After hitting rock bottom, colleges might be about to climb back up

If you had to pick a single institution more responsible for America’s social and political problems than any other, one stands out: higher education.

Yet that may be starting to change, even if the process is slow and the road long.

In just the past two years, and especially the past six months, US colleges and universities have faced a reckoning.

Their highly corrosive ills — affirmative action, DEI, radical faculty, bureaucratic bloat, raging antisemitism, sky-high tuitions, racist policies, flawed research and even their failure to teach — have all been exposed for the world to see.

Yet a combination of court rulings, congressional hearings, public opinion and, not least, President Donald Trump’s commendable pressure have sparked some small but notable changes.

The result could be a welcome new focus on the colleges’ original goals: teaching, merit, scholarship, open inquiry, freedom of speech and thought.

And perhaps all at lower costs.

The damage universities, particularly the elite ones, have caused is indisputable: They’ve denied admission to countless well-qualified applicants on the basis of race. They’ve brainwashed students with untethered lefty worldviews and dubious morals.

Kids wind up backing terrorist entities like Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, targeting Jews, hating cops and embracing Marxist, socialist fantasies. (Exhibit A: Zohran Mamdani)

Meanwhile, they learn precious little actual history, science, math, philosophy . . .

Many wind up jobless with mountains of debt.

The good news: The changes that have been forced on higher education may start to fix at least some of that.

Take the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s rules for student loans.

Easy government money paved the way for schools to raise tuition, hire more staff, indulge in radical, ideologically driven agendas like DEI.

But the OBBBA will rein in student loans. It places new limits on how much kids can borrow with government help. And it imposes tougher terms for repayment.

Team Trump has also pushed student borrowers to resume payments halted during COVID, reversing the Biden loan-forgiveness programs.

That will save taxpayers money, but equally important, tighter lending — and perhaps higher interest rates in the private market — will force kids to think more carefully about taking on debt.

Students may see college more as place to acquire knowledge and prepare to earn a living than as a playground for childish activism.

The new rules may also deprive colleges of funding that’s fueled their bloat and allowed them to jack up tuitions. Schools may have to drop their prices and provide more value for the buck.

Trump has also squeezed universities over their antisemitism, DEI programs, hostility toward conservatives and affirmative-action programs.

The Supreme Court’s 2023 ban on racial preferences in admissions also pushed higher ed to level the playing field, although with meager results so far.

On some fronts, a few key schools are starting to bend, even if just slightly.

After ugly antisemitism erupted at Harvard following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Israelis, and after congressional hearings exposed the school’s tolerance for it, Trump held up billions in federal funding, donors cut the school off and Jewish students thought twice about attending.

True, Harvard has refused to change many of its policies, but at least it knows it has a problem: Officials are now actively discussing the idea of center for conservative scholarship and have offered other small concessions as well. Baby steps for baby feet.

Meanwhile, Columbia University — another leftist, antisemitic hotbed that has fought with Team Trump — just announced new steps it’ll take to fight Jew-hatred on campus: It’ll no longer meet with an anti-Israel, pro-terror student group, for example, and will adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism. More progress.

To be sure, it’s taken decades for higher ed to reach its nadir — and it’ll take years to reverse.

But then, if college and universities have finally hit rock bottom, the only place for them to go is . . . up.