The Trump/Vance Administration seeks academic mediocrity

American universities are the envy of the world—for now. If President Musk’s cuts to the NIH budget hold, that will likely change*. But for JD Vance, that’s a feature, not a bug:

“When President Trump and his allies think of the idealized version of higher education, they don’t look to the Ivy League or the revered universities of the United Kingdom. They look to Hungary, a middle-tier economy without a single college or university ranked among the world’s top 400.

“Over the past 15 years, Hungary’s right-wing prime minister, Victor Orbán, has installed political allies in leadership roles, slashed funding for independent scientific research, and cut support for the humanities in what he has described as a campaign to save universities from financial ruin and, crucially, root out the pernicious influence of left-wing radicals and globalists.

”I think his way has to be the model for us,” Vice President JD Vance said of Orbán’s approach last year.”

What does that model look like?

“In 2017, Orbán targeted an elite graduate school in Budapest, the privately run Central European University. For many Hungarian liberals and academics, CEU was a cosmopolitan oasis in a country that felt increasingly isolated and stifled. Founded in 1991 by George Soros, the liberal philanthropist and native Hungarian, it was meant to revive higher education in post-communist Europe.

“It had a vibrant academic culture. “There was a public event every day,” said András László Pap, who taught at CEU for 25 years. The lectures and conferences were catered, offering sandwiches and drinks. “It sounds mundane, but that’s unique,” Pap said.

“When the Fidesz-controlled Parliament passed a law in 2017 that effectively made it illegal for CEU to continue operating in Hungary, tens of thousands of young people protested, chanting “Free country, free university” in Budapest’s streets.

“But two years later, after failed negotiations with the government, CEU’s leaders gave up and moved the university to Vienna, where it is now based.

“The expulsion of CEU was a potent symbolic triumph: Orbán had eliminated an institution he regarded as an insidious, liberal influence, and vanquished Soros, a longtime bogeyman of both the American and Hungarian right. Next he moved to consolidate his control of Hungary’s public universities.

“Orbán and the chancellors he had installed choked off funding. Campus buildings deteriorated. Salaries were cut. Students and academics left to study and work abroad.

“Most public universities were suffocated financially,” Pap, a legal scholar, said.”

So Vance thinks US universities should shrink their way to excellence?

*For those who haven’t been paying attention, all research universities depend significantly on NIH-funded research.

Trump/Vance want to destroy American higher ed