I'm wondering if Harvard is demonstrating the power of FU money: its endowment is supposed to be $50Billion+
(at least before the recent stock market downturn).
Proud of them for defying him, and also proud of the law firm Perkins Coie for the same. History will not be kind to the others.
The other universities don't have the luxury of such huge endowments. Most have become bureaucratically bloated to the point that they are utterly dependent upon federal funding to continue operations and service debts accrued during a multi-decade building spree. I think the odds are near zero that they'll cut executive salaries, end money-losing sports programs, eliminate student services, eliminate money-losing majors and graduate programs, or sell real estate in the hopes of breaking even. Not when they could just acquiesce to the ruling party's wishes and crush dissent.
As with social media, the users of higher education became the product, not the customer.
The dark path becomes even more attractive to university administrators when we realize that the US has overbuilt higher education. It is sustained only by federal funding and international students, both of which are being reduced dramatically. Administrators must realize, while they feast on bloated salaries and tall organizational structures, that an extinction event is occurring, and not all universities will survive.
75 public or nonprofit colleges have closed, merged, or announced closures or mergers since March 2020, and the demographics don't look good for a resurgence. The cultural backlash against taking out student loans to buy "useless degrees" was already building when the political winds turned against education. So it will be hard enough for any university to survive the hard times ahead, much less if they are at odds with the regime.
If that means starting each Sanitized History class with MAGA chants, or keeping lists of suspected disloyal students, then the administrators who will take a six figure salary for implementing such a change will emerge.
