An April 10 report from a designated committee of professors at Yale determined that American universities bear significant fault for the erosion of public trust in higher education. The study cites high cost of attendance, opaque admissions processes and intellectual homogeneity on campus as key drivers of public distrust. The study also lists 20 recommendations for Yale to rebuild public trust, ranging from “reform undergraduate admissions” to “be human.”
The Herald spoke to members of the committee and an expert on higher education at Brown to understand how the report might be relevant on College Hill.
Beverly Gage, co-chair of the committee and a professor of history at Yale, said that while the study aimed to make recommendations specific to Yale, they wanted to consider peer institutions — the report refers to the “Ivy League” in multiple instances — and “education more broadly,” Gage said.
“I do think that selective private institutions like Brown have an awful lot in common with Yale,” she added.
Sarath Sanga, a member of the committee and a professor of law at Yale, said that “loss in public confidence is basically inversely related to the U.S. News ranking, meaning that the loss in confidence is biggest in (the) Ivy League.”
Sanga clarified that the “the report does not presume to tell other schools what to do.” Yale’s peer schools can learn from the study but should ultimately make their own individual decisions, he said.
John Friedman — dean of the Watson School of International and Public Affairs and a professor of economics and international and public affairs — researches government, policy and economics with a focus on upward mobility in higher education. Friedman felt that, for the most part, the findings “make sense” and were in line with previous reports.
“What I think was new — and why I thought it was pretty noteworthy — is that this is something that’s coming from inside one of these institutions,” he said, adding that he hopes other institutions follow suit.
One specific finding of the report was that “grading across many institutions has steadily lost its meaning.”
Grade inflation has been long debated at Brown. Brown had the highest grades in the Ivy League from the ’90s to at least 2012, and 63% of grades in the 2023-24 academic year were As.
At a recent event hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 defended Brown’s high grades, saying Brown graduates are still “getting into the best professional programs. They’re getting into great graduate programs. They’re getting great jobs.”
But Sanga pushed back on the idea that post-graduate success is proof that the grading system is effective. He believes that “elite placement in graduate schools, in professional schools, in employers, is not evidence that the grading system is working. It’s evidence that the brand (of the elite institution) is working.”
“I think the terms of the current debate are toxically wrong,” Sanga said regarding the current conversation surrounding grading at colleges. “This is a deeper part of the problem, that we have forgotten what grading is for.”
Friedman said that grade inflation could contribute to public mistrust in higher education institutions. But he’s not convinced that if Yale or other elite institutions reverted to older, harsher grading systems it “would make that big of a difference in the overall broader trust.”
“I think that in some forms, grade compression can undermine academic excellence,” Friedman said. But he does not think it is “the core problem with the student experience as it relates to academic excellence and academic focus.”
According to Friedman, public erosion of trust in higher education is exemplified by public response to the Trump administration’s attacks on higher education.
“What I actually found more striking is no one seemed to care,” Friedman said, emphasizing the importance of higher education institutions to society.
Gage said she feels optimistic that universities can regain trust they’ve lost in the public sphere. Upon the publication of the report, Yale President Maurie McInnis released a public statement, in which she committed to taking action in certain areas, such as making Yale more affordable and increasing intellectual diversity, that the committee recommended.
“Part of what we wanted to do as a committee was really to provoke more conversation and bring more people into that discussion and open up some new questions, because that’s at least the first step in making change,” Gage said.
Friedman shared Gage’s positive outlook and hopes “that an effect of this report is that it motivates these schools to really think about how to move on some of these issues, not just in the next few years, but over the longer term,” he said.
He specifically appreciated the transparency of Yale’s process in creating and publishing the report. “The public commitment to do something about this is a good thing,” he said.
“If the report and the ideas behind it can be of any help at all, to any school, helping them in any way in the broadest sense, that would be very rewarding for me,” Sanga said.
Jeremiah Farr is a senior staff writer covering university hall and higher education.
