In the private sector, when a company is failing, the remedy is either liquidation or a hostile takeover by more aggressive and capable managers.  This same formula applies to our universities.

President Trump, in his recent press appearance with Japan’s prime minister, reminded the world that the U.S. has recently ranked at the bottom among 40 of its global competitors.  It has lagged the world in important subjects for a long time, and closing the federal Department of Education bureaucracy is an important first step in reform.

Like any other industrial sector, the next step to begin reform is to get specific, with specific examples of specific institutions.

One such institution in need of reform, and there are thousands, is the University of Chicago.  Although it surely has had many notable historic successes, one of its key current weaknesses stems from a politically distracted, partisan Board of Trustees. 

Interestingly, President Trump singled out Kennedy Center chairman David M. Rubenstein as among the reasons why the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts lost its way and why he will replace its Board.  Mr. Rubenstein is also the Trustee chairman of the University of Chicago.  Along with its academic president and former Berkeley administrator, Paul Alivisatos, the university remains a financial laggard, consumed with political distractions.

Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, and the University of Texas have combined assets at or approaching $50 billion.  The University of Chicago, on the other hand, has been coasting along on 80% less in endowment value and is highly leveraged with debt that is being downgraded, all while Mr. Rubenstein has been busy supporting DNC causes, funding DIE programs and “slavery” projects, and having former president Biden pin medals on him alongside Hillary Clinton.  His job as university Trustee chairman is apparently viewed as a political role, which also reflects the priorities of UChicago’s law school, which he graduated from.

This lack of focus is important for key reasons related to President Trump’s determination for university reform: the University of Chicago, like many others, is especially dependent on federal funding because it is otherwise under-capitalized and relies deeply on federally guaranteed student loans, grants, and awards that subsidize its bloated cost structure.  This is why the faculty and staff are up in arms over Trump’s determination to uncover and slash higher education’s uncontrolled spending and the federal gravy train that feeds it.

No amount of private endowment will, alone, ever make any university willing to tighten its belt.  But when they assume that government will always support them, then they become the government’s state wards.

This also makes them state ideology centers and willing political revolving doors.  UChicago’s president has a full-time “senior adviser” on the payroll, Michelle Obama’s former chief of staff, while the university supports the next-door Obama Center and its political indoctrination programs on campus.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg across higher education, in how it is steered by progressive left’s political interests, where the hope is that by cooperating with progressive social causes like destructive DIE and BLM programs (that consume 40 million hours of instruction) and dozens more, including illegal open border policy, the federal financial spigot will remain open at full force.

Indeed, universities hope that millions of federally financed students — including hundreds of thousands of illegal border invaders masquerading as students, whom universities are illegally protecting — will keep their enrollment numbers up, and with them, inflated student loans, multi-million-dollar government grants, and endless faculty jobs.

Making our universities great again starts with making their management great, by surgically removing and replacing their complacent, overpaid, and underperforming bureaucrats with Trump-style businessmen who can bring pragmatic American common sense, and uncommon will and determination, to the vital task of reforming American education. 

Matthew G. Andersson is a former CEO and graduate of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.  He is the author of the upcoming book Legally Blind, concerning law school reform, and has testified to the U.S. Senate.  He writes regularly for the National Association of Scholars and the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.

Image via Pexels.