students and a disservice to this nation.” He claimed, in a prepared statement, that college students these days have some growing up to do and it is because many of the nation’s colleges are creating and coddling “a generation of sanctimonious, sensitive, supercilious snowflakes.”

According to The Washington Post, during Sessions’ speech the crowd started chanting “Lock her up,” a favorite call of Trump supporters regarding Hillary Clinton. Sessions chuckled, and repeated the chant himself. What a moral example to high schoolers from the country’s top law enforcement officer. Sessions would say later that he could have handled the situation “differently.”

This speech was delivered at a summit for high-school students sponsored by Turning Point USA, a conservative group that constantly attacks colleges and professors that they see as hostile to conservative ideologies. Sessions then warned the high schoolers at the conference that some people would try to silence them and added that President Trump has questioned whether federal funding should be pulled from higher education.

Sessions’ Department of Justice has filed statements of interest in lawsuits against universities and has actively participated in other lawsuits in issues ranging from what he sees as violations of free speech of conservative speakers to alleged racial discrimination against Asians (but not African Americans or Latinos).

This is not the first time that Sessions has used this kind of rhetoric. Last September at Georgetown University, he disparaged college campuses as “an echo chamber of political correctness and homogenous thought, a shelter for fragile egos.” The response from leaders of higher education or liberal leaders in this country? Almost nothing, so Sessions’ diatribe went unchallenged. The only exception was from the University of California at Irvine Chancellor and free speech expert Howard A. Gillman, who said about the “snowflakes” comment that “calling each other names isn’t productive.” That is a high-minded response, but totally ineffective from a communications viewpoint since such rhetoric will not change the minds of those targeted by Sessions’ statements.

In the same meeting the education secretary, Betsy DeVos, proposed curtailing Obama Administration loan forgiveness rules for students defrauded by for-profit colleges, requiring that student borrowers show they have fallen into hopeless financial straits or prove that their colleges knowingly deceived them. In other words, those who were duped by for-profit colleges with promises of “great jobs” after graduation, now have to return the money unless they provide almost impossible evidence of extreme poverty.

For-profit universities are a favorite of Secretary DeVos, who has been accused of stocking her department with former executives of for-profit colleges and universities to free the industry from oversight. The Obama Administration had eased access to loan forgiveness for students who were left encumbered with debt after two for-profit college chains, Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute, imploded in 2015 and 2016. The schools were found to have misled their students with false advertisements and misleading claims for years. Yet, they had long benefitted from federal government subsidies while being the most responsible for the current level of student debt in this country – $1.5 trillion.

But all of this information has been well known for years. What is the difference now? The difference is that conservative, extremist groups are winning the battle for public opinion.

According to a survey by the Pew Research Center published last week, of about 10,000 respondents, 61 percent of Americans say the higher education system in the U.S. is going in the wrong direction, with Republicans and Democrats differing over why they think this is the case. Seventy-three percent of Republicans and those who lean to the Republican Party say higher education is headed in the wrong direction, primarily because of political correctness. Fifty-two percent of Democrats and Democratic leaners agree that higher education is going in the wrong direction, but blame its cost.

This state of mind will translate is less political and financial support for higher education since nobody likes to back disparaged institutions.

Unless we, in colleges and universities, come up with better communication approaches we will lose the public opinion battle and all because the enemies of higher education were able to generate a black legend while we were incapable to counter it.

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The Black Legend of Higher Education

Although we hear a lot about problems at public colleges and universities – budget cuts, enrollment issues, political interference – private colleges also have their share of concerns.

Of the more than 4,600 institutions of higher education in this country, a little more than 3,000 (almost two-thirds of the total) are private. Although there are a few exceptions, they tend to be small, at around 2,000 students or fewer. Yet they represent a significant number of the overall number colleges and universities. Obviously not all are created equal. Some of them have large endowments and can afford to be very selective in admissions due to the large number of applications they receive. Those schools do not face any immediate financial issues. But what about the others?

From time to time we read in the press about small private colleges that either close down or are absorbed by larger ones in the same geographical area, and one wonders what is the future for those institutions. Let’s analyze some of the unique problems that they face.

The first one is demographics. Each year the U.S. is seeing a decline in the number of high school graduates. Since these private colleges depend substantially on tuition dollars to cover their costs of operation, fewer students mean less economic certainty. And since these colleges attract mostly students from their geographic regions, those located in the Northeast and the Midwest, where there is a steady decrease in high school graduates, are the ones suffering the most.

This problem is compounded by the fact that in the past they tried to remedy these shortfalls by attracting more international students, but with the new xenophobic rules imposed by the Trump administration we are seeing a decline in the number of international students applying to colleges and universities in the U.S.

Another problem is that now they are facing more and more competition from public colleges and universities. Because of state budget cuts, public institutions have had to become more competitive in their recruitment efforts. They also, with few exceptions, cost significantly less to attend. Public institutions have become a serious threat to the recruitment efforts of private ones. Add to that the efforts made in some states, like New York, to offer free college tuition to its residents under certain conditions, and it becomes clear that many private institutions face economic peril.

Although many private colleges have tried to compete by reducing what they charge students by charging a fraction of the actual cost – called the discount rate – the problem is that this is not a zero-sum game. At some point the discount rate becomes unsustainable and the college starts losing money.

Religious-affiliated colleges that try to stick to certain faith-related traditions are particularly vulnerable. According to a recent study by the Pew Research Foundation, fewer and fewer Americans identify as belonging to any particular organized religion. Those private colleges that require their students to be the followers of a particular faith have an even harder time recruiting.

This issue also faces highly specialized colleges like those in the arts. The competition they face by larger (mostly public) institutions is such that unless they offer something really unique they cannot contend with the choices offered by larger, more scholarly diverse ones. To put it simply, they don’t have room to maneuver.

And it is not that private colleges are unaware of these problems. In a report published last week by Insider Higher ED, a survey of college and university business officers showed that only 44 percent of chief financial officers at four-year baccalaureate colleges say they are confident their colleges will be financially stable over the next 10 years, down from 52 percent a year ago and 54 percent in 2016.

Twenty-four percent of financial officers at private baccalaureate-level institutions reported that the leaders of their colleges have had serious discussions about merging with other institutions, more than any other sector and almost five times more than answered that way a year ago. A similar proportion (26 percent) said that their college should merge with another. And 68 percent of financial officers at four-year private colleges now acknowledge that their tuition discount rate is unsustainable, markedly higher than last year’s 59 percent.

Are there ways to deal with these issues? There are. The problem is that the leadership of many of these small private colleges is not always capable of taking on the challenges and making the changes that are required to achieve those goals.

One shortcut they sometimes try to take is to increase their institutions’ positions in the endless and meaningless rankings that are published every year by popular magazines. The problem with that approach is that it costs a lot of money the scale up in the rankings to meet the artificial standards crested by those magazines. If your problem is a lack of money, that is not a viable solution. The other is that those rankings are not what really make a difference when making a decision on which college to attend. Location, cost, and affinity are much more important factors. After all, none of those rankings measure how well they prepare their students.

These small colleges need to take a different route and develop the two pillars that are fundamental to building a sustainable financial future. One is to be known for something very specific and important, something that gives national prominence. A small institution should not try to be a jack for all trades.

The other strategy is to differentiate yourself from the rest. Most college websites look the same – the same design, the same messages, the same kind of pictures, and all use the word “excellence.” Additionally, more and more students try to find out if a particular college is the one for them based on what they read in social media.

Unless they are willing and skillful enough to take on these challenges, they will become dinosaurs and their merging, and in some cases closure, will translate not only in fewer options for students but also loss of jobs in academia.

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Uncertain Futures for Private Colleges

A couple of weeks ago the Trump Administration rescinded two Obama-era guidelines on affirmative action in higher education. The two guidelines, issued by the Obama administration in 2011 and 2016, respectively, gave colleges a lot of leeway in determining whether considering applicants’ race was necessary to achieve a diverse campus as part of the institution’s goals.

The bases for these guidelines were the multiple U.S. Supreme Court decisions since the 1978 Bakke case, which basically said that although race quotas were not permissible, considering race in the admissions process was acceptable as long as it serves to achieve institutional missions. The most recent decision on this matter was in 2016, in Fisher v. University of Texas, a decision written by the now retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, which allowed race to be considered in the admissions process of any university.

The question is, what are the real intentions of the Trump Administration in abolishing the Obama-era policies? Is it just another of his ideological tantrums to keep his base happy, or something else? Let’s analyze the facts.

Republicans have long had an issue with affirmative action, a policy created by the Kennedy Administration in 1961 intended at developing laws, policies, guidelines, and administrative practices to end and correct the effects of a specific form of discrimination. This has been contested by Republicans in the courts for a long time. The justices involved in those decisions have affirmed the value of such practices, although in a limited way.

For example, in 2003 the George W. Bush Administration told colleges that they could not consider race in the admissions process unless it was “essential” to achieving their mission. The Bush-era guidance seemed to discourage the use of race, which it said, “must have a logical end point.” The currently nominated U.S. Supreme Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh was part of the Bush legal team then, although his exact influence on that policy is unknown.

The Obama Administration issued in 2011 a joint guidance by the Education and Justice departments replacing Bush’s. It said that affirmative action programs “greatly contribute to the educational, economic, and civic life of this nation,” effectively encouraging colleges and universities to consider applicants’ race as a means of increasing the diversity of their student bodies.

Last November the Trump Administration’s Department of Justice announced it was investigating Harvard University – a private university – for alleged discrimination against Asian-American applicants. This is a very convenient and savvy approach to the issue. By attacking Harvard they are aiming at a favorite target of their concerted animosity towards higher education. Harvard is not only very famous, but also has been painted by Trump officials as a “nest of liberals.” By appearing to defend Asian Americans, the Trump Administration is siding neither with African Americans nor Latinos on this issue, but with a group that tends to vote conservative and are more palatable to the party’s white base.

Then, in March of this year, “The Students for Fair Admissions,” a conservative group that has always challenged the notion of affirmative action, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Boston claiming, among other things, that Harvard’s actions were “unconstitutional.” The leader of this group, Edward Blum, is notorious for recruiting plaintiffs, hiring sympathetic lawyers, and raising millions of dollars from conservative groups to challenge voting rights and affirmative action policies, often successfully. He was the one behind bringing the Fisher v. University of Texas case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which claimed that Abigail Fisher was denied admission because she was white. That case was decided (4-3) in favor on the university with the pivotal vote by Justice Kennedy.

This latest lawsuit against Harvard seems to be designed to end up in the U.S. Supreme Court, where Kavanaugh, the presumptive replacement for Kennedy, will tilt the court’s decision against affirmative action, thus reversing the previous decision in Fisher v. University of Texas. As has been disclosed since his nomination last week, Kavanaugh is a very conservative justice who has opposed (or at least been very critical of) voting rights, abortion rights, the right of government to regulate industrial pollution, and heath care, among other matters.

Kavanaugh has been endorsed by the Federalist Society, a very active group in conservative circles that has been very successful in getting conservative lawyers appointed to judiciary positions and that emphasizes a literal interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, a document that was written when slavery still existed and women did not have the right to vote. In fact, the Trump Administration in repealing Obama Administration guidelines, saying that those recommendations, “advocate policy preferences and positions beyond the requirements of the Constitution.”

Beyond the constitutional issues, and despite the fact that guidance documents by federal agencies do not have the same legal authority as court decisions, these actions by the Trump Administration may be designed to send the message to colleges and universities to watch their steps or risk losing federal assistance.

So, what would be the next step for the dismantling of affirmative action in higher education? The lawsuits filed against Harvard (and a similar one filed against the University of North Carolina) are still at an early stage, since they are still in federal district court. After that they will likely proceed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Then, with a very conservative new justice, such as Kavanaugh, the original majority opinion written by Justice Kennedy will be overturned. The basis? Not only that affirmative action is not constitutional, but that by discriminating against Asian Americans, Harvard is violating Title VI of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance. This would be a perverse use of a law aimed at protecting non-whites from discrimination in order to favor a white supremacist ideology.

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Dismantling Affirmative Action in Higher Education

In the last few weeks we have heard a lot about trade wars (taking place or looming) between the U.S. and virtually every economically important nation in the world. This is surprising in today’s world where the tendency has been over the past few decades to eliminate trade barriers.

Mainstream economists have pointed out for years the benefits of free trade: international economic growth, improved financial performance of investments, lowered business risks, more competition that lowers prices while increasing choices for the consumers, and diversification of revenues. Although there are some risks associated with free trade, such as the environmental and labor abuses that accompanied free trade agreements such as NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), but they have usually incorporated side agreements, such as the creation of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, to deal with that type of issues.

There is a pretty strong consensus among economists that trade wars will reduce jobs. Under the present climate, a number of U.S. manufacturers have already said that they will have to lay off workers or move their manufacturing plants elsewhere. Warnings of that have been given by manufacturers as large as General Motors and Harley-Davidson, all the way to soybean farmers. They all have said that these trade wars will lead to the loss of jobs and competitiveness in our country. To make things worse, the Trump Administration has focused its actions on the three largest trading partners with the U.S. – China, Canada, and Mexico.

In an article published last week in The New York Times, Richard Newell, president of Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington, described the administration’s overall approach as “whack-amole policy,” full of uncertainties, lack of clarity, and great potential for unintended consequences.

But will these trade wars affect higher education in general and scientific research in particular? Of course.

Let’s take the case of China, which the administration has zeroed in on as a major target for its trade wars. China and the U.S. are the world’s two largest economies, and the administration announced a 25 percent tax on 818 goods imported from the Asian country effective July 6. Among those goods are scientific equipment that includes microscopes and geological-survey devices. Tariffs on another 284 industrial goods, including chemicals, are being considered.

In response, China’s Ministry of Commerce set its own tariffs on 545 U.S. products also effective July 6, and announced plans to apply tariffs on another 114 American-manufactured products, including chemicals and medical instruments such as X-ray and the now commonly used MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) devices.

All this will translate into higher prices for scientific equipment. The problem is not only the cost itself, but can be much farther reaching. When researchers submit grant proposals (particularly to major federal funding agencies), those proposals are budgeted for several years. Under the proposed tariffs research will cost thousands of dollars more, with the researchers or their home institutions having to foot the bill. This is a tall order in the current climate of budget cuts to colleges and universities.

That is not the case for scientific research in China, which is in large part financially supported by the Chinese government. These tariffs will also mean that the Chinese will start importing equipment from Europe and Japan that is of comparable quality to American products, while encouraging their own industries to manufacture more scientific and technological goods. The Chinese market will be lost for U.S. manufacturers.

This will play perfectly into the hands of the Chinese government whose ambitious “Made in China 2025” plan is to make that country self-sufficient in manufacturing products that are mostly now imported from the U.S., such as microchips, automated engines, and self-driving cars. Automation is a great objective of the Chinese. As average wages have increased Chinese manufacturers are looking at ways to use fewer workers.

By the same token, U.S. manufacturers of chemicals and other scientific goods, such as the widely popular DNA sequencers as well as medical equipment, can expect to see exports being reduced. This drop will lead to a loss of jobs and other economic benefits for U.S. workers and corporations.

This trade war – together with the new immigration policies – will also have the social effect of reducing scientific collaboration and the talent flow between the U.S. and countries like China and others. For example, a lot of high-tech companies depend upon foreign students who, once graduated, work for them because there are not enough U.S.- born individuals to supply their talent needs.

And there can be health and food consequences as well. Chemicals are not just supplies for lab research. The pharmaceutical and biotech sectors depend heavily on synthetic chemicals produced in China for the manufacturing of their products. Higher tariffs on those products will mean an increase in prices for drugs and food.

To make things worse, the history of trade wars has taught us that they tend to escalate in a tit-for-tat dynamic with no end in sight, constantly expanding the list of products under trade restrictions. This is why mainstream economists agree that in trade wars nobody wins.

If the U.S. government thinks that it is being treaty unfairly by China, for example, it should have gone to the World Trade Organization so solve those disputes without causing collateral damage. That is the way true dealmakers work out situations like this.

Trade wars will further erode the leadership of the U.S. in science and technology, and will make “America Second” the more accurate reality. These tariffs are a clear case of how demagoguery and nativism have real negative consequences for our country.

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Trade Wars are Bad for Higher Education

The recent announcement of the July 1 retirement of Associate Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court Anthony M. Kennedy has already created a political storm about many issues ranging from reproductive rights to LGBTQ issues. What effects can we expect on higher education from his departure and the potential appointment of a new justice by President Trump? Plenty. Let’s begin by examining those decisions in which Kennedy participated that directly affected colleges and universities.

Affirmative Action has always been a bone of contention between conservative and liberal justices on the court. For one thing, liberals see the concept – first established by an executive order from President John F. Kennedy in 1962 – as a way to bridge societal inequalities, including access to education. In fact, not long ago many colleges and universities discriminated against non-whites, non-Christians, and women in their admission processes. Conservatives have argued that affirmative action policies represent “reverse discrimination” against whites, and, therefore, should not be used, particularly when it came to establishing quotas.

In this matter, Kennedy’s opinions seem to have evolved. For example, in the 2003 court’s ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger that upheld race-conscious admissions at the University of Michigan Law School, he dissented. However, in the 2016 decision in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin (a decision he wrote) he sided with the liberal faction that supported not only the idea of using race as a factor in admissions, but also gave deference to the autonomy of institutions to make those admissions policies.

Although there is a tradition of not reversing well-established precedents, political observers believe that a new conservative majority will be tempted to do so. That will certainly be the case if Kennedy’s replacement happens to be an activist, conservative justice. In the last few weeks the Justice Department has launched an investigation into alleged racial discrimination against Asian-American applicants by Harvard University, which signals yet another attempt to dismantle the very concept of affirmative action.

Another hot issue on college campuses lately has been that of free speech. Conservatives have been arguing that hostile policies and practices against right-wing speakers on campuses is a violation of their freedom of speech rights. In the 2010 ruling on Hastings Christian Society Fellowship v. Martinez, Kennedy joined the court’s four liberal justices in finding that the University of California’s Hastings College of Law had not violated the First Amendment in denying official recognition to a Christian student group that effectively excluded gay students from membership. The law school requires that all official student groups be open to all.

Kennedy also wrote the majority opinion in the 2006 case Garcetti v. Ceballos, in which the court ruled that public employees could be disciplined for speech made while carrying out their official duties. This case was brought to court by the plaintiff Richard Ceballos, who had been a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles County since 1989 and who argued that he had been passed up for a promotion for criticizing the legitimacy of a warrant. Kennedy sided with the conservatives in this 5-4 decision.

Although this ruling seems on the surface to be irrelevant to higher education, it is not. Think about faculty members at public institutions who express opinions that can be considered as “offensive” or “unorthodox,” or that express controversial ideas? If faculty members were to be disciplined for doing so, part of the disciplinary actions against them could be dismissal (even if they have tenure), which is a direct violation of one of the most important principles in higher education: academic freedom.

Although no specific case dealing with academic freedom has yet to be brought to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Garcetti v Ceballos case could be used by a more conservative court as a basis to allow punishment of controversial faculty members because of their opinions expressed either in the classroom or in a more public forum.

In the two latest decisions by the court – upholding Trump’s travel ban (Trump v. Hawaii) and striking down mandatory membership fees for public sectors unions (Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council) – Kennedy sided with the conservatives in these 5-4 decisions.

The first decision will impact further the enrollment of international students (whose numbers have been declining since Trump was elected president), which in turn affects colleges and universities that need that tuition money to survive. These institutions, mostly because of diminishing demographics, need international students to make up for fewer U.S. students enrolling in an environment in which public institutions are receiving less and less support from the government.

The second decision means that faculty at public institutions will see weakened unions to represent them in negotiations with university administration.

Based on all of the above it is clear that Kennedy’s departure and his likely replacement by a more conservative justice poses a more dire future to higher education in this country. Although it is too early to tell, this may be a pivotal moment in the history of American higher education because it can affect in dramatic ways and for decades to come three essential pillars of colleges and universities as institutions: access to higher education, freedom of speech on campuses, and the most solid tradition of all in academia, freedom of inquiry, a tradition whose history dates back to the medieval ages when faculty members were protected from backlash for their intellectual works.

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Justice Kennedy’s Exit and Higher Education