The future of Donald J. Trump’s presidency, which has been defined by an embrace of anti-intellectualism and a rejection of the kind of international collaboration that is so central to higher education’s ethos, remained uncertain in the wee hours of Wednesday, as votes continued to be counted in his race against Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The absence of a clear winner in Tuesday’s election, which has been expected to drag on because of a surge in mail-in voting related to the Covid-19 pandemic, left unclear whether higher education is in for four more years of jousting with President Trump or a return to many of the policies that Biden championed as vice president under Barack Obama.
Trump’s presidency, predicated on an “America First” principle that many academics see as a threat to the global exchange of ideas, has featured regular onslaughts against the values and practices of higher education, which Trump has condemned as politically correct and corrosive. Through executive orders and legal action, the Trump administration has blocked international travel into the U.S. from certain foreign countries, banned diversity training for recipients of federal contracts, challenged racial considerations in college admissions, and threatened (briefly) to deport international students if they did not take in-person classes amid the threat of Covid-19.
Biden would very likely undo much of the Trump administration’s approach to higher education, while pressing a proposal to make college tuition-free for families with incomes less than $125,000.
Most important to many in higher education, though, would be Biden’s embrace of the value of scientific expertise, which Trump, throughout the pandemic, has questioned and even belittled.
On matters of policy, higher-education leaders and U.S. presidents always have their differences, and the Obama-Biden administration was no exception. An Obama-era plan to tie federal aid to a college-ratings system, for example, stirred outrage among college leaders. But Trump’s presidency has been peculiarly hostile toward colleges, which he has blasted as bastions of liberalism and presented as useful foils to his populist agenda.
In an increasingly polarized nation, a partisan divide is becoming clear among voters based on education levels, which could portend further schisms in the country over the value of higher education. Less educated voters embraced Trump, in 2016, while more educated white voters sided with Democrats.
College-educated voters made up just under half of the 2020 voters, according to early exit polls. That’s slightly more than the four in 10 voters with a college degree in 2016.
Biden took 55 percent of those college-educated voters, compared with 42 percent for Trump, according to preliminary estimates. The vote among those with no college degree was evenly split between the candidates, 49 percent to 49 percent, The New York Times reported.
As colleges have struggled with how to reopen safely in the pandemic, Trump has urged a return to normal operations, even as the virus surges across the nation. The president’s approach to Covid-19 has fed deeper concerns among academics, who fear that he has sown lasting distrust in evidence-based decision making and the value of expertise.
“The bias of college and university leaders would be toward reopening their institutions, particularly because the revenue depends on having students on campus and in dorms,” said Terry W. Hartle, the American Council on Education’s vice president for government relations. “But a lot of institutions felt political pressure, particularly coming from the state level, to reopen. In a lot of ways it was the president setting the tone.”
On a Knife’s Edge
Many college leaders approached Election Day with trepidation, urging those on their campuses to remain calm and resolute regardless of the outcome.
Months of civil unrest, fueled by anger over the death of George Floyd in the custody of the Minneapolis police, had already put colleges on edge. The unabating threat of Covid-19, which has killed more than 230,000 people in the U.S., has added another layer of chronic anxiety to life on college campuses.
At Miami Dade College’s Kendall Campus on Tuesday, a student who had voted for Biden told a Chronicle reporter that the pandemic had cast a pall over the campus and the city.
“You can’t go anywhere here without feeling unsafe,” Loc Tran, a sophomore, said. “It’s kind of like living in fear.”
In North Carolina, a battleground state, Christopher R. Marsicano, an assistant professor of the practice of higher education at Davidson College, wondered whether Covid-19 had affected student turnout in the state.
“I can’t help but wonder what impact colleges being all online this semester impacted the college-aged vote,” he said in a text message. “So many students who might have registered to vote in NC may be living (and voting) elsewhere due to institutional decisions to have online-only instruction at places like UNC Chapel Hill and NC State.”
The prospect of ongoing uncertainty about the election result, while not unexpected, put the nation and its colleges in an apprehensive state of limbo, presenting leaders with a distinct challenge.
Laura E. Skandera Trombley, president of Southwestern University, which is located in Georgetown, Tex., about 30 miles north of Austin, said in an email to The Chronicle on Tuesday night that she is managing a campus full of people with frayed nerves.
“People are just flat-out exhausted: physically, emotionally, intellectually,” Trombley wrote. “There is just a very strong feeling, myself included, that we are all desperate for a little blue sky.”
Southwestern is creating opportunities for students to have physically distanced dialogue with faculty members. In hopes of adding some cheer to an anxious semester, the university has been inviting a different dessert food truck to campus every week “courtesy of the president’s office,” Trombley wrote.
The nation may not yet know who the next president will be, but at Southwestern this much is true: Today is Bundt-cake day.
Katherine Mangan and Michael Vasquez contributed to this report.
