UNIVERSITY STANDARDS SHOULDN'T BE DICTATED BY TRUMP & PRIVATE EQUITY CEO

UNIVERSITY STANDARDS SHOULDN’T BE DICTATED BY TRUMP AND PRIVATE EQUITY CEO

A MAGA private equity billionaire is trying to determine University rules on academic freedom, permissible speech and teaching, tuition and admissions policies.

The Trump Administration’s Compact to Universities is really an extortion: accept our conditions to get more federal money or you’ll get less. The driving force behind the Compact is Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan, views formed by his role at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School.

There are two important lessons here for Higher Education. The Trump shakedown should be rejected by Universities, even if there are a few meritorious provisions; the Compact would be enforced by the deeply partisan Justice Department. Seven of the nine institutions initially cited have rejected this extortion led by MIT, whose President said Trump’s demand “is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone.”

Two, big donors, while indispensable assets to many colleges, should not be setting academic standards. Rowan who gave $50 million to Wharton, is in over his head. He should stick to what he does well, making money.

The Compact would set limits on admissions policies and for international students, impose restrictions on some teaching and speech, and require any participant to certify its obedience to Trump.

The seven Universities that have rejected the shakedown said it would violate academic freedom. The University of Southern California faculty suggested it was “probably unconstitutional.”

Even more compelling was a statement from a half dozen First Amendment academic experts, liberals and conservatives like Princeton’s Robert P. George. While their politics differ, “we agree Trump’s Compact violates academic freedom.”

Faculty, they suggest, shouldn’t have to answer to the federal government. A provision to censor any students or faculty who voice support for “entities designated by the U.S. government as terrorist organizations imposes overly intrusive regulation of constitutionally protected speech.”

Rowan, who was passed over for Treasury Secretary last year, has achieved enormous success and riches at Apollo; he is a big MAGA booster with attendant views. In a book foreword, he embraced a philosophy that rather than judge a society by how it treats the most vulnerable it should be judged by “how they treat the most successful.”

At Penn. he led the campaign to drive out the University President who he charged was inattentive to rampant anti-semitism. He especially objected to allowing two years ago a Palestine Writes Literary Festival on campus, which had slated some anti-semitic speakers.

He wrote: “It took less than two weeks to go from the Palestine Writes Literary Festival on the U-Penn campus to the barbaric slaughter and kidnapping of Israelis.”

In addition to that absurd linkage, the extreme speakers were barred from campus by the Penn President. Accounts from the press and participants report the festival was chiefly about Palestinian culture with a few pro-Palestinian remarks, That’s called free speech, Mr, Rowan; if you don’t like it the best antidote was articulated a century ago by Justice Louis Brandeis who wrote the best counter to bad speech is more speech, good speech.

The influence of the billionaire class on education is worrisome at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the nation’s best and most prestigious colleges because of the disproportionate influence of the Wharton school, a cash cow for the University.

Scott Bok, the former chair of Penn’s board of trustees who was forced out by Rowan warns: “Universities need to be very careful of the influence of money, especially one like Penn, which has a business school with a brand larger than that of the University itself.”

There is a very limited history of private equity types running a higher education institution and it’s bad. Ten years ago Mount St. Mary’s, a small Catholic school in Emmitsburg, Md., hired Simon Newman, a private equity executive, as its President. He sought to overhaul everything including getting rid of freshmen that he didn’t believe could excel. “This is hard for you because you think of students as cuddly bunnies,” he told the faculty. “You just have to drown the bunnies ... put a Glock to their heads.”

He was gone in a year.

While I doubt the culture of most private equity or hedge fund firms are conducive to leading a University, there have been highly successful non-academics, starting with the great Terry Sanford who a half century ago elevated Duke University to a global academic powerhouse.

Republican Mitch Daniels, a former Governor, at Purdue, and the late John Brademas, a former congressman, at New York University were successful leaders.

It’s no secret that major donors are the lifeblood of many college endowments. An estimated 80% of endowment contributions are for specific purposes, funding a chair for a tenured professor, medical or scientific research or for athletics; there are more than a few rich jock-sniffers.

There are really important huge donors -- dwarfing the Rowans-- who make seminal contributions while honoring the values of the institution. Michael Bloomberg has given around $4 billion to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins, providing major assistance for undergraduate students, free medical school tuition and launching the Bloomberg School of Public Health. He has given another $600 million to Historically Black Medical schools.

Nike founder Phil Knight and his wife donated $2 billion to the University of Oregon for cancer care and research. Philanthropist McKenzie Scott has donated hundreds of millions of dollars of unrestricted assistance to historically Black colleges.

On the Compact, after the initial rejections the Administration is casting about for colleges that will go along. I suspect some will; money can talk.

Higher Education has real issues and challenges, a few touched on in the Compact. But an ideologically-centered federal intrusion, guided by billionaires, is not the answer.