Former Secretary of Education, Senator and university president, Lamar Alexander, declared in the Wall Street Journal that “Donald Trump Isn’t a University President.”

The old-school political insider and prior university administrator, goes on to criticize President Trump’s “Compact for Higher Education,” which would establish a national board of trustees for the 6,000 universities and colleges across the United States. 

Mr. Alexander tells readers that this will have the apparently distasteful consequence of establishing admissions guidelines, managing university costs, creating testing standards for faculty competence and hiring, and setting criteria for international student admissions. 

He asserts that this is an example of federal overreach. 

He’s wrong.

What Mr. Alexander misses in President Trump’s Compact is that perhaps for the first time, it is creating “shareholder” representation for American citizens who are financing our universities — and holding them accountable.

This is all new to universities and their academic presidents, who are used to operating with little outside pressure, no career risk (they simply go back to tenured professor status if they run aground), and a sense of entitlement to federal taxpayer finance.

In recent articles, I’ve discussed why universities have outgrown their culture of using college professors as executives.  The nature and demands of university leadership have changed.  Higher education has outgrown the casual behavior of academic insiders who don’t take management seriously.

In this regard, it is a lot like political parties, and explains how President Trump is bringing reform to universities, like he has done in politics. He brings an experienced businessman’s perspective to institutions and their bureaucracies. It is partly based on cutting through old assumptions, and putting the dare back in how we do things.  

The former Senator has it precisely backwards: university presidents aren’t President Trump.

Image: Grok, ai-generated image

Matthew G. Andersson is a former CEO and graduate of the University of Chicago.  He has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and has testified before the U.S. Senate.