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Broadly speaking the spending and staff levels at universities have grown over time while the number of enrolled students have stagnated and tuition costs per student have risen. There is a desire to reduce the per-student cost without providing additional subsidy and a straightforward way to do this is to look at the side of the university that doesn't have anything to do with undergraduate eduction and see where cuts may be made. One clear example of what we perceive as administrative bloat in the recent past was the Stanford Harmful Language Initiative (https://stanforddaily.com/2023/01/08/university-removes-harm...). Every institution makes mistakes but if a tax-exempt and grant receiving institution has the bandwidth to produce something that to the eyes of the right appears to be fairly silly while charging ~$60k for tuition, this does raise some eyebrows.

"If our schools have lost any edge, it’s since Trump came back to power." I completely 100% disagree with this statement. My partner is an education at a University and remote learning had a huge negative impact on our schools and student outcomes. US academic achievement has been flat for decades despite spending and pupil rations going way up https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf. Public schools in certain areas of the country are a complete failure for every student enrolled https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/at-13-baltim... (I choose an example of a left leaning area but obviously there are right leaning examples as well!)

Let me propose what I see as a couple of common sense reforms. Mandate the availability of pre-k nationwide starting at 4. Increase the school year from 180 days to 195 days by reducing the length of summer. If needed make this optional at first. Allow professors to fail students who have not learned the course material and make it illegal for the department to pressure professors to offer the students a way to pass the course.