Greetings, Dear Reader,
Here it comes. By mid-2030, if all goes according to plan, academia is going to be fundamentally different.
Let’s get into it.
New ways to create start with new ways to solve problems. Joe Bacus and Leef Armontrout, founders of BLA Studios in St. Louis, are doing both with Claude—from welding machinery, to a steel-saving program, to community improvements.
Today’s newsletter starts below
THE GREAT ACADEMIC PURGE
Tucked inside Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” signed into law almost exactly a year ago is a new law federal bureaucrats have referred to as the “do no harm” test.
Technically named “STATS” – Student Tuition and Transparency System – this test is part of the Earnings Accountability rule. It will eventually require universities to gather data on student outcomes in certain majors. If those majors fail to report earned income higher than median workers without a college degree, they will lose federal funding.
Seems like common sense. Why should taxpayers foot the bill on (astronomical) college debts for educations that have no hope of ever paying back the money?
Of course, the NPR’s of the world are against it:
“Earnings is only a small piece of that puzzle,” said Lee Ann Scotto Adams, executive director of the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), a nonprofit that studies the careers of arts graduates.
She and Doug Dempster, the president of SNAAP, worry the new test might lead colleges and universities to preemptively slash low-earning creative arts programs in music, theater, studio art and design. Dempster says that could lead to a further devaluing of jobs that are critical to a well-functioning society.
“We know we need nurses. We know we need journalists. We know we need early childhood educators,” he said. “We don’t know how many artists we need, but I can guarantee that if you eliminate access, we will impoverish our cultural life nationally.”
At this point, I feel the need to remind everyone involved that there was a time in which colleges and universities and benefactors could not rely on the federal government to pay for kids to learn art history. Federal financial aid for the arts wasn’t even a thing until about 50 or so years ago. Before then, universities themselves and even some self interested, wealthy alumni would help make ends meet for arts and humanities departments.
They also didn’t have a 4:1 administrator to professor ratio back then either.
As for teachers, quite often states themselves would subsidize tuition. The one string was usually that graduates had to teach in state for at least three, five or ten years post-graduation.
And imagine my surprise to discover that federal financial aid traces its ancestral lineage back to the day the Russians launched Sputnik.
The so-called “Sputnik scare” led federal leaders to launch the National Defense Education Act, or NDEA, the direct forefather of what we now call FAFSA, or Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Eisenhower signed the NDEA into law Sept. 2, 1958.
As far as laws go, the NDEA was ruthlessly targeted. It set aside academic financing for anyone pursuing a degree in STEM fields, plus any K-12 teachers who intended to teach STEM in school. Sorry, kids, your most recent sketch won’t help us beat communism.
On that note, I was more than a bit amused to discover two other details about the NDEA.
It required recipients to issue a signed affidavit and a loyalty pledge. The affidavit stated, in part, that the applicant “does not believe in, and is not a member of and does not support any organization that believes in or teaches, the overthrow of the United States Government by force or violence or by any illegal or unconstitutional methods.”
The loyalty pledge was the same one many federal employees make: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the United States of America and will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
Holy crap, right?
(Consequently, Yale, Harvard, pretty much all the ivies and several highfalutin, boutique liberal arts colleges went to war over the affidavit part. That’s a story for another time.)
It’s unfortunate that this federal fund for national security purposes served as the preamble for the student loan regime we’re suffering under today. As you well know, Dear Reader, that’s the problem when it comes to federal rulemaking; you never really know what it’ll beget.
Regardless, it appears Trump is trying to return to the spirit of the original federal financial aid program. Since it’s a law and not regulation, it’ll be tough to unravel.
A future president, given a liberal, could just decide not to uphold the law. That’s a possibility.
I’d wager many universities will prepare for the worst though.
Come 2030, we might be seeing some serious downsizing on campus.
MORE LINKS
America’s Largest Teachers Union Votes To Continue Anti-ICE Activism, Elects Socialist
As I was saying.
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JD, Usha Vance Make Historic Family Announcement
Heck yeah.
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AOC Deploys Attempt At Southern Charm During Red State Campaign Stop
Cringe, but worth watching.
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