The Interconnected Threats Facing Higher Education

The Alliance for Higher Education brought together a panel of leaders across higher education sectors to discuss the administration’s coordinated attacks on higher education. Moderated by Autumn Arnett, executive editor of the EDU Ledger, the panel featured Mike Gavin, President and CEO of the Alliance for Higher Education; Kaleb L. Briscoe, Associate Professor of Adult and Higher Education at the University of Oklahoma; and Marjorie Hass, President of the Council of Independent Colleges. The conversation explored how funding cuts, diversity, equity, and inclusion rollbacks, accreditation pressure, and immigration enforcement are not separate crises, but interconnected pieces of a broader effort to reshape who higher education serves — and who controls it.

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What’s the issue at hand? Each executive order, proposed rule, and piece of legislation introduced by this administration may look like individual attacks on higher education, but in reality, each of these pieces make up a much larger, coordinated effort to further marginalize groups who have historically been excluded from higher education. 

By increasing legal uncertainty, elevating political risk, and imposing consequences for pursuing certain educational goals, these actions create an environment that discourages institutions from acting on their missions. The result is not only pressure on individual programs or policies, but a broader play to narrow educational opportunities and reduce institutions’ capacity to serve a multiracial democracy.

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Why it matters: It is often confusion and fear, rather than the law itself, that causes lasting damage to universities’ staff and programs. Anticipatory compliance has gutted some institutions, leading to the elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion offices, staff, programs, and services that were never legally required to be cut but were dismantled out of fear, not mandate. 

Panelists referred to these disruptions as the "Trump chaos tax" — the enormous, often invisible cost institutions absorb in staff time, legal fees, and the organizational energy required to brace for litigation and react to shifts in guidance.

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What the field is seeing: Panelists discussed the consequences of anticipatory and over-compliance along with who typically bears the burden of these decisions: 

• Undoing destruction is not the same as rebuilding. Some of what has already been dismantled – such as pipeline programs for underrepresented students in STEM – will take a generation to restore. Panelists agreed that the field will likely see the damage from these decisions over the next five to fifteen years. 
• While private colleges are generally better positioned to resist anticipatory compliance than public institutions, this resistance has pushed the Department of Education toward more aggressive tactics – including threats to institutions’ tax-exempt status, Pell Grant eligibility, accreditation ties to federal funding, and nonprofit status supporting philanthropy. Panelists anticipate that while the courts have largely held the line thus far, they will face escalating tests.
• Gavin noted the need for the sector to move beyond reactive and crisis responses, saying the sector must define a shared purpose centered on equitable outcomes for students. Attacks from the administration are calculated and coordinated – pitting institutions and sectors within the field against one another. Panelists urged sector leaders to recognize that attacks on one (threats to the tax status of private colleges and threats to public universities’ endowments) are attacks on all. 

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The big takeaway: Higher education scholars and leaders across the field can connect the dots and trace these coordinated attacks back to at least 2023. Extending the historical lens further, we see what happens when authoritarian governments seek and gain control over higher education's curriculum. Education is a pillar of our democracy. It is this framing that has made the higher education sector a target of the administration.

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