(Bloomberg Opinion) – It hurts me to say this, both as an economist and a graduate of Colombia, but:: This may be the time to break Colombia not only Columbia but to break the entire system of elite higher education of America.
America’s large private research universities, such as Columbia and Harvard, have long been important for their economic extraordinary. The symbiotic relationship between universities and the federal government, which subsidize tuition and fund research, has created development and innovation which is jealous of the world. Now, rather than being a source of national pride, many elite have become a source of the national division, some Americans have seen them as a collapse, hypocritical or even hostile to their values.
Thus it was unavoidable that he became the goal of the administration of President Donald Trump. It first caused the NIH grant reimbursement for the costs related to research (utilities, administration, facilities, and so on), and it is now cutting the grant completely in elite research universities such as Harvard. The administration is also trying to cancel the tax-free situation of its settlement and try to stop Harvard from a significant source of foreign students, funding and talent.
Universities say that these cuts are abolishing important research projects in diseases like cancer and ALS. European universities understand an opportunity, trying to hunt talented professors and students in the US, many of which are Europeans and have come in the US because it is more attractive. Federal money helps in paying those high salary, as well as to reduce research costs. This is why American universities have become the world’s research centers, attracting the most talented students and scientists, many of whom live in the American economy and contribute heavy – such as Elon Musk.
The entire system is the brainchild of mostly Wanever Bush (yes, of that Bush family), who led the office of scientific research and development during World War II and advocated the government support of research in the university system. His idea was that if scientific research took place in universities, it would be saved from political influence.
Other benefits also came out: More wealth and prestige made American universities the best in the world. Research universities can attract and maintain the best talent, which will not be satisfied with only teaching graduates. They could also train graduate students.
A few eight decades after Bush advertised for the first time, however, many taxpayers have come to see elite universities as political institutions. This is not just a lack of intellectual diversity between the faculty. It is research, canceled speakers, hiring and discrimination in entry, loyal oath, research on issues with institutional statements that had nothing to do with the university. The incidents of October 7, 2023 and the subsequent several universities served only to explain how they were out of touch.
True, most science researchers have no engagement with politics. So why should they and their research be punished? The answer is that they should not do – and that’s why the Research University model can no longer work.
Universities played an important role in the American economy in the 20th century, but in 21st they have deviated from their missions. If the taxpayer’s money was in exchange for being out of the bargaining politics of Wanvor Bush, then many universities have not been there for it. This is not enough that scientific research itself is tainted with politics; It is that the institutes are themselves.
The question is not whether the US System of Higher Education needs to be changed, but how. The current system associated with the departments of highly political graduate arts and humanities, political graduate scientific research programs, have become unstable. Taxpayers may recover with cancer research or less lucky to subsidize an education, but not with excesses of being universities. Subsidies may also incite market signals, resulting in many students getting useless degrees.
At the same time, government-supported research is important for America’s long-term economic success. An option is breaking universities. For example, for a university like Colombia, engineering, medical and business schools, with some difficult science, can create a unit. College, humanities and social science schools and departments can create another and continue with their activism.
Alternatively, if the US wants to keep private elite research universities in its current form, they will need to make honest and big changes. Universities always have professors who say and even teach aggressive things. More recent failure included extreme views by becoming a university policy. It is an institutional failure that is not easily removed.
Institutions develop at the behest of their initiatives or society over time. One of the strongest criticisms of the policies of Trump administration is that they are rash; The university’s faculty and administrators are right that Trump has gone far away and suppressed his freedom and free speech. The ban on foreign students can be their most economically disastrous policy.
But Trump’s attacks on the American system of higher education did not come from anywhere. Given the behavior of the great universities of America in the last decade, it is difficult to be very sympathetic – or to believe that they are capable of a change. Their entire economic model is weak from within, now under pressure from external forces. The risk of breakup can be only one thing that can force them to change.
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This column reflects the individual views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Elisan Shragger is a Bloomberg Rai columnist who covers economics. A senior partner at the Manhattan Institute, he runs “an economist in a brothel: and the author of other unexpected places to understand the risk”.
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