Perhaps no sector better exemplifies the economic recklessness, inflation, and elitism that Americans rejected last month than academia. What was once a beacon of Western enlightenment has devolved into a profiteering industry that survives on Washington’s tired, cynical bribe: “Vote for us, and we’ll funnel more money to colleges!” As this hollow promise loses its power to persuade, President Trump has a historic opportunity to dismantle the College Cartel and free Americans from the stranglehold of these calcified interests.

If you don’t think the $670 billion-a-year higher education industry doesn’t indulge in more than its fair share of grifting, then, as Michael Corleone would say: “Who’s being naïve?” In this unholy trinity, college administrators are the capos, collecting exorbitant tuition “dues.” Accreditation boards serve as the muscle, shielding universities from competition with the help of their lobbyists, who enlist politicians to rig the system in their favor. The marks in their scheme are American taxpayers, who subsidize the whole racket, and families burdened with $1.74 trillion in debt.

Shrouded in a guise of respectability, the College Cartel thrives by forcing students to pay wildly inflated prices for courses that, at best, are tangential to their careers. Schools barely cracking the top 100 regularly charge anywhere between $3,000 to $8,000 for a single three credit elective. With degrees typically requiring up to 30 credit hours, well, you do the math. Few stop to question this madness because most students simply fold the tuition bill into massive loans or tap into grants subsidized by the long-suffering taxpayers. But what can possibly justify fleecing a kid for a Cinema 101 course when, for about a hundred bucks, they can take a MasterClass on filmmaking taught by Martin Scorsese himself? The answer, dear reader, is nothing. To preserve this scam, college administrators and their accreditation enforcers simply refuse to recognize affordable alternatives.

Trump can crush this academic syndicate on day one of his second term by targeting the unelected bureaucrats trapping millions of Americans in this gilded labyrinth. The president can do this by instructing the Justice Department to launch antitrust inquiries into the autocratic credentialing boards that bleed students dry and choke the life out of American higher education. Meanwhile, the president should direct his Department of Education to immediately revoke their gatekeeper status for federal aid, while taking a page from Florida’s playbook and encouraging colleges to explore new accreditation bodies. This one-two punch would force universities to justify their value, purge ideological fluff, and prioritize real-world outcomes over bureaucratic checkboxes.

The next step is cutting off the “demand” side of the ruse: the overemphasis on degrees in hiring. Building upon his 2020 overhaul of administrative hiring, the president could strongly encourage federal contractors to reassess degree requirements for positions that don’t really need them—and, let’s be honest, that’s most of them. Such a move would ripple through corporate America, unlocking opportunities for skilled workers trapped in a “paper ceiling” paradox: unable to secure jobs without degrees, yet unable to afford degrees without jobs.

The coup de grace would be ending the Cartel’s monopoly on the “product”—courses. With the stroke of a pen, President Trump can declare that any university drinking from the federal trough—which is, nearly all of them—must grant students the freedom to pursue high-quality, low-cost classes to satisfy elective requirements at no additional cost. Naturally, schools can maintain academic integrity by administering proficiency tests and working with independent platforms to enhance their offerings. This simple, yet transformative, reform would automatically improve quality, slash tuition expenses, and inject much-needed competition into higher education—all without further burdening taxpayers.

Trump’s cost-cutting executive order could go further by tackling one of the Cartel’s most insidious schemes: bloated general education requirements that consume up to 40% of a student’s coursework before they even touch their majors. For perspective, consider that European students earn their B.A.s in just three years by knocking out many of these requirements in high school—so why can’t Americans do the same? Using the pretext of intellectual rigor, America’s entrenched elites insist that the only legitimate path to higher learning is confining our students to an eighteenth century four-year degree model. As a result, our youth are now buried under significantly more personal debt and decades behind their global peers.

Fortunately, this problem is relatively easy to address. Most U.S. high schools already offer AP courses or dual-enrollment programs that would save American students precious time and money. But our universities—particularly those of the elite variety—often treat these credits like counterfeit pesos, rejecting them outright or arbitrarily limiting their transferability to keep students on the hook. On the first day of his presidency, President Trump can put an end to this caprice by making access to federal funding contingent upon counting these courses toward credit.

This isn’t an either-or proposition. American universities can continue offering traditional liberal arts degrees for those who value them while also fielding specialized, padding-free programs for career-focused students. It’s about innovation, fairness, and common sense: no one should be forced to subsidize a Latinx Studies department just to prove their accounting chops.

There’s plenty of blame to go around for the status quo—both parties have zealously guarded the Ivory Tower. Conservatives, meanwhile, have been so focused on collegiate cultural rot that perhaps they’ve overlooked a far greater scandal: the most egregious campus “safe spaces” are those insulating these institutions from accountability. On the other hand, the knee-jerk response among liberal activists is to flood the system with taxpayer cash and hope the problem goes away. It won’t—unless we turn off the spigot. Trump would be well-advised to do so.

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