Earlier this month, Yale University’s ten-member Committee on Trust in Higher Education issued a bracing, 58-page report on what’s driven plunging trust in higher ed. The committee was formed a year ago by Yale president Maurie McInnis amidst Trump 2.0’s early onslaught. McInnis charged the committee with determining why confidence in higher ed was at an all-time low and what to do about it. As McInnis wrote in her introduction to the report, “Universities nationwide are facing a historic wave of calls for change. Trust in institutions is waning, and that’s not a problem we can brush aside.”

The report, which says America’s universities need to shoulder much of the blame for losing that trust, proposes a raft of reforms that have drawn a lot of attention. It’s all sparked a burst of hot takes. Let’s sort through a few of them, Dan Graziano-style.

This is a crucial, overdue statement. Its accountability is a breath of fresh air. It’s the most promising sign yet that higher ed is willing and may be able to address its failings.

Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION. Throughout the Trump administration’s various standoffs with universities over the past 15 months, there’ve been few obvious signs of institutions willing to look in the mirror. This is a big one. Brand-name institutions waved off the White House’s Higher Ed Compact last fall, but it was tough to read too much into that reaction given the proposal’s clumsy construction, dubious legality, and bullying tone. Now, with Yale’s measured, practical tenor and Ivy League sheen, their report offers a comfortable way forward for campus leaders seeking a path to peace. The report also benefits mightily from the air cover provided by leaders at Vanderbilt and a handful of like-minded institutions, who’ve stretched higher ed’s Overton Window by aggressively taking on the status quo.

This is the 21st-century version of Yale’s 1974 Woodward Report, which famously rejected the campus chaos of the 1960s. The Woodward Report codified the norm that protecting free speech on campus required order, respect for scholarly discourse, and an insistence that student mobs couldn’t exercise the heckler’s veto.

Verdict: TOO EARLY TO TELL. Landmark documents only gain that status in hindsight. Lots of reports and manifestos get issued, garner attention, and then are forgotten. It’s very possible that we could look back in five years and conclude that the Trust in Higher Education report was all talk and no action. At the same time, it’s peppered with the kind of sturdy language that could become a touchstone for campus reformers, as with, “Trust is earned by doing what you say you’re going to do – and, ideally, doing it well.” But it’s too early to judge the import of this effort. The Woodward comparison isn’t necessarily wrong, but it’s certainly premature.

The Yale report did a terrific job identifying the problems plaguing higher ed. The discourse has grown so vitriolic that it can be unclear what we’re arguing about. The report effectively spotlights the important questions and brings some useful data to bear.   

Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION. The report cites data on the loss of trust in colleges and universities. In 2024, Gallup reported that the share of the public with “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of trust in higher education fell to a record low of 36 percent. In 2025, Pew reported that 70 percent of Americans said higher ed is heading in the wrong direction. It includes useful data on costs, grade inflation, and much else. It calls out “the soaring price of higher education in the United States” and the sense that academic degrees “are no longer worth the money and sacrifice they demand.” It notes the loss of confidence in “the college admissions system – specifically, the question of who gets in and why.” It acknowledges the skewed “partisan composition of the faculty” and concerns that Yale is “trending toward intellectual and ideological conformity.” And it points to “an array of issues about what is said and taught on university campuses, including matters of free speech, political bias, and self-censorship” as well as “grade inflation, new technologies, and bureaucratic expansion.” None of this is new information, but it’s a pretty good summation of what’s top of mind for the public and policymakers—and it’s a big deal to see these concerns acknowledged in this fashion by a pillar of the academic elite.

This is evidence that elite institutions are finally getting serious. The report tackles the problems straight on, and McInnis’s public response has been admirably direct. We can be relieved things are finally getting better.

Verdict: OVERREACTION. The frank talk is welcome. It’s heartening to see Yale take this on. But it’s easy to talk the talk; the challenge is walking the walk. Look, the recommendations are sensible. They include reforming financial aid to lower costs, setting clear and transparent standards for the admissions process, reducing the campus bureaucracy, and combating grade inflation by establishing a 3.0 mean grade point average for Yale College. That said, none of these ideas are novel. The hard part will be making those changes in the face of faculty resistance, entrenched bureaucracies, and institutional inertia.

If the follow-through is the hard part, we’re sunk. No one has any idea how to drive change at big universities.

Verdict: OVERREACTION. Institutions like Arizona State, Vanderbilt, and the University of Florida have made big strides on changing the status quo. Progress is possible, if difficult. It helps, of course, if campus leaders are thoughtful about the political and institutional dynamics.

In any event, it’s a big deal that the report bothers to specifically address classroom devices, urging a default “device-free policy” from which faculty may deviate only for “compelling pedagogical, research, or practical reasons.”  In K–12 schooling, distraction from phones and other devices is a huge issue. Why should higher ed get a pass? That’s why it’s great to see Yale’s faculty taking this stance.

Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION. I’ve interviewed several college presidents over the past couple years and had extended conversations with many others. I’ve been struck by how laissez-faire they’ve all been about classroom devices. When pressed, they uniformly lament ubiquitous cell phones and screen culture, then shrug and explain that classroom norms are set by individual faculty who are instructing “digital natives.” The wishy-washy attitude and shoulder-shrugging resignation from leadership places faculty in an untenable situation. Professors don’t want to appear out-of-touch and they don’t want to get stuck playing device cop. The inevitable result is distraction-filled classrooms, where students may spend more time sending texts, checking social media, or betting on DraftKings than taking notes. This is where new campus norms could be a very big deal.

Along with the rise of institutional neutrality policies and the dismantling of DEI machinery, the report is a clear sign of a sea change in higher education. Public backlash and Trump’s pressure have finally broken through, and higher ed leaders are course-correcting after the arrogance and excesses of the past decade.

Verdict: OVERREACTION. Whoa, Nelly. Not so fast. Wesleyan’s president took to the New York Times to (very politely) deride the report’s approach as an ineffectual, defeatist “defense strategy.” Days after the report was issued, former Columbia University president Lee Bollinger argued at the New America Foundation that “We need a NATO for universities,” which would allow higher ed to mount a collective defense against external pressures. In the same conversation, the University of Delaware’s Dominique Baker compared institutional neutrality to norms in Nazi Germany. In D.C., more than a few higher ed mandarins quietly dismissed the report as “nothing new.” Meanwhile, just last week, AEI’s Mark Perry documented that the University of Michigan’s massive DEI apparatus has been rebranded and repackaged rather than “shuttered” (as had been claimed).

In short, it’s far too early for higher ed reformers to proclaim victory. Yale’s report is a promising chapter, but most of this tale is yet to be written.

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”