The Challenges Facing Higher Education
The following is a summary of the presentation President Brian W. Casey offered to alumni at “The Hour With the President” during reunion weekend.
Before becoming a college president, I studied the history of U.S. higher education. Decades of personal experience and research tell me that there has never been a more fluid, dangerous, and unsettled time for American colleges and universities than now. Meanwhile, Colgate, itself, is experiencing growth and vitality. Given these conflicting contexts, a question naturally follows. Namely, how should the University respond to current circumstances?
I. Changing Demographics and the End of the Financial Model
Two decisions by the U.S. government in the mid- to late-20th century fundamentally altered American higher education. First, at the beginning of World War II, the federal government turned to the nation’s universities to conduct the basic research necessary for victory. That decision encouraged American universities to enroll more students (especially graduate students) and build new research facilities. Research efforts eventually moved beyond defense, into pharmaceuticals and much more. The booming university research era had begun.
Second, there was a baby boom after the war, and many of those children eventually wished to go to college. America was wealthier, and the government agreed to provide low-interest loans to anyone interested in attending an accredited institution. Student populations boomed, with concomitant growth in the size of the faculty and the size of campuses themselves.
With these two decisions regarding research and enrollment financing, the federal government, in partnership with colleges and universities, created the strongest educational system the world has ever seen.
Are we now at the end of this chapter in American education history? We are seeing a demographic decline in the number of 16- to 18-year-olds. We are seeing questions about the engagement of the federal government — about research and loans. So it is possible that an 80-plus-year period of massive investments in American higher education is coming to an end.
II. The Rapid Emergence of Artificial Intelligence
Two fundamental acts take place at universities.
First is the act of scholarship — creating new knowledge. Scholars go into laboratories, archives, and libraries, and they develop new ideas. They look at the world differently and develop new theories to explain our world. They next send these new ideas into the world. They publish their ideas in journals, and other people look at them, poke at them, or build on them.
Second is the act of teaching. Ideas are passed on to generations of new students. The post-medieval university developed a model in which an expert enters a classroom and says, “I am going to tell you what you need to learn, and you are going to demonstrate to me that you learned it by writing essays, completing exams, and developing new ideas.”
AI would appear to replicate those two functions — not perfectly, but swiftly and conveniently. If you want new ideas, large language models promise, here are new ideas. If you want an answer to a question, you can have it in moments. This development is almost an existential moment for our work.
III. Speech
What happens with speech on the American campus is complicated. For the longest time, American universities told the world that they are places where all ideas are welcome; they are, it was always said, places of debate, academic freedom, and freedom of expression.
During the last several years, some people have begun to argue otherwise. According to these individuals, there isn’t a free flow of all ideas on a campus. Instead, these critics argue, an orthodoxy of acceptable ideas had emerged over the past several years. Then Oct. 7, 2023, happened. Many campuses lit up with protests and counter-protests, and a series of college presidents went in front of Congress. Congress asked these leaders, “What is happening? Tell us about how speech works on your campuses. How are you protecting the people on your campuses?”
These presidents of famous institutions seemed unable to answer the questions. Their responses seemed mannered. It appeared that speech on a campus was either thwarted, or it was harmful. To many, a fundamental promise of the American campus seemed to be broken.
IV. The New Athletics Landscape
There are few more powerful ways for members of the American public to engage with higher education than by cheering on college sports teams. Students who are in laboratories on Wednesday and classrooms on Thursday take to the field on Friday to represent their school, and there is an innocence about it, a joyfulness. We could not have created a better marketing system than to have created what we always thought of as “college sports.”
People forget this now, but for decades the NCAA tightly controlled this world and the way it was brought to the public. The NCAA once had a rule, for example, that no football team could be on a national broadcast more than twice a year. But that world has changed, and new television markets and new transfer rules have emerged.
In short, billions of dollars came into collegiate sports, so the system by which we restrict the movement of players, how often you can be on television, and more — all of that changes. People still consume American college sports, but it seems different now. Athletics, which is a way we brought American higher education to the public, has now been called into question.
V. Current Politics
Finally, it must be noted that we have a federal administration that is saying it does not like what is happening on American campuses. It has announced that it intends to create change by targeting the bottom line: Take away the research. Tax endowments. Block international enrollment. That goes right to the business model of our institutions.
The Way Forward
Given these five realities, how does Colgate move forward?
Option one, of course, is to hunker down, to hope the storm passes.
As bad as that option is, a second choice is even worse — and Colgate is surely tempted by this. We could tell ourselves that we are just fine as we are. The winds are currently blowing around us, so why not continue to do what we have always done? Tens of thousands of people apply every year to Colgate. We fill our classes, and two-thirds of our students can afford the full price of attendance. The campus looks great. We have a strong faculty, and we invest in their research.
But nothing dooms an institution into obscurity and irrelevance more swiftly than self-satisfaction.
When I look at the present context, I wonder if there is an opportunity for Colgate to look at what we are and decide that this moment affords us a chance to be better. Is there something big, bold, and ambitious that we can do? Those of us who steward Colgate today owe this University and the nation, itself, a commitment — a commitment to the transformation articulated in the Third-Century Plan.
These moments in American higher education always provide the backdrop for one, two, or three institutions to decide that they are changing, that they are leading. This nation is hungry right now for someone to acknowledge that education is important. Having a liberally trained group of people go into the world with empathy and intelligence is important, and we are going to do it really well.
Curling up in a defensive crouch; declaring that the status quo is good enough — we will not give in to these impulses. We cannot.