by Dr. Watson Scott Swail, President & Senior Research Scientist

UPDATED 4:10PM EST, OCTOBER 16, 2025

Since writing this piece and publishing the morning of October 16, 2025, both Brown University and Penn University have also pushed back on the Trump Compact. That brings them in line with MIT and Dartmouth and leaves four other institutions mulling the Administration’s offer over. Expect more dominoes to fall.

The United States, the world, and higher education are in particular turmoil these days. While there has never been an era devoid of political influence or economic anxiety, the current epoch is unprecedented in US history. The irrational and unconstitutional (under every other Supreme Court) movements from the White House through executive orders and their weaponization of the federal government are unrecognizable in our history books and would be completely astounding to those who etched their names on the Constitution  238 years ago. In parallel, the two houses of Congress have largely fallen silent by way of reneging on their responsibilities to provide leadership and oversight. To wit: we find ourselves in the midst of a government shut down not because Congress was doing their jobs; but rather, because they consciously neglected their congressionally-mandated responsibilities in the name of political gamesmanship.

In the education arena, you can scarcely throw a stone and not hit a colleague who has been hurt by the cutting or eliminating of programs. The closure of offices. The firing of employees. The “RIFs” (Reduction in Force). The domino impact of these measures has forced schools, districts, colleges, and universities to close projects, move or let go employees, and figure out how to both serve students that relied on their federal programs or find other external funds. In most cases they just have to do without.

The tactics from the Administration are meant only to bully academic leaders to conform to a scorched-earth philosophy to break everything that had put into effect by Congress over the past 60+ years. As I’ve said to others in my circles, if the government really wanted to make substantial, positive change to the status quo with regard to government work and oversight, they would hire the likes of KPMG, Deloitte, or Bain to come in and review the situation. That conversation would start like this: “Give us a year or two to review and investigate the various departments and offices, at which point we’ll have a solid enough understanding to provide recommendations for a new path forward.” Even with that, an Administration would have to apply due process since government finances are run by Congress and programs mostly set by legislation. This Administration has run all over due process and the Republican-led House and Senate have capitulated to every wont of the President.

But this is not what the Administration wants. They simply want to create havoc and chaos so they can continue to push Project 2025 while everyone runs around in disarray. This Administration has shown complete disinterest in making education better across America. In fact, the facts argue the opposite: it seems that their intention is to make things significantly worse. And while many people throw around the word “fascism” as the phrase du jour, the intentionality and direction of the Administration points clearly to that intent. It isn’t hearsay; it isn’t hyperbole. This is happening.

The way to do this is to destroy moral, reduce or remove social structures, point fingers and blame everyone but yourself, and create an atmosphere of fear and malcontent in society. This is Donald Trump’s framework and vision for America.

I won’t document herein the massive reductions or elimination of education or education-related budgets and programs this year; I did that in my September 5, 2025 article. But I will focus on a few specific and recent issues from the past few weeks to provide significant examples of what is happening in Washington.

First, this past Friday (October 10, 2025), the Department of Education fired 466 employees at the Office of Special Education Rehabilitative Services (OSERS), which oversees $15 billion in funding authorized through Congress’ Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). These reductions, or RIFs, represent 10 percent of the entire US Department of Education staffing prior to its previous cutting of 2,000 jobs in March (The Department, which had 4,133 employees, only employs an estimated 1,700 employees today). Most disconcerting is that these cuts will plummet services to over 8 million children and adults through OSERS each year. I wouldn’t call this cut simply hasty or imprudent. Rather, I see it as vindictive on a population that has to battle the physical and cognitive world every single day. When an Administration targets the least able to defend themselves, we know the climate has changed.

The more large-scale attacks on higher education were made via threats of taking away hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding from elite universities unless they conformed to certain stated expectations. On February 14, 2025, the Administration sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to schools and colleges advising them that they may be fined or have funding taken away if they did not follow the guidelines as they (the Administration) see them in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This was followed up in March 2025 by a letter to 60 universities warning them of “potential enforcement actions” related to antisemitic discrimination and harassment through Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. This list included six of the eight Ivy League schools, including Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Brown, and Columbia. The two not listed—Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania—were targeted separately. Also on this list were research-centric, D1 schools such as Stanford, Ohio State, Arizona State University, Johns Hopkins, UC Berkeley, and the University of Virginia, to name a few.

To understand the scope of these threats on postsecondary education, Columbia University had $400 million in grants threatened while Harvard had $2.7 billion cancelled. This is real money that supported real research and work.

What we saw, in real time, was a series of negotiations between these colleges and the Administration to release the frozen funding based on the agreement of these institutions to change their admissions and DEI-related policies and processes.

Columbia University settled with the Administration and paid a $200 million fine for “tolerating harassment of Jewish students and employees.”[1] This restored their federal funding as long as Columbia agreed to ensure that admissions and hiring policies focused exclusively on merit. Interestingly, they also agreed to hire more Jewish studies faculty, which would seem to be somewhat antithetical to the merit of the lawsuit’s argument.

The University of Pennsylvania, which had $175 million suspended due in large part to the transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, “voluntarily” modified three school records set by Thomas.

Brown University, which had more than half a billion dollars in federal funding cancelled, paid a $50 million fine that went to Rhode Island workforce development organizations. One of the stipulations was that Brown University must adopt a binary definition of gender, focusing only on “men” and “women,” a cut at the LBGTQ+ community.

Harvard University’s story was a little different. They at least took the Administration to court where a US District judge recently (September 3, 2025) ruled in their favor, saving much of their $2.7 billion in federal funding.

These examples of “The Art of the Deal” got the job done for some of these colleges, but at what point should we be pressing our grandest institutions to be fighting for what is right rather than simply for the money? These institutions trumpet free speech as one of the most valued principles. This January, only nine days after the inauguration of President Trump, Princeton University president Christopher Eisgruber wrote this in his annual State of the University letter:

[O]urs must be a community where all members can speak their mind and where they engage in civil and respectful dialogue, even on — indeed, especially on — difficult topics.[2]

To be fair, we as a society too often over regard the Ivy League schools. If you have attended, been employed by, or worked with these institutions before, you likely understand the nature of these uber-tier institutions. They are truly unlike most other colleges across the country, matriculating the world’s smartest students into their quads and halls. That stated, collectively, their undergraduate programs serve less than 1 percent of four-year students in America.[3] Even so, we look to the Ivies for leadership as they represent the best of higher education around the world.

But this year, they largely capitulated to the Administration as an effort to secure their lost funding in spite of turning their collective backs on their missions. On one hand, it isn’t hard to argue: the loss of hundreds of millions, and in some cases—billions of dollars—would have significant repercussions on the ability of these institutions to operate, let alone conduct their critical research work in medicine and other areas. They should have never been in this position. Still, we hope for more from the top echelon and watched as they fell, one-by-one, to the unfair and undaunted demands of the White House.

The Administration is still throwing haymakers at colleges and universities. Just two weeks ago (October 1, 2025), the Administration created the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” and offered it to nine colleges, including MIT, Dartmouth, and Brown. As education writer Kevin Carey stated in his excellent Atlantic review, the Administration “tried to make nine elite research universities an offer they can’t refuse.”[4]

Colleges are starting to push back. Just this Monday (October 13, 2025), MIT stood up to the Trump Administration and said “no.” In a brief letter to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, MIT president Sally Kornbluth laid out three examples of how MIT has a clear set of values by priding itself of rewarding merit, providing free or almost free education to talent students who cannot afford an MIT education, and their continuing commitment to free expression. “We must hear facts and opinions we don’t like – and engage respectfully with those with whom we disagree,” wrote Kornbluth. She continued: “Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education.

The political news agency “The Hill” wrote this:

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology became the first university to say no. And in a time when silence can feel safer than truth, that “no” carries real weight. MIT’s president, Sally Kornbluth, wrote, “Fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone.”[5]

The Administration didn’t take kindly to this response: “Any university that refuses this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform higher education isn’t serving its students or their parents — they’re bowing to radical, left-wing bureaucrats.” Next thing you know they’ll put videos of Secretary of the Homeland Security Kristi Noem in airports suggesting that the shutdown is the Democrats fault. Glad that will never happen.

Yesterday (October 15, 2025), Dartmouth officially joined MIT in rejecting the Compact. Perhaps others will follow. [After this Swail Letter was published, both Brown and Penn also rejected the Compact].

My purpose here is to illustrate, through a few examples, the damage that is going on in American education through the imprudent movements of the Trump Administration. I could have also included the elimination of the Office of Civil Rights or the elimination of major research projects and funds that are important joint international efforts. I could have focused on the impact of cutting all of USAID’s funding to the world, or told you of colleges that we work with that were told in a two-week period that their funding may be cut, only to find out on the last few days of September they were cut, forcing them to cut employees and projects. And I could tell you how agencies like and including ours had huge portions of our operating budgets slashed due to the Administration’s decision-making.

And while my hope was to illustrate; my purpose is to suggest that the education sector, including the powerful philanthropic entities, and state governments, and the corporate sector push back on what is happening in Washington and beyond.

The focus is to make better, not make worse.

Stay tuned. The saga continues.

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[1] https://apnews.com/article/harvard-columbia-trump-university-fines-settlement-template-4a39b2894f08beffcff5da4971585710.

[2] https://www.princeton.edu/meet-princeton/academic-freedom-and-free-expression.

[3] https://www.economicstrategygroup.org/publication/the-small-role-of-ivy-league-schools-in-us-higher-education/#:~:text=The%20most%20recent%20data%20collected,times%20as%20many%20(197%2C022)..

[4] https://apple.news/AJwz1_wtZSNicV5Mc8vlm2Q.

[5] https://thehill.com/opinion/lindseys-lens/5553055-universities-resist-political-control/.