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Subject: Weekly Briefing: Which colleges could lose the most from Trump's cuts?
The colleges that have the most to lose from Trump’s cuts
Illustration by The Chronicle
What Trump’s intervention could mean for colleges. Early in President Trump’s administration, many speculated that a potential increased endowment tax could damage colleges’ budgets. Now funding to Columbia University has been cut off, and subsequent threats of cuts have been made to other institutions. The agenda, for now, is that colleges should make policy changes as dictated by the White House or risk losing National Institute of Health and National Science Foundation funding and, for wealthy private institutions, having a tax on their endowments. Phillip Levine, a professor of economics at Wellesley College and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, writes in
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The colleges that have the most to lose from Trump’s cuts
Illustration by The Chronicle
What Trump’s intervention could mean for colleges. Early in President Trump’s administration, many speculated that a potential increased endowment tax could damage colleges’ budgets. Now funding to Columbia University has been cut off, and subsequent threats of cuts have been made to other institutions. The agenda, for now, is that colleges should make policy changes as dictated by the White House or risk losing National Institute of Health and National Science Foundation funding and, for wealthy private institutions, having a tax on their endowments. Phillip Levine, a professor of economics at Wellesley College and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, writes in The Chronicle Review that 77 institutions are subject to large costs associated with at least one of the policy changes. These colleges may now face a collective $10 billion in additional annual costs. Read his essay.
What happens when the sports teams designated to boost enrollment don’t work? In the last dozen years, Lourdes University, a small private institution in Ohio, has established a robust athletic program. The problem for Lourdes, and many other colleges that had similar plans to use athletics as an enrollment lure, is that athletics has done little or nothing to attract students who don’t play sports. Our Eric Kelderman has more.
Trump freezes billions in funding, but Harvard is ready to fight. The Trump administration is freezing more than $2 billion in federal funding for Harvard University after its president said that the institution would not submit to the latest set of demands that would have given the federal government the power to shape campus policy. Unlike Columbia University, which agreed to the Trump administration’s demands, Harvard is steeling itself to fight back. Chronicle staff explain.
This week on College Matters from the Chronicle: Western Civilization. Why are so many conservatives pushing for courses and centers devoted to the classics and American civics? Listen on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube to find out.
Lagniappe
Listen. If you’ve ever been curious about the dark history of the Johnson & Johnson company, listen to this interview with the author of a new investigative book on the company and its lawsuits about the safety of its signature baby powder. (Fresh Air)
The idea of a compact among institutions is based on the idea that there’s strength in numbers, and it comes amid frustration that few presidents are speaking out against the administration’s actions against the sector.
