Two weeks ago the National Association of Scholars published Critical Care, our policy recommendations to restore American higher education after the 2020 coronavirus shutdown. As stay-at-home orders continue and as some colleges begin to prepare for a fall semester online, it is all but inevitable that colleges and universities will need a bailout.

To ensure public money is well spent, we’ve written an open letter urging the president to rescue American higher education through our outlined reforms.

Will you join this effort by signing?

We believe that legislators and regulators should tie bailout funds to reforms that address long-standing problems in American higher education. Colleges and universities can and must do better than return to the status quo.

For far too long, American higher education has exploited the hopes of students and their families, as well as the goodwill of legislators and the American public. Millions of Americans have been plunged deeply into insupportable debt in order to fund huge increases in college administrative costs over the last 30 years. Administrative positions, including non-instructional staff, now consume more than 50% of higher education payroll costs. At the same time, colleges and universities offer a trivialized curriculum marked by animosity to America.

Our country deserves much better—and we can get it.