Trump Is Destroying Higher Ed. Here’s How Democrats Can Rebuild It

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The Trump administration has laid siege to colleges, cutting their funding and launching ridiculous investigations. But the administration took advantage of preexisting frustrations with higher education, says Marshall Steinbaum, an economics professor at the University of Utah and fellow at the Jain Family Institute. Policy decisions by Republican and Democratic politicians and universities themselves have created an unequal higher education system, where schools with lots of resources and money draw students from upper-income families, while those from poorer backgrounds attend schools that are inferior in terms of funding and quality. Steinbaum says that we need a total overhaul of higher education, including a requirement that publicly funded schools charge similar tuitions and therefore draw economically diverse student bodies. Steinbaum says we currently have heterogeneous universities that have homogeneous student bodies; we should instead have similar colleges that enroll diverse student populations. He’s co-written a comprehensive plan for higher education that he hopes officials in both parties adopt.