Brian Rosenberg
Chronicle of Higher Education
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon recently released a “National Call to Action to University Presidents and Governing Boards,” a less openly threatening version of the earlier “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” that had been broadly rejected. More than a month prior to the release of McMahon’s letter, Vanderbilt University published “The University and Its Purpose: A Declaration of First Principles,” signed by its chancellor and board chair and adopted by its board.
Whether this alignment is the result of happenstance or collaboration is impossible to know, but what is clear is the extent to which Vanderbilt is positioning itself as a model of the sort of elite higher education of which the Trump administration approves. This does not, prima facie, make the Vanderbilt model wrong, but, given the stakes, it does suggest that the model should be examined with great care.
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