Secretary of Education Linda McMahon issued a call to the leadership of American colleges and universities in an address at Hillsdale College on Monday, urging a return to their roots in western civilization and the restoration of academic rigor in higher education.
Americans’ confidence in higher education has been on a decline, according to Gallup, while interest in college alternatives like the skilled trades increases. “Decline is a choice,” McMahon said, “and too many college leaders today have made that choice and failed to own up to it.”
McMahon painted a vision of what higher education traditionally offered — “world-renowned repositories of knowledge about our nation’s history, the great philosophical and literary traditions of western civilization, and the latest advances in science, technology, and medicine.” She touched on the disappearing reality of colleges as avenues for actual human interaction, “places to date, meet your future spouse, and maybe even have your first child.”
Colleges must once again be places of academic rigor, McMahon cautioned, “a trial by fire that inspires students to struggle and strive.” She added that this depends upon admissions standards that are “rigorous, selective, and completely merit-based.” She pointed to the leftist conditioning deeply ingrained in every aspect of the college experience, stating that it is not the place for “social experiments in neo-segregationism or political correctness.”
McMahon called on colleges to embrace and protect their heritage in the western ideals of liberty and civic engagement from “enemies both foreign and domestic.” This is the responsibility of higher education leadership, whether the assault on western tradition comes from “the Chinese Communist Party or from our own misguided undergrads,” McMahon said.
She also took aim at the bloat of administration staff at American colleges and universities. Administrators control much of universities’ operations and decision making, McMahon said, yet “Americans don’t know their names, their full job descriptions, their biases, or their qualifications.”
Some major institutions of higher education like California Institute of Technology, Duke University, and the University of California at San Diego employed more non-faculty staff than they had students enrolled, according to a report in 2023. Data from some “top” colleges and universities revealed student to non-faculty ratios close to 1-1, with student-to-faculty ratios substantially wider. None of the 51 schools listed employed more faculty than non-faculty employees per student.
American students are facing an educational landscape with “plenty of would-be authorities with their own opinions, but few mentors and leaders who would take responsibility for their personal growth,” McMahon said.
She acknowledged that decades of federal bureaucracy was in part to blame for the deterioration of college’s appeal and value, and that President Trump has “promised to fix it.” In July, Trump reached settlements with Columbia University and Brown University, to the tune of $200 million and $50 million, respectively.
Conditions for Brown included rejecting racist, DEI-based admissions practices, university-perpetuated gender delusions and permissive antisemitism. For Columbia, the administration’s terms centered on addressing antisemitism, along with reevaluating the university’s Middle East ties and its recruitment of foreign students. Columbia is required to abide by new standards for demonstrations and protests in response to the mayhem caused by pro-Hamas protests on campus. In return, the administration restored most grants to the universities and closed the pending investigations against them.
McMahon argued that the federal government is limited in what it can do to reestablish higher education as a truly valuable pursuit. “University leaders must embrace their role as public intellectuals directing institutions that can transform society. This is the difference between a university and a diploma mill,” McMahon said.
Catherine Gripp is a graduate of Arizona Christian University where she earned a degree in communication and a minor in political science. She writes for The Federalist as a reporting intern.