By Nirvikar Singh
The United States, along with being an innovator in democratic government, experimented with higher education in ways that shaped the modern university. The founders of the country were creatures of the European enlightenment, and believers in education as freedom of thought as well as practical experimentation. The US borrowed from various European models, including Germany, which led the world in the 19th century in research, and the creation of new scientific knowledge. By the early 20th century, the US was already developing the precursors of modern research universities, though these differed from the German model in relying less on government support and more on private philanthropy. The Nazis forced some of the brightest minds in Europe to flee to the US, and World War II increased federal government support for its universities. The Cold War, US economic dominance, and the baby boom all came together to make US universities a global force. They have led the way as places where people from all over the world come to be educated.
Eight decades of progress are now being destabilised, and even reversed, by the Trump administration. Many of the people leading this effort are themselves products of elite US universities. But they lack the same attitude to valuing free inquiry and truth-seeking that has been — mostly — a hallmark of US universities (with the usual caveats about the perennial influence of money). President Trump, himself the erstwhile promoter of a fraudulent university, epitomises that lack. But while billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel (JD Vance’s mentor) have been beneficiaries of the US higher education system, they tend to subscribe to a view that glorifies innate talent and risk-taking above systematic knowledge acquisition.
Some of the current attack on US universities is straightforwardly political — a defence of bastions of power and privilege against the bogeyman of “wokeness”, which is being made to stand for everything that might challenge inequalities in the status quo, and blamed for everything from wildfires to airplane crashes. But there is also an anti-intellectualism that, at its core, is the polar opposite of the modern ideal of the university. And on top of that is an ideology that private enterprise is always superior to government decision-making and action. Many of these positions are also inherently undemocratic, and universities are targets for that reason as much as the media is. The decimation of federal funding for US universities reflects all these complex factors.
All of this comes just a year after India overtook China as the largest source of foreign students for US universities. US universities have been desperate for students from abroad because of a shrinking domestic college-age population. China’s demographics have been heading in the same direction, but it has built strong universities of its own, albeit not yet matching the US or Europe: by one ranking, China has nine universities in the top 100 worldwide, while India has none in the top 500. US universities need students from India, and those students need US universities, at least for now.
Even before the change in administration in the US, Indians were finding it harder to get student visas for the US. This seems to have been a trend in other countries as well, where broader concerns about jobs, housing, and immigration dominate the interests of their higher education institutions. Some of these concerns reflect policy imbalances that were heightened after Covid, especially surges in immigration, while others are the first rumblings of fear of large changes in labour markets and the structure of the economy that will be wrought by artificial intelligence. Even without the anti-immigration stance (often tinged with racism) of the Trump administration, it may have been the case that job prospects in the US, as well as immigration pathways for foreign students, would have shrunk. It is difficult to tell whether this would have deterred such students from coming at all. But the immediate deterrent will be reductions in university budgets for supporting graduate students who come to pursue research.
What does it all mean? Technological change is having long-term effects on the nature of jobs, especially those that have recently been associated with having a university education. Domestic demographics will continue to hurt the economic health of US universities. Cuts in federal funding will make that financial pain worse, and damage the research capabilities of many of those universities. Fewer foreign students will be admitted to US universities, increasing the financial stress and reducing the scope of their research. Private sector money is nowhere near enough to compensate for any of these impacts. All of this is good for a rising China, and even for a sclerotic Europe, which still is home to many world-class universities.
Indian students will have to look for new options, as a golden period of globalised but US-dominated education goes through a major reset. American and European universities have been building outposts in places like Singapore and Abu Dhabi. These will become more important, and Indian students may look for such alternatives more assiduously. Perhaps the most obvious positive development would be an expansion of foreign universities in India, possibly with local partners. Ultimately, this would make it easier for Indian universities to upgrade as well.
As with many other policies, the Trump administration’s war on universities may be just a chaotic and inefficient harbinger of long-run structural changes in the world order, including higher education.
The writer is professor of economics, University of California, Santa Cruz.
Disclaimer: Views expressed are personal and do not reflect the official position or policy of FinancialExpress.com. Reproducing this content without permission is prohibited.