Saving Higher Education
Why Higher Education Institutions Must Reclaim Their Purpose and Lead with Integrity
Higher education is under siege. Public trust is plummeting, institutional values are under attack, and the field risks obsolescence unless universities reclaim and recast their purpose for today’s world.
An Existential Threat
According to a public opinion study published by the Pew Institute just a few weeks ago, seven in 10 Americans say that higher education in the US is going in the wrong direction (source). The study reveals troubling perceptions across many areas:
Nearly eight in ten adults (79%) say colleges and universities are doing a fair or poor job of keeping tuition costs affordable, and 52% say the same about their performance in providing financial help to students who need it.
About half give colleges and universities fair or poor ratings on preparing students for well-paying jobs in today’s economy (55%) and developing students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills (49%).
When it comes to free speech on college campuses, 45% of Americans say colleges and universities are doing a fair or poor job of exposing students to a wide range of opinions and viewpoints.
32% rate colleges and universities as fair or poor at advancing research and innovation.
Systemic Failures Abound
This failure is not new—it is baked into the system. U.S. universities were founded as exclusive enclaves for white men, and centuries of reforms have only partially opened the doors. Equity remains elusive: Black Americans are disproportionately funneled into expensive for-profit colleges and are far less likely to complete a degree or to reap its benefits. Countless other students—those who aren’t wealthy, white, or male—face similar structural disadvantages.
These aren’t minor flaws; they are systemic injustices. It’s no wonder millions of Americans are furious, including many graduates of four-year institutions who might otherwise have pursued careers in higher education. The system continues to reward privilege while leaving most students to bear the cost, struggle, and disappointment—a betrayal of the very promise that higher education claims to uphold.
Higher Education in the Crosshairs: A Culture War
At the industry level, a very different narrative is playing out as President Trump’s administration wages blitzkrieg (or perhaps more aptly neokayfabe – more on this term later) on many of its most elite institutions. These attacks often come cloaked as concerns over racial or anti-Semitic discrimination, but their effect is clear: university leaders have struggled to defend their institutions, disoriented by the emergence of a new axis of power among fascist-aligned actors and amplified by outsider mouthpieces like former professional wrestling executive turned Secretary of Education Linda McMahon.
Josephine Riesman’s Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America (2023), which documents the decades-long relationship between spouses Vince and Linda McMahon and President Trump, provides a deeper view into how they operate in the political sphere (see end note for relationship disclosure). In professional wrestling, kayfabe refers to the deliberate presentation of staged events as real. Riesman coins neokayfabe to lay bare the current state of affairs, in which wrestling fans accept the lie of the spectacle because they believe it aligns with a deeper truth — that everyone is, or should be, a liar. Riesman draws direct parallels to the political sphere, in which political leaders publicly declare one position while supporting an entirely different one behind closed doors, and many supporters accept this as just the way things are done — and believe that you’d be a chump not to behave that way. So how does neokayfabe show up in higher education?
Neokayfabe in Action: Columbia University Case Study
Take Columbia University as a stark example. Conservative columnist Debra J. Saunders gleefully called acting president Claire Shipman and other leaders “the dons of Big Education,” writing that elite universities “pose as protectors of free speech, but nobody believes that anymore” (source). Yet the facts are staggering: as of late 2025, no credible reports indicate that any individual or group at Columbia had called for genocide against Jewish people. Still, Shipman agreed to pay $200 million to the federal government, eliminate race-based admissions preferences, end DEI programs, and oversee the arrest, suspension, or expulsion of over 100 students protesting the genocide in Palestine–now the most documented genocide in human history (source).
Shipman’s deal offers no protection to the unfairly accused students. Rather than advocate for justice or defend free speech, Saunders celebrates the outcome, praising Shipman for taking a “smarter path than the usual preening one sees in the Ivory Tower” and concluding with a taunt: “You think you own it. You did own it, but not any more (sic).” This is neokayfabe in action: elites reveling in each other’s failures while ignoring legal and moral obligations, leaving the very institutions they claim to lead vulnerable. Shipman failed her students, Saunders failed the public, and no one in this spectacle acknowledges the responsibility to uphold truth or defend core values. The result is a system in which deceit is normalized, applause-worthy, and deeply corrosive.
A Nation Being Sucked Dry
And so we return to an old story: The leaders are part of the problem, and meaningful reform will only come when people demand it, because those in power will not act on their own. Talmon Joseph Smith reports in an April 2025 article on U.S. wealth inequality that the top 10 percent of families now hold 69 percent of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 50 percent hold a mere three percent (source). He also reports that those in the bottom two-thirds of income are deeply pessimistic about the economy at levels similar to the 2008 financial crisis, while sentiment among the top third of earners recently rebounded to pre-pandemic levels. One interpretation of the paralysis in reform at the highest ranks is that senior leaders in higher education, insulated by their elite networks and personal wealth, project unearned optimism about the economy and their institutions’ resilience and remain blind to the broader structural pressures threatening their campuses.
In 2025’s Burned By Billionaires, inequality researcher Chuck Collins lays out how wealth at the billionaire level is accumulated through four phases: getting the wealth, defending the wealth, political capture, and hyper-extraction (source) What’s fascinating about this structure is that in many ways, President Trump is extremely bad at it: His success has come not from participating in this system, but instead by razing it in favor of a return to despotic power. Higher education is a key front in this assault, because historically, higher education has played a formative role in the system billionaires use to accumulate wealth, protect it, gain political influence, and engage in hyper-extraction. Targeting higher education destabilizes this foundation, undermining institutions that have long served as both intellectual incubators and gatekeepers of social mobility.
Reclaiming Purpose and Values
So what must universities do to continue to exist in today’s climate? They must reclaim their core values. In doing so, they will also reclaim their purpose and story. In this case, reclaiming their values means also recasting them in light of today’s needs by holding themselves accountable to a very different set of demands than the ones President Trump is making (source). For some leaders, this reckoning is uncomfortable, even painful. But without it, higher education risks obsolescence—and with it, the nation’s capacity to educate, innovate, and sustain a just society.
Higher education institutions must value their own contributions to an equitable and inclusive society. They cannot keep acceding to President Trump’s demands—unreasonable, insatiable, and illegal as they have proven to be. First, they must recognize that higher education is valuable in and of itself. We must celebrate students who achieve remarkable outcomes through higher education, even if they don’t attend elite institutions, earn exorbitant salaries, or attract media attention. We must honor the work of low-paid public servants—teachers, nurses, EMTs, firefighters, and yes, police officers (but only those who earn it by championing strategies like restorative justice)—alongside doctors, lawyers, and entrepreneurs. Equity and inclusion must be celebrated as vigorously as innovation and excellence, while wealth-hoarding and elitism must be devalued. Only then will we see society’s distorted obsession with wealth begin to self-correct.
Higher education institutions must preserve history with honesty and integrity and protect their employees. The story of U.S. higher education cannot be divorced from its colonial past. The only path forward is to confront that history, acknowledge its harms, and act transparently and democratically. This means re-centering the human experience at the heart of higher education. Character development must be measured and made an accountable priority alongside skills and employability. Humanities must be reclaimed (counter to prevailing trends as decried by Tyler Austin Harper in The Atlantic) and made as compelling as the sciences and other lucrative fields (source). Institutions must confront the realities highlighted in recent Pew studies, rehire deserving professionals ousted under DEI controversies, and safeguard workers tackling the most difficult and uncomfortable problems—problems that some leaders historically failed to address because they were part of the problem. By taking responsibility, learning from mistakes, and demonstrating steady, data-driven progress on inequities, higher education can reclaim its story in the public eye.
Higher education institutions must abide by the rule of law and value all graduates equally. Morality matters—especially in institutions serving students whose brains are still developing. Leaders must model ethical, law-abiding behavior. Authoritarian regimes thrive on normalized moral degradation, and generations of elite protection have led us to our current crisis. Lies cannot be prized at equal levels with the truth. Higher education institution leaders must adopt a simple mantra: I will not accede to the demands of a thirty-two time convicted felon. Nor can universities continue to enable robber-baron companies—like some generative AI firms built on stolen intellectual property—to exploit academic resources. Allowing such practices is tantamount to turning departments and student populations against each other while facilitating wealth extraction. Universities must resist complicity in these schemes.
Higher education institutions must protect their purpose while preparing for the worst. Higher education institutions serve thousands of people, own vast amounts of expensive property, and have complex operations. Funding for each school, institute, department, and program is a mix of public and private dollars, hemmed in by timeline and funding cycles, and shaped by the demands of all of its many stakeholders. Yet wealth inequality must not reshape universities into factories for further extraction. Under President Trump, costs are rising, infrastructure is crumbling, and the U.S. population very simply cannot sustain more exploitation. Higher Education leaders must confront this reality, separate personal optimism from institutional imperatives, and develop concrete plans for worst-case scenarios. Only by embracing and preparing for the worst can higher education effectively navigate the challenges ahead.
Only the higher education institutions that show they prize their own worth, value higher learning for all, uphold the rule of law, and prepare for the worst have a chance of continued relevance at a time when the nation faces its most pressing existential threat.
Relationship disclosure: I directly worked with Josphine Riesman from 2009-2010 at digital strategy firm Blue State in New York City.
