Key Harvard woes systemic in higher ed

Although President Donald Trump and Harvard’s recent spats make headlines, key issues in question affect all higher education.

Harvard, our nation’s first college (1636), is a center of current civil disruption and antisemitic behavior. The timing is bad because high school graduates are finalizing their college choices or deciding to forego college altogether.

The news comes after graduates see existing student loans payments reinstated after a four-year pause due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Morgan Stanley economists estimate there are 5.6 million borrowers who are now delinquent of their student loans.

Nationwide, the average student loan debt after four years is $35,000 and $296,500 to complete dental school.

Last year, Boston Magazine’s Jon Keller described Harvard as suffering from “A crushing cancel culture, accusations of plagiarism, protests on campus, lawsuits, Congressional investigations, and big-dollar donors running for the door.”

Harvard recently took the highly unusual action revoking the tenure of Professor Francesca Gino, who was widely known for researching honesty and ethical behavior. In 2023, Harvard placed Gino on administrative leave due to allegations of data falsification.

Add to that ongoing “grade inflation” which is prevalent throughout education today.

A 2023 Harvard Crimson op-ed argued grade inflation is substantial. One faculty member described the grading practices as “indefensible.” Another critic quipped grades of “A” were given out like Halloween candy.

A Harvard-watcher wrote in the Harvard Political Review the school’s new motto could be “The only thing harder than getting in is failing out.”

Fr. Robert Spitzer, S.J., Gonzaga University president from 1998-2009, recommends that instructors combat plagiarism by requiring students to participate in classroom discussions. It includes having students complete in-room writing assignments without using their electronic devices.

During the Spitzer years, Gonzaga’s enrollment jumped from 4,500 to 7,000 students. SAT scores and GPAs of incoming first-year students were up, and annual gifts tripled to $15.4 million.

In 2017, CEO MAGAZINE ranked Harvard, once the crème de la crème of higher education, as the world’s best university ahead of MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Princeton. This year, Harvard slipped to fourth behind MIT, Stanford, and Cambridge.

The Hill reports Harvard ranked dead last, two years in a row, in the College Free Speech Rankings published annually. “Most recently, it placed 251st out of 251 surveyed universities, earning an “Abysmal” rating for its campus speech climate.”

Significantly, declining enrollment is facing all higher education. Colleges and universities collectively experienced a 15% decline between 2010 and 2021, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

“That includes a drop-off of more than 350,000 during the first year of the pandemic alone, and it means there are already 2.7 million fewer students than there were at the start of the last decade,” NCES reports.

It is a growing problem in the years ahead. Our nation’s number of high school graduates peaked in 2025 and now enters a period of prolonged decline.

Last year, Wall Street Journal’s (WSJ) Douglas Belkin wrote “for three generations, the national aspiration to ‘college for all’ shaped America’s economy and culture, as most high-school graduates took it for granted that they would earn a degree.

That consensus is now collapsing in the face of massive student debt, underemployed degree-holders, and political intolerance on campus.

According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans who expressed strong confidence in higher education decreased from 57% to 36% over the past decade.

WSJ adds half of parents say they prefer not to send their children to a four-year college after high school, even if there were no obstacles (financial or otherwise). “Two-thirds of high-school students think they will be just fine without a college degree.”

It is also a trend among employers who are choosing skills-based hiring over college credentials. Deloitte is one of dozens of large companies championing the idea that skills matter more than degrees, WSJ reports.

That is an emerging challenge no university leader can ignore.

Don C. Brunell is a business analyst, writer, and columnist. Contact him at theBrunells@msn.com.