The Trump administration has made numerous proclamations about recapturing or preserving traditional manufacturing jobs in an effort to shrink the US trade deficit and make America great again. Most are populist cries to bolster old industries, such as automobile manufacturing, that purportedly have been ravaged by unfair global competition. It’s too bad we romanticize businesses lost to progress and ignore vibrant sectors in which the US is still justifiably great and even dominant. “Like what?” you may ask. How about higher education?
While American colleges and universities are often vilified as hotbeds for liberal elitism, we forget that our 8,000 learning institutions constitute an enormous economic engine. US manufacturing has been declining in importance since the 1970s, but higher education has countered that trend dramatically. Our postsecondary schools will generate more than $550 billion in revenues in 2017, growing to $700 billion by 2024—a multiple of the American automotive industry’s contribution to the economy. The 4.1 million people working at colleges and universities—from teachers and scholars, to administrators, to food service professionals, to engineers and construction workers—is roughly the same number as those employed directly and indirectly in the US auto sector.
