The Crisis in Higher Education

In this clip, Ashish Vaidya outlines the structural challenges facing U.S. higher education in 2025, emphasizing a growing crisis of public confidence. He identifies several long-term issues that have eroded trust, including misalignment between academic programs and workforce needs, inadequate student success outcomes, and escalating costs. Vaidya urges institutional leaders to reexamine the original mission of regional public universities—serving as engines of access, economic mobility, and community development—and cautions against mission drift driven by prestige or exclusivity. He argues for re-centering institutional focus on local impact, student needs, and alignment of internal incentives with broader societal goals.

It is kind of ironic that we're talking about this in 2025. And my academic journey began many, many years ago, but I would never have really imagined that we'd be having this conversation about a crisis of confidence in the higher education sector writ large, where the skepticism and cynicism, not just through the political venues but also through students and families is at an all-time high and it is important moment. I hope that I think of this as a moment where higher education says, 'We just can't do business as usual, and we have to reclaim the narrative about higher education as a national, state, and regional asset for economic prosperity.' That's the core mission of this university. So, uh, this crisis of confidence was built up over time. It just didn't happen as a result of this new administration. It's been over time. And we in the higher education sector all bear a large part of [the] responsibility for ignoring student success outcomes, not focusing enough on cost containment and efficiencies, not thinking deeply about which academic programs do we really need to be offering to our students. Is there a match between the skills us graduates have and what's needed in the current and future marketplace? And today we have AI, we have you know all these issues that are going to challenge the labor market. And I think the pace of innovation in the sector has just not been fast enough. Which is why we arrive at this. I mean the narrative is all about it's too costly. Look at the student debt. Only 60% of students are completing baccalaureate degrees on a national average. Not enough STEM graduates [are] being produced. I mean all the litany of things that are there, and now there's an added, you know, pressure of universities are just engines of indoctrination. They don't support free speech. They do research that is of no consequence to society. You know in in some ways, it's actually going back to the roots of why institutions were formed in the first place. I'll speak about regional public universities. The sector that I'm most familiar with, as you know, the reason they're called regional public universities; they're very much region-ed and community-focused. They were placed [in] very specifically in geographical areas that needed to improve access to college education, or transfer from community colleges. They were meant to provide originally teacher training, but other professional and applied research training for those communities that needed to be lifted up, and for which their economic development needs were there. Over time, I think many of these institutions, I would say, lost their perspective to some extent. [They] began focusing on trying to be all things to all people, seeking misguided rankings, trying to become more exclusive, which is counter to what their original focus was. So I would say, to both the current and future leadership is, take a moment to go back and think about mission. Take a moment to think about, "What is the purpose of college?" Especially for those institutions that are serving large percentages of first generation low-income students. You are supposed to be engines of economic and social mobility. You are supposed to be a convener, a facilitator of economic development. You're supposed to be there when people turn to you and say, "We have an issue in the community. How can you help us solve this?" And that's where your attention should be. Your mission should be so closely aligned. And then your internal structures and incentives and rewards should be set up so that whoever comes to work at the university doesn't forget what they are. They're not there to pursue their own agenda. And I'm speaking obviously to some extent about faculty. You're not there to come with your own research agenda. Your research and teaching agenda has to be focused by the region that you're serving, by the needs of the students that you have, that you're serving. Not by, you know, I'm interested in studying, you know, issues of international trade in the Cameroon. Worthwhile subject, but is that relevant for the institution you're at right now? For the community and region that you are supposed to be an anchor for.