Opinion - ‘We Lost Our Mission’: Three University Leaders on the Future of Higher Ed
Arnold Korotkin
Opinion - ‘We Lost Our Mission’: Three University Leaders on the Future of Higher Ed
Ms. Kaminer is an editor for Times Opinion. Ms. Beilock is the president of Dartmouth. Ms. Mnookin is the chancellor of University of Wisconsin-Madison. Mr. Roth is the president of Wesleyan University.
It’s an eventful moment in American higher education: The Trump administration is cracking down, artificial intelligence is ramping up, varsity athletes are getting paid, and a college education is losing its status as the presumptive choice of ambitious high school seniors. To tell us what’s happening now and what might be coming around the corner, three university leaders — Sian Beilock, the president of Dartmouth; Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan; and Jennifer Mnookin, the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison — spoke with Ariel Kaminer, an editor at Times Opinion. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Ariel Kaminer: The Trump administration seems determined to bring higher ed to heel. Dartmouth was among the universities asked to weigh in on a “compact” with the government that would constrain how schools can admit students, hire faculty members and more. President Beilock, where do you think this is headed?
Sian Beilock: I was very clear that I don’t believe a compact with a Republican or Democratic-led White House is the right way to effect change in higher ed. But I’ve also been very clear that I think we have work to do in higher ed to gain back the trust of the American people, and to make sure that we’re serving this country and the world in the best way possible.
I don’t know what the next step in terms of specific interactions is, but I’m always willing to have conversations with the administration.
Kaminer: President Roth, you’ve also said that some of the Trump administration’s priorities align with work that you already felt colleges and universities should be doing. Is this crisis empowering you to do things you otherwise could not?
Michael Roth: Oh, on the contrary. I think it’s given viewpoint diversity a bad odor because it’s being imposed on us, not because the federal government was looking for ideological diversity, but because they’re looking for loyalty. I think this initiative has as much to do with scientific research as the early [antisemitism] initiative had to do with protecting Jews. This is an extortionist move to try to hold institutions that are heavily dependent on federal funding, as research institutions are, to have leverage over them.
I think, of course, as my colleagues have said, we can do more than one thing at the same time. The problem, I think, for many people is: How do you negotiate with a partner who’s willing to actually destroy what we do well?
Beilock: Instead of stepping back and name-calling, I think our response ——
Roth: I didn’t name-call, did I?
Beilock: Oh, you definitely name-called. Instead of doing that, I think our responsibility as presidents should be to look at what we’re doing and how we can do it better, certainly in concert with the federal government, and be clear and defend our rights and values, whether that’s free expression, academic freedom, and understand that’s our responsibility to the American people, where trust in higher education is low.
As leaders, we lost our mission a bit about what higher education was about. We’re educational organizations. We’re not political organizations, like the R.N.C. or D.N.C. We’re not even social advocacy organizations.
Roth: No, and none of our schools has ever been that.
Jennifer Mnookin: I think that many universities, not all, but many, were for a period of time deeply focused on identity diversity, and really not so focused on viewpoint diversity or belief diversity. I think there’s a danger of a pendulum swinging too far in the other direction, and we need to worry about that. But I think universities should be spaces where ideas, and different ideas, embodied by people from different backgrounds, come together, and where it won’t always be comfortable, but where we will learn and do better from that engagement.
Roth: I do think this is a perilous moment for universities. I believe that Project 2025 makes very clear that the administration intends to capture higher education for ideological purposes. I do also believe that science can only be done at the level to which we’ve been accustomed through intense federal funding. But I would hate to see us pretend that the agenda of the White House, which is clearly laid out by its practitioners and by its officials, doesn’t exist.
Mnookin: But Michael, a commitment to viewpoint diversity and to pluralism should, in fact, prevent capture. It should prevent external capture and internal capture. And it should be a way of thinking about a piece of our mission, and looking for excellence that can actually bring people together, even across their differences.
Kaminer: There’s been a lot of talk about the “demographic cliff” that’s coming for the U.S. college-age population. Schools like yours are always going to have to fight off applicants. But how do you see this playing out for less competitive schools?
Roth: There are going to be many more schools that fail. I think it’s likely to be a result of the demographic changes, the challenges for international students getting visas, and there has been also a decline of trust in the value proposition of higher education.
I think that as colleges and universities describe what they bring to the lives of their students and their alumni, that we’ll be emphasizing the human qualities that are going to become ever more essential in the work force, as A.I. gets more and more sophisticated, to teach students powers of discernment, of judgment, of teamwork, of resilience, and that they will bring that to their careers, but also to their personal lives.
Beilock: I also think we have to step back and be clear that not everyone needs to have a four-year degree, and that selling that as the only option for upward mobility does a disservice to our country and to students.
Kaminer: OK, but then who is college for? How should people navigate that decision?
Beilock: I think it’s for people who want it. I think that’s one thing. You should have some choice and agency in this.
Mnookin: I certainly don’t think everybody needs a college degree. But I also worry when students may believe that their only path to college is going to leave them saddled with unmanageable debt that they’ll never be able to get beyond. And it’s very likely that’s not their only pathway.
Beilock: And we often don’t do a good enough job of talking about that. The sticker price at an Ivy institution can be in the $80,000 or $90,000 range. The fact of the matter is a third of our students go tuition-free, and we are actually cheaper to go as a lower- or middle-income student than it was 10 years ago. But we don’t all communicate that the same way. We have a responsibility here to think about how we do this, and how we do it collectively.
Roth: I think that figuring out how colleges and universities like ours can offer educational opportunities to students, whether they’re four-year degrees or certificates or just classes, can do a service to communities that are underserved educationally. I think that can be really important. And it’s not that hard to do now with technology, getting into high schools around the country.
Mnookin: The American system of higher education actually does better than many countries on having lots of entry points, where if you don’t take the right classes in high school, it doesn’t have to be — no door is shut completely. But I think we could make those entry points more visible over the course of people’s careers. How do we help people find the pathways that will serve them at later moments?
Kaminer: You mentioned people’s confusion about cost. I think the opaque pricing system is something that really drives a lot of people crazy. Shouldn’t that change?
Beilock: It’s a place where I think we should be coming together with our legislators to think about how we could do that in a way where each student isn’t having to figure that out at each school.
Roth: Yeah, it’s challenging. There are antitrust issues when we start doing that, but I think there has been progress in these net price calculators that many schools offer.
Kaminer: But if students who are smart enough to be considered for admission still can’t understand what you’re telling them about cost, something’s not going right.
Mnookin: A couple of years ago, in some polling that we did, many residents of the state of Wisconsin thought that our tuition was too expensive. When they were asked what they thought would be a fair tuition level, the average level that they reported was actually about what we charge. So I appreciate that we have more work to do to get the word out about cost and financial aid. And I think it is confusing and uncertain for many bright candidates from under-resourced environments.
Kaminer: Let’s talk about students. Are they really as isolated and celibate and depressed and all the rest of it as they have lately been made out to be? Are you having to do more to socialize them?
Beilock: One of the things that we do is we have them practice, like a muscle, the skills of talking to people who disagree with you, of listening, of empathy. I think this is a muscle that we have to help our young people develop so that they can be productive citizens in our country and across the world.
Mnookin: I think these issues around mental health and well-being for our students are very serious ones. We’ve seen some slightly positive polling data recently. Fewer students are reporting anxiety and depression than a couple of years ago. At the same time, I think that the concerns about overload and mental health are real, and also the concerns about engagement. People find their people, their groups. But then I worry that they stay in those comfort zones a little bit more than I think is in their and our long-term interests. We want them to be crossing those boundaries and borders and engaging with each other.
Roth: We also do something on training or educating people around dialogue and difference. We’re trying to, just as Sian said, build a muscle, really. I worry a little bit, because I’m a worrier, that sometimes we try too much. We do a little bit too much coaching. They are 18. They’re not 6 years old. And I’d like them to find their own path and not just have the path illuminated for them by some well-meaning associate dean or well-meaning senior.
Kaminer: OK, artificial intelligence. There’s a big discussion about how the advent of A.I. will change how teachers teach, to prevent cheating. But should it change what they teach?
Beilock: I will say, at Dartmouth, we’re preparing students to work with A.I. rather than against it. I certainly understand concerns about cheating, but I think we have such an opportunity to be better humans with this technology. And it’s our responsibility to change our pedagogy to enable them.
Mnookin: We certainly have some faculty — my husband is one — who are now using blue books in some of their classes. But every student should also have classes where A.I. is being used very actively to help push opportunities that couldn’t exist without. So we’re hiring more computer scientists and more people using A.I. in STEM research, but we’re actively looking to hire more people who are thinking about the philosophical, sociological and human dimensions of A.I., too.
Roth: In my great books course on virtue and vice, I’m now giving the exam in class instead of sending it home. But we built a little bot for them in an A.I. sandbox, where they are practicing a virtue or reading Aquinas or Rousseau. That conversation with A.I. is just a warm-up for in-person conversation. The discussions are much more animated, since students come having been primed. So there it seems that they’re using it as a tool, not as a substitute. It can be a tool to make you a better human, rather than take away your humanity.
Mnookin: It does write distressingly credible administrative memos to presidents and chancellors.
Kaminer: All the current turmoil — foreign student visas, new admissions rules, threats to budgets and to loans, all of it — what’s going to be the net impact on admissions at schools like yours? Asking on behalf of a lot of anxious New York Times readers.
Mnookin: There’s a set of people who may be less interested in going to college than ever before. There’s another set who are so focused on this as the culmination of their inherent value. And I’m here to say it is not. If we have a kid who, maybe they wanted to go to Dartmouth but didn’t get in and came to us, or maybe they wanted to go to us and didn’t get in and go to Minnesota, their life opportunities can be extraordinary, no matter what. And that’s, I think, the most important message.
Beilock: I totally agree with Chancellor Mnookin. And I think her message is not necessarily even as important for the students as it is for the parents.
Roth: When I’m at these admissions events, I always say it seems like such an enormous decision, and you think so much rests on it. But most people are happy wherever they wind up. I think all of us see this when someone gets taken from the wait list in another school than where they had set their heart on going. But then they’ve met some people at the new school and they say: Well, I’m going to stay here.
Kaminer: Harvard, which has a nearly $60 billion endowment, recently announced significant cuts in a number of departments. What was your first thought about what it bodes for your own institution?
Roth: Those cuts, like the cuts announced at the University of Chicago a few months ago, really surprised me and worried me, especially in regard to those fields that seem to be especially vulnerable in the humanities and interpretive social sciences. I do think it should remind all of us of the seriousness of our situation. One of the richest universities in the world has to batten down the hatches like that.
Mnookin: I do think that the challenges we’re facing about research funding right now with the federal government are near-existential, not just for our universities, but for our ability to find cures for diseases and new, commercializable products, and new ways of understanding humans through psychology and beyond. And I think wherever we are in that ecosystem, we need to be worried about that.
Beilock: I think we universities have to be looking at our operating models and how we can make sure that our dollars are going to our core academic functions as best as possible, and at the same time advocating for and making sure our representatives, those in Washington and those in this country, understand how our basic and more applied research has been one of the most important things that America has produced in the last many years.
Mnookin: Hear, hear. I think we’re ending on a note on which we can all agree.
Roth: I think so. It’s amazing. Makes me worried.
Beilock: You always worry.
Roth: I know.