Why Trump’s 'American Academy' proposal is a 'bad joke': conservative

When Donald Trump was still president in 2020, he called for "patriotic education" — a proposal that former National Security Adviser Susan Rice slammed as authoritarian, telling CNN's Erin Burnett, "I thought I was listening to Mao Tse Tung running Communist China." Trump, in 2023, continues to insist that there are too many liberal and progressive ideas in education — and he has proposed an online "American Academy" that would offer free college degrees while pushing an "America First" ideology.

Forbes education reporter Frederick Hess is highly critical of the idea in an article published on November 9, slamming it as an example of "national conservatism's taste for big government" being applied "to higher education."

"While it always feels a bit odd to take Trump's policy proposals too seriously — since it's not clear he intends for them to be taken that way — this one deserves a closer look," Hess writes. "In calling for Uncle Sam to establish a free, degree-granting institution with public funds, Trump has adopted an Obamacare approach to tackling higher education."

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Hess acknowledges that "'free college' tends to poll well" but attacks Trump's "American Academy" idea using conservative and libertarian arguments.

"For those who recall Trump's recurring promises to 'drain the swamp,' the idea of putting federal bureaucrats and hangers-on in charge of the 'American Academy' should seem like a bad joke," Hess argues. "This is the same government that runs the IRS, got defrauded of hundreds of billions in pandemic relief, and that is mind-numbingly behind in updating air traffic control or the nation's bridges. This is who we should trust to promote efficiency and convenience in higher education? And, in lieu of conservative efforts to ensure that students are sensibly protected from lousy outcomes but that both they and colleges have skin in the game, Trump is proposing a game-show host's giveaway."

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Read Frederick Hess' full article for Forbes at this link.