THE - UNIVERSITIES RESHAPING - TAP : MASTER GLOBAL ESSAY

WHEN BILLIONAIRES make '' reshaping universities '' a very pet project.

RIGHT HERE in Proud Pakistan - I take the liberty to address esteemed Syed Shabbar Zaidi sahib, and esteemed Hamid Mir sahib :  

''Sires the Global Founder Framers are wondering as to how many billionaires are helping reshape universities as a pet project?''

Lest I talk and research about the Far East, Africa, Asia, Afghanistan, South America, Sri Lanka, those other African continent countries or Uzbekistan .....................?.

The ultrawealthy have long lorded their money and might over university presidents, pelting them with ideas and demands, promises and threats.

President Trump embraced a billionaire's strategy to try to wring ideological concessions from universities. He blessed another's role as Harvard University's emissary for negotiation with the federal government.

Yet another billionaire helped steer cuts at the Department of Education - which a different billionaire heads.

The campaign is accelerating. But it has been in the world for years.

IN 2023, the hedge fund manager Bill Ackman and the private equity titan Marc Rowan tested a new way of wielding a new power over their alma maters, with nationally vocal - and ultimately successful -  to oust leaders of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Ackman's social media jeremiads about diversity, equity and inclusion catalyzed a debate that Mr. Trump began turning into policy soon after he returned to Washington.

And this fall, Mr. Rowan, whose business interests include for-profit University of Phoenix, was a leading force behind the Trump administration's quest for a '' compact'' with universities that could have tied federal funding to fealty to Mr. Trump's ideology.

Their prescriptions for campuses have often drawn fire from higher education leaders, including university presidents and chancellors who believe academia needs to listen to some of its critics.

'' My experience with billionaires is that they do not suffer from humility, said Janet Napolitano, who was homeland security secretary during the Obama administration and later the president of the  University of California.

'' They think they have made fortunes, they're making fortunes, there's a kind of we-know-it-better-than-you-do.''

But figures like Mr. Rowan have argued that universities are not doing enough to change themselves and that outside forces like the federal government have roles to play.

'' Many colleges and universities, and especially some of the oldest and traditionally prestigious schools, are burdened with archaic governance structures that make self-reform all but impossible,'' he wrote in a guest essay in The New York Times in October.

'' This means the course correction must come from the outside.''

This Master Essay publishing continues. The World Students Society thanks Alan Blinder and Stephanie Saul.