What Trump’s Victory Means For Business Education

The unimaginable has happened.

A twice-impeached, four-times indicted convicted felon has been elected President of the United States.

Trump not only won the Electoral College. Shockingly, he won the popular vote.

Political experts are already saying fear and anger won Trump’s reelection. In fact, this election was a triumph against elitism, reason, intellect, and politically correct dogma. In a country where fewer than a third of the citizens have a college degree, an impulsive man who is interested only in himself is returning to the most powerful office in the world.

DISILLUSIONED AND AGGRIEVED, THE UNEDUCATED BROUGHT TRUMP BACK

By and large, the uneducated, disillusioned and aggrieved over the country’s direction, won over America’s educated. If you need any more evidence of this truth, consider that the guy who claimed to hold a Michigan Ross MBA that he never had also won election to the Senate. Ohio Republican candidate Bernie Moreno beat incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown for a pivotal U.S. Senate seat.

It was Democratic strategist Doug Sosnik who recently predicted that “the biggest single, best predictor of how someone’s going to vote in American politics now is education level. That is now the new fault line in American politics.” The data support this view. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis documented that for every dollar of wealth in a household headed by a college graduate, a household headed by a high school graduate has 22 cents. In his last victory, Trump gained the support of some two-thirds of White voters without a college degree, while losing White college-educated voters.

It is why President Biden has publicly said that the majority of jobs created by his infrastructure bill will go to those without college degrees. And it is why Vice President Kamala Harris vowed to nix “unnecessary degree requirements” for federal jobs on day one, a day that will never come.

“People who climbed the academic ladder were feted with accolades, while those who didn’t were rendered invisible,” writes David Brooks in an essay in The New York Times. “Society worked as a vast segregation system, elevating the academically gifted above everybody else,” “Before long, the diploma divide became the most important chasm in American life. High school graduates die nine years sooner than college-educated people. They die of opioid overdoses at six times the rate. They marry less and divorce more and are more likely to have a child out of wedlock. They are more likely to be obese. A recent American Enterprise Institute study found that 24 percent of people who graduated from high school at most have no close friends. They are less likely than college grads to visit public spaces or join community groups and sports leagues. They don’t speak in the right social justice jargon or hold the sort of luxury beliefs that are markers of public virtue.”

They sought revenge, someone who would disrupt everything, regardless of whether it would actually help them.  It’s not something that any smart and ambitious international student could understand. As a round one international MBA applicant put it, “It’s challenging to grasp how such a significant portion of Americans resonate with the vision that Trump and the Republican Party represent. What’s even more concerning is how this might affect international students and professionals who contribute so much to the U.S. The climate feels less welcoming, and I’m sure many others feel so uncertain about their place and future here.”

The implications for higher education in the U.S. are massive.

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT IN A SECOND TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

While many say you can’t take Trump at his word, they underestimate what a second-term Presidency with Trump in the White House would be like. Trump will now surround himself with right-leaning extremists, loyal to him not the Constitution or the country. He will have the support of a Republican-controlled Senate and House. And he will not have to worry about the consequences of his decisions because he will not be able to run again.

What can you expect?

• A plunge in international applicants. Applicant pools and class cohorts will experience a significant decline in prospective students from abroad. Many international applicants decided to hold off on applying in round one deadlines so that they could submit an application knowing the outcome of this election. With this Trump win, they will perceive the country as unwelcoming and suspicious of them and choose to study elsewhere.
• The elimination or diminishment of OPT (optional practical training). In the past ten years, one business school after another has rushed to get STEM designation for its graduate programs. Going STEM assured international students of landing a job in the U.S. for three full years. That extension allowed these graduates to apply for an H1b vision in three lotteries.  Trump’s senior advisor, Stephen Miller, has shaped Trump’s draconian immigration policies. Miller, who played a role in Trump’s zero-tolerance policy, has OPT in his crosshairs
• The dismantling of the Department of Education. This long-promised piece of Trump’s policy agenda is a likely outcome of the election. After all, it fits with the war on the educated that the Republican Party has been waging under Trump for some time. The impact of either the department’s abolishment or a major reduction in funding could make it more difficult for students to access federal financial aid, harm schools that rely on federal money and make higher education a riskier proposition.
• The elimination of all funding for universities and schools that have diversity and inclusion policies. Many universities have devoted significant resources to DEI offices and policies that are widely seen by Trump enthusiasts as disguised mandates for affirmative action.

IS THERE AN UPSIDE? DON’T BET ON IT

Truth be told, it’s hard to imagine any upside to higher education in a Trump administration. Yet the dean of American University’s Kogod School of Business has taken an optimistic view of things. Noting his own personal disappointment in the outcome of the election, Dean David Marchick wrote that he believes the work ahead is more critical than ever.

“I am struck that our work in academia is more important today than it was yesterday,” he wrote in an email to the community. “If you believe we need to address the climate crisis, we should work to create a more sustainable world through business, as progress in the next few years will come through business, not government. If you believe that better business practices can help people of color and those who are impoverished participate more fully in the economy, our scholarship and teaching in that area has never been more critical. Each of you changes lives every day with teaching, research, and engagement with students, helping young people reach their full potential and enabling them to launch meaningful and successful careers. ”  

The best advice? Hunker down. The next four years will be a highly challenging time for business education and for higher education in general.

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