The job of a college president often involves being optimistic, even when that attitude appears to defy reality. But there was little of that positivity this week as the presidents of several hundred private nonprofit colleges met to commiserate about what they saw as the future of their institutions and the state of higher education.
The Council of Independent Colleges’ annual meeting, in San Antonio, instead was focused around a theme of navigating “conflict.” With whom? Virtually everyone: elected officials, trustees, faculty, students, alumni, and the public generally.
Many of the presidents feel their sector is deeply misunderstood and under pressure from constituents across the political spectrum whose demands are conflicting or impossible to satisfy, such as cracking down on protests while allowing free speech or attracting new students at the same time as cutting programs and faculty.
Conflicts over the war in Gaza have been on display at scores of campuses over the past year and captured the attention of the national media. But tensions over free speech and academic freedom; partisan political differences; and disputes over diversity, equity, and inclusion have been regular flashpoints for much of the past decade.
“We’re all trying to figure out how we can speak to one another in ways that kind of lower the volume and try to find some common ground so that we can move forward,” said Lori S. White, president of DePauw University.
‘Very Worried’
A set of more immediate challenges to higher education could come from the incoming Trump administration and Congress, where Republicans have a narrow majority in both the House and Senate.
Among the list of possible executive, regulatory, or legislative actions are efforts to ban DEI on campus, restrictions on international students, bills or new rules to bar transgender athletes in intercollegiate athletics, steep increases in the endowment tax, and cuts to federal work-study programs, Barbara K. Mistick, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, told the attendees during a session on Tuesday morning.
Republicans will be limited by the fact that their majority is just two votes in the House and three votes in the Senate, where rules still require a 60-vote majority to advance legislation, Mistick said, but a single, well-publicized incident on a campus could also spark a reaction.
“It is going to be this whole miasma of things that just keep popping up and you’re going to see them,” she said. “It’s going to be what happens in the newspaper; something happens in an institution and it becomes front page news. Next thing you know, we’re going to see it on the House floor.”
In particular, Mistick said she was “very worried about our transgender students,” because the conservative backlash against efforts to accommodate and support them is a core piece of the Republican agenda.
The new chair of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Rep. Tim Walberg, Republican of Michigan, has announced he is co-sponsoring a bill to require that “biological females compete against other biological females in women’s sports that are operated, sponsored, or facilitated by a recipient of federal funding.”
The endowment tax, which now applies to just a few dozen colleges, could have a much deeper impact if the tax rate were increased or the threshold to be taxed were lowered, Mistick warned. The tax now applies only to endowments that value more than $500,000 of assets per student and is assessed on 1.4 percent of the endowment’s total income.
U.S. Sen. JD Vance, now the vice president-elect, filed a bill in 2023 to increase the tax to 35 percent of endowment income.
Mistick urged presidents to build relationships with lawmakers from both parties to make sure they understand the college’s value to their district. Independent colleges are in 395 of the nation’s 435 Congressional districts, she said.
But private colleges also may have some opportunities to advance their goals under the Trump administration, Mistick said. She predicted that Trump’s nominee for education secretary, Linda McMahon, would be a good manager of the department.
“We will be fortunate to have her,” Mistick said, “she had great experience at the [Small Business Administration] in the last [Trump] administration. She understands how to run a big organization.”
Higher education will also likely be free of new accountability measures pushed for by the Biden administration, Mistick said.
“You don’t need to worry about free public college,” Mistick said, making a joke about the Biden administration’s short-lived attempt to fulfill a campaign promise with a national program to cover two years of public-college tuition. (Some private colleges worried that such a program would lead to even steeper enrollment declines.)
Conflict Closer to Home
Presidents are also managing longer-term attacks on higher education at the state level, including efforts to bar DEI programs on campus.
More than half of states have considered measures to prohibit such program offices or staff; ban diversity training or diversity statements in hiring; or prohibit consideration of race, sex, ethnicity, or national origin in admissions or employment. A dozen states have passed such a measure.
The laws typically apply only to public colleges, said J. Bradley Creed, president of Campbell University, in North Carolina, but the rhetoric puts colleges like his under pressure, too.
He said that while his campus is still committed to supporting all of its students, he is willing to change the way he discusses DEI efforts to avoid conflict with state legislators. “I ask myself, ‘Brad, do you want to be right, or do you want to be effective?’” Creed said during a small-group discussion on the topic.
Underlying all of that are the financial challenges facing many small, private colleges with declining enrollments, small endowments, and high numbers of students from low-income families. At those colleges, presidents also must learn to manage conflict with faculty and staff over the decisions needed to keep the campus open, White said.
“When there’s some conflict between faculty and the administration as a body, it comes from the place of both parties caring deeply about the institution,” she said. “Administrators seeing the need to move more quickly for change, and faculty raising questions about, you know, why are we doing this?”
“Change is challenging and difficult and fearful for people,” she said.
