University leaders are foolish to reject President Trump’s compact

OPINION:

University leaders are foolish to reject President Trump’s offer of a dialogue about improving performance, campus environments and confidence among the public at large.

In October, Mr. Trump asked nine universities to comment on a compact to correct their failings and, in return, receive preference in competition for federal funds. Those are strategically important for national competitiveness in basic science.

These institutions included Vanderbilt University, Dartmouth College, Brown University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the universities of Pennsylvania, Texas, Arizona, Southern California and Virginia.

Some of the conditions the compact would impose are unnecessarily severe: for example, freezing tuition for five years and free tuition for students in STEM disciplines. Others are badly aimed.

Faculties are too woke and unbalanced in favor of radical liberal ideologies, but shutting units that attack conservative ideas won’t solve deeply rooted liberal intolerance among humanities and other faculties.

Yet the summary rejection of the president’s request for feedback or failure to respond in any positive way by all but Texas and Vanderbilt were tragic mistakes.

The president is offering the opportunity to discuss the contents of the compact; it’s not a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. If they had instead chosen to engage in dialogue, the document could have been improved. The American people pay the tuition and underwrite student loans and grants. They should expect universities to prepare students for life — equip them with empathy, tolerance, critical thinking skills and the ability to earn a living. And to undertake leading-edge research.

According to a Pew Trust poll, 70% of the American public view higher education as headed in the wrong direction. Fifty-five percent believe universities do a good job advancing science, but the majority assign poor marks when it comes to exposing students to a wide range of opinions and providing opportunities to express opinions, develop critical thinking skills and get an affordable education.

That’s an F, or at best a D, in all classes except science.

Hiding behind platitudes about academic freedom, constitutional rights and excellence, academic leaders fail to recognize that they have very dissatisfied customers.

The declining relative value of a college education — as measured by the ability of graduates to get jobs that really require a college degree — indicates that the customer is right and universities should change.

The president’s compact offers the opportunity for improvement in six areas.

• Abide by the laws concerning discrimination on race, for example, by requiring incoming freshmen to take the ACT, SAT or an equivalent exam, and correct the bias in favor of liberals and against conservatives in staffing.

• Embrace more open cultures and speech codes and enforce civility.

• Refrain from taking institutional positions on political issues. Universities should be neutral on matters that don’t concern their operation, but faculty could still say what they please if their speech doesn’t cultivate lawlessness.

• Address costs and affordability by tackling administrative bloat.

• Accept a reasonable cap on international student undergraduate enrollment, and be careful about taking money from foreign governments.

• Accept a system of accountability.

His details on many of these reflect the naivete often exhibited by business leaders about what’s wrong with universities and how to fix them. Hiring independent auditors and requiring faculty and students to be polled about campus climates are hardly threatening unless you are not sincere about wanting genuinely inclusive environments.

Most alarming is that the compact would empower the Justice Department with enforcement authority.

The failing grades American universities receive from their customers would seem to indicate that the seven university presidents who rejected a dialogue should be fired.

Not really. The Trump administration doesn’t seem to understand that these presidents serve only as long as their boards let them, and progress is possible only if their faculties follow them.

A mutiny is easy to incite among tenured professors, and the threat of less funding for the physics lab is hardly a weapon feared by Trump-deranged, radical humanists.

Mr. Trump endangers what American universities do best, advance science, by now offering the compact and preferential access to grant money to less-capable institutions.

His ongoing war with wokeism at Harvard endangers important medical and other scientific research.

The leading role of universities goes back to a report published by Vannevar Bush, who ran the Office of Scientific Research and Development during World War II. It emphasized that scientific research is essential to promoting national security and public welfare, and the U.S. government should support basic research at colleges, universities and institutes.

From Gatorade to mRNA, we have delivered, and the president should send the grant money to Harvard researchers.

University presidents should view Mr. Trump’s request for feedback as an opportunity to open a dialogue with both their customer, the American people, and their faculties, whose members clearly need to clean up what they do.

• Peter Morici is an economist and emeritus business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist.