[music] I'm Alexander Heffner, your host on The Open Mind.

I'm truly delighted to welcome our guest today, president emeritus of George Washington University, Stephen Trachtenberg.

President emeritus, thank you so much for joining me today.

Hello, my pleasure.

I have to ask you as a foremost authority on education in America for some decades, what is your reaction now that we know that the new administration really does intend to shut down the Department of Education?

What are your thoughts on that pursuit of closing down the federal cabinet level agency, Department of Education?

Well, as you know, I spent two years myself as the special assistant to the United States Commissioner of Education.

Back when the Department of Education was a part of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

I had left government to go to Boston University as a dean.

When Mr. Nixon came in as president, and as the years went by, I watched as the department became an independent department of education in the, Carter administration when President Carter, delivered essentially on a promise he'd made to the American Federation of Teachers and the, other teachers unions, all of whom wanted the department.

The truth of the matter is, these functions that they have can be done either in a Department of Education or, and distributed to other agencies.

They're probably more efficiently done in a single department.

But there are functions in education which are not under the Department of Education, and they work more or less, okay.

In other words, I think it would be a mistake to do away with the Department of Education, from an administrative point of view, from a functional point of view, but I don't see it as a great and manifest tragedy.

The truth of the matter is, education in this country is run by the states, not by the federal government.

The amount of money that the federal government puts into education, although it's in the billions of dollars, is a trivial part of the larger educational budget.

The 50 states, are genuinely and have always been responsible for education, largely because as the Constitution says, anything which is not specifically given to the federal government, remains with the states.

And since education is never mentioned in the Constitution, it is always been historically in this country, a state function.

A state function and also a function of philanthropy, and private enterprise.

Giving back, if you will, to, our various institutions of learning, right?

That's a separate agenda.

People give back philanthropically to churches.

They give to colleges and universities.

They give to schools.

They give to health charities.

I mean, people give to all sorts of philanthropic initiatives.

I guess the question that I have for you, though, is it part of a trend that is the privatization of, education funding and the education apparatus as, you know, in some jurisdictions, the function of public education, has taken a backseat to, hybrid approaches, to charter schools, you know, a range of alternative options.

Do you see the closure, potential closure of the Department of Education as, following this kind of pattern of greater privatization of education?

There has been as far back as I can remember, a concern, by state agencies, by people who believe in the, locality of, authority being better than a national authority.

That education might, be to largely influenced by the federal government, and this, was stimulated, by the creation of the Department and has been, most recently articulated by the various initiatives under, what we call, woke.

Right.

But the truth of the matter is education has, since the founding of the country, been a state function.

And, the federal government's participation has been very small.

There was a concern that even that small is too much.

And that's where the debate goes south on us.

It's probably a mistake to do away with the Department of Education.

But as somebody who has a great affection for that department, having worked there myself, in a manner of speaking, I don't see it as necessarily the end of the government, the federal government's role in education.

Which is to be largely to be inspirational and to collect data and to set an example, but not to, create the curriculum.

In fact, it's interesting that this country has 50 experiments going on at any given time.

Every state is running its own educational enterprise.

And that's, frankly, a good thing because it shows us the virtues and the vices of different alternatives.

In other words, what I'm saying is I'd be against doing away with the Department of Education, but I don't think that the Trump administration's initiatives to do away with it ought to be cause for alarm.

It ought to be cause for us to be alert, to be committed, to be very careful to watch what they do.

But I don't think panic is the answer.

That's certainly a thoughtful reaction to what we're observing.

Do you see it as a real genuine effort to find efficiencies?

Or do you see it more as a punishment for what we might perceive as an anti-free speech climate on campuses?

A certain message to be sent to public and private universities that the way administrations have responded to the culture wars, is not something that the government wants to embrace.

You can't get into the minds of people to know their motives.

It wouldn't surprise me if your analysis, or your proposal, is accurate.

Or it's possible to have more than one motive.

It is possible, on the one hand, to be unhappy with what you've seen, and therefore try to change it for various reasons.

Some may be, just mean spirited, but some may be, a commitment to better, activity and greater efficiency.

I don't think you have to pass judgment on why people want to do things.

Sometimes people do bad things to you for the right reasons, and sometimes they do, right things to you for the wrong reasons.

The cause is irrelevant.

The question is, what are they going to do?

And, I think, by the way, we need to distinguish between elementary and secondary education, and higher education.

These are different functions and have different sets of institutions which deliver them to the American people.

As you look at the landscape right now, what concerns you most?

In those two different categories.

So what concerns you most about the way, you know, K-12 is operating in this country in those, you know, 50 different experiments.

And then, of course, there experiments outside of public education, 50 states, different approaches by private or quasi private institutions.

But what concerns you most, about K-12 in America right now and then what concerns you most about, what you see in the college and university arena?

Well, I am concerned that the quality of elementary and secondary education delivered to the American child, is not as good as we would hope it would be.

Our young people aren't as good in mathematics.

They aren't as good in, even the use of their own language.

And they don't know enough about our own history to be useful citizens.

So, I think, all of these things could do with an enrichment.

And, I think it would be a useful thing for the federal government, as it has in the past to fund initiatives, experiments, in different places.

And those that succeed can be adopted by other states and those that don't succeed, can be halted.

I think there's a real role, for the enhancement of elementary education and secondary education.

Frankly, I'm dissatisfied with the quality.

And, it's not merely an issue of resources.

The states have in many, in many states have been generous.

I live in Minnesota, and Minnesota is a very generous state to its elementary and secondary schools.

And the schools have taken on functions that go beyond education.

They feed children, they look after them under difficult family circumstances.

They provide them with health education.

They've added value to the lives of Americans in manifold ways.

Higher education, is another matter.

We have a wide range of colleges and universities, research institutions, women's colleges, African-American institutions.

There are over 4000 colleges and universities in this country.

We may have overbuilt.

We built for a population that is, no longer the same size as it was at the end of the Second World War and growing.

On the contrary, if demography is destiny, it's inevitable that we're going to have fewer schools of higher education.

We simply have more seats in colleges than we have high school graduates.

And we know exactly how many, potential college students there are.

Because if you start college conventionally at 18, we know exactly how many people were born 18 years ago.

Right.

And we know that it's fewer, every year for the next decade, at least, it gets smaller and smaller and smaller.

So we're going to end up with a redundancy.

That'd be a great tragedy of institutions in which we've invested for 150 years, were to close and, finding a way to protect and retain and support these institutions as they have to get smaller.

There's a role that the federal government could play that would be extraordinarily useful.

We need the graduates of our colleges.

And yet it's not an institution that everybody has to go to.

This country has not celebrated artisans and craftsmen, carpenters, mechanics, plumbers as thoroughly as it should.

These are important professions.

And, we're going to miss them, if we don't pay further attention and celebrate them and pay them, as thoroughly as we might.

There's a role in this country, for people who have gone to college and people who haven't gone to college, and both need to be honored in their work and in their lives.

And I think we've been bad at that.

We went through some cycle in which, unless you went to college, you were thought of as a second class citizen.

That's foolish, unnecessary and harmful to the body politic.

If you were in the president's office today, thinking about that dilemma, would you invite those craftsmen and mechanics and tradespeople into the fold in some way?

To demonstrate that they might have been elite institutions, but these are not elitist institutions.

These are not exclusive institutions.

Is there a way to do that, that could help solve the problem that you foresee, which is the the mathematical equation that was going to require some of these institutions to shutter or downsize?

Yes.

I think we ought to have an open embrace.

Look, one can be, a plumber and still be a person who reads, who enjoys art and music, and finds value, in these activities in their lives.

Indeed, I think, we've overemphasized, four years of college and been neglectful of the two year institutions which make a terrific contribution to our society.

And it may be that what we need is increasingly a blend of vocationalism and, scholasticism.

There's no reason why, mechanics and carpenters and, computer technicians and people with all sorts of crafts, people who make their livelihoods with their heads as well as their hands, can't get further education and indeed, perhaps, advanced degrees, but I think we got too carried away with degrees and then we got off on foolish degrees.

In disciplines for which, there was no consequential role subsequent to earning the degree.

Like what?

Well, one hesitates to pick a fight with my wife, but my wife, for example, is an art historian.

Yeah.

And there were a limited number of art historians society needs and indeed, she worked as an art historian subsequent to getting a degree, but also later on in construction.

Your point is about, majors or concentrations that do not have widespread applicability to society.

They may prepare you to curate a museum, but they may not prepare you for a whole lot of other...

Yes, and we need museum curators, God knows.

-Right.

-We need museums.

We need museum curators.

It's a question of numbers.

How many do we need?

Right.

Look, it is clear to us that we do not have enough nurses.

We do not have enough physicians.

We have a lot of lawyers, maybe.

[laughs] Maybe we ought to redirect some of our resources from law schools to nursing schools and medical schools.

In any case, on the one hand, you want to leave people the liberty to find their own way and study the things that interest them.

There is a utility in seeing to it that the various functions that make society operate are available.

Right.

And so finding ways to encourage the development of artisans and all sorts of, professions that society needs, is a good thing.

And I don't think anybody quarrels with that.

Right.

I think you're also getting to the point that the emphasis on niche disciplines, had the effect of siloing a lot of people.

Thereby creating the climate that was not conducive to bridge building and deliberation and, sort of broad landscape of free speech.

So, you know, my point here is that, when you look at the events that transpired in the last year, largely manifesting in response to the Israel Hamas conflict, a lot more people than had been, became turned off to the university scene.

And I wonder if, there can be a reset at this point.

People recognizing the utility of the university anew, and the scenes that we saw, maybe being the last scenes of that kind where there was just such a disconnect, between how you operate in a university versus how you operate in a civil society that can function.

Because, for a period of several months, and still now in some respects, the universities became, places that were not operating within the boundaries of what we would consider civil society.

And, you know, so my question to you is, have we seen the worst of it, is there an understanding that what transpired really set back higher ED and perceptions of higher ED?

It goes back further than the, Israel, issues.

It goes back, it goes back to the Vietnam War, the kinds of, disruptions and demonstrations, that we see on campuses, tend to be a thermostat for American society.

So when there are difficult issues before the country, you see them played out, not surprisingly, perhaps, on our campuses, the fact that sometimes they go to excess, tells us that we have not been as good in educating our young people as we like to think we have.

I think people who, understand, for example, the history of the country, the history of the Middle East.

Cannot, on the one hand, be unsympathetic, to the Palestinians, and yet, understand that the way to demonstrate that sympathy, is not to try to close down the university, which is educating you and other people about the issues and understanding that, Israel is not a function of black and white.

That there are arguments to be made, for the Israelis.

Arguments for the Palestinians.

The Palestinians have been very badly led.

There have been three, four, five opportunities for them to have a country of their own.

I happen to believe in a two state solution.

I think unless the Palestinians have a homeland of their own, these quarrels will go on in perpetuity.

Interestingly enough, that President Trump, to my astonishment, came up with what people think is a cockamamie idea about what to do with Gaza.

Yeah.

And I think the idea has some merit, although it's been terribly articulated.

Whoever's writing his speeches on that subject, should read a little history themselves.

Yeah.

I think, if Trump had said we have to restore Gaza, and I want to establish a program similar to the Marshall Plan, Right.

and we're going to do it not by the United States alone, but in union with, Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region.

And we're going to create a demilitarized zone significantly large, so that Israel can feel the sense of security that the rise of a Gazan, enterprise will not be a threat to them politically and will not be a threat to them militarily.

A totally different reaction might have evoked.

Well, that's very fair.

And I like your Marshall Plan analogy.

I think a major grievance of Trump and Trump allies has been, the lack of attention paid to this by, Muslim majority countries in the region.

That not just the relevance of what transpires, but have an opportunity to rebuild too, and so if that challenge had been made, because, President Trump is about, the art of the deal and investments and real estate, I mean, look at, cutter, look at, the United Arab Emirates put these, you know, and it was, Saudi Arabia and, you know, other powers that were responsible for that type of development.

So, I think you said it well, he did not articulate it that way, but if he does, and invites the primary stakeholders to the table, it could be, a pragmatic approach.

Yes.

For a man who is seeking a Nobel Prize in diplomacy.

Trump can be remarkably undiplomatic.

Right.

It's true.

There's an uncanny, diplomacy in his undiplomatic, utterances.

But yet if you get to the base and not get distracted, you might find something wholesome at the end of the day.

And just as we close, president.

One of the things that was most concerning to me was this kind of, vigilantism that you saw play out on these campuses with targets, of Jewish students and Palestinian students.

It's genuine anti-Semitism.

Right.

And this is one of the world's oldest prejudices and oldest hates.

It's very easy to pick on the weak.

And that played out and also going back to this question of being pragmatic, I think, you know, my grievance with the protesters, was that, you know, we live in an era where the temptation to be click-tavists you know, people who are kind of phony activists and think clicking a button is modern day, you know, underground railroad formation or something.

It's not.

And it takes hard work.

And so much of the incessance, you know, was noise.

It was noise and it was hate.

And there was nothing like, durable that you came out of the protest with this foundation of, this is the way forward.

When it comes to, even the practical considerations and concerns about divestment, are these universities investing in causes that, or enterprises that, or are constructive, that are not going to further destabilize the world?

You know, that's a fair question.

But it has to be presented with a, you know, a certain level of seriousness.

And when these protesters were operating as if they're university presidents and chair people of departments, were responsible for atrocities, they were misdirecting a lot of the, you know, their resentment or concern.

They were not directing it at the decision makers.

Yes!

[laughs] This is the answer to that.

Certainly, I mean, you know, I remember a cartoon many years ago in which somebody frustrated with the federal government decided to walk down to the corner and kick the mailbox.

Because that was the symbol of the federal government that was right on the corner.

Yeah, I mean, the question of divestment has always amused me because if the, let's say, university owned stock, they now sell the stock, the stock goes to somebody else.

It's not as if the company disappears.

It's not as if any change in their policies is necessarily the result of the sale of the stock.

In fact, it would be the purchasing of the stock and the voting of the stock that would have some effect on the on the corporate behavior much more than selling the stock.

Again, depending on amounts and depending on whom you sold it to.

And one thing or another.

But these questions are far too complex to be decided by people marching up and down on a street corner.

We have only one minute left, President Trachtenberg.

-Yes, sir.

-But the question here is, have the people on higher ED learn the lesson, in a way that maybe more durable, over the last couple of years, have lessons been learned that are going to be acted on?

Who knows?

Who knows?

Only time will tell.

The lessons have to be learned, school by school, Yeah.

the circumstances are different institution by institution.

But given the predicament that you describe of the declining enrollment, like at least from a perception perspective, it has to be learned soon.

Yeah, well, they may be institutions that close.

Yeah.

You're going to see more and more institutions close.

President emeritus Trachtenberg, we're out of time, but I'd be delighted to invite you back to The Open Mind.

You betcha.

I really appreciate your insight today.

Best greetings from Minnesota.

Thank you, sir.

[music] Please visit The Open Mind website at thirteen.org/openmind.

Download the podcast on Apple and Spotify.

And check us out on X, Instagram, and Facebook.

Continuing production of The Open Mind has been made possible by grants from Vital Projects Fund, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Ploughshares Fund, Angelson Family Foundation, Robert and Kate Niehaus Foundation, Grateful American Foundation, and Draper Foundation.