War, Education’s Catalyst

Dear 47th, the time to foster educational equity is now.

In 1931, Pulitzer winner James Truslow Adams coined the phrase "The American Dream" in his book The Epic of America. He defined the dream as “a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable… regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

Throughout times of war in American history, presidents have seized education as a means both to bolster our national security and to march us closer to the ideal in which everyone can reach their maximum potential. With the imminence of U.S. involvement across the world today, our next president has the opportunity to drive us closer to that dream, sloganized a century ago and envisaged a quarter of a millennium prior at our founding.

The Civil War: A New Class of Universities

Within the first eighty years of the United States’ founding, university education was designed for the elite. “Higher education” meant private and religiously affiliated institutions that emphasized the classical liberal arts like Latin, Greek, and philosophy. Then, about twenty years prior to the Civil War, evolving agrarian needs called for the creation of industrial education to modernize agriculture. States like Illinois and Michigan sought to develop practical universities so that they could adapt to changing economic dynamics brought upon them by westward expansion and Industrial Revolution mechanization. Beyond economic factors, supporters like President Lincoln (who himself received less than a year of formal education) believed in the importance of educating all. The South was resistant to the movement, however; among a host of reasons, it feared that increasing access to education would undermine the institution of slavery which was central to its economic and social structure.

The Civil War would subsequently present a timely opportunity to jumpstart practical universities. After Southern states seceded and no longer had congressional voting power, Lincoln seized the moment to help pass the Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862. The act provided federal land for states to build public schools focused on agriculture, engineering, and manufacturing, effectively propping up a new class of lower-cost industrial universities for working Americans. Across all fifty states today, virtually every state university that we know of (e.g., University of California, Penn State, Texas A&M, etc.) came from the Morrill Act.

World War II: Widening Elite Corridors

The Civil War helped plant the seed of college-for-all, but another eighty years would pass before meaningful access to a university education extended beyond elite corridors. The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 (colloquially known as the G.I. Bill) provided wartime veterans with tuition and living support as they pursued education and a better life post-WWII. Significantly, it was the first massive-scale federal program providing direct financial support for a four-year education. And unlike Lincoln’s time, the WWII act faced virtually no political resistance. This period in American history was marked by President Franklin Roosevelt’s contagious optimism; the government had to be audacious in its vision for a peaceful and prosperous post-war world.

In the first seven years, about eight million veterans used the G.I. Bill, doubling the number of U.S. college and university graduates between 1940 and 1950. The bill is widely acknowledged to have expanded lower-income households’ access to higher education; estimates show roughly half of recipients in the initial years would not have attended college without the aid. So while James Truslow Adams’s The Epic of America was published more than a decade before the G.I. Bill, this bipartisan act was what materialized the book’s ideals. It altered the perception of who could receive higher education, confirming the reality of the American Dream and widening the aperture for those seeking its promise.

The Cold War: Democratizing STEM Education

Shortly after WWII, geopolitical competition between the U.S. and the Soviet Union bubbled up into a STEM education movement. Cold War investments in STEM had been initially modest, focused narrowly on defense-related research at select universities such as Caltech and MIT, in areas like nuclear weapons and missile technologies. This, however, suddenly changed in 1957 when the Soviet Union forged the space age with the launch of Sputnik 1, the first man-made satellite to orbit Earth. Its success shocked the American public deeply, igniting fears that the nation no longer wielded the technological prowess to protect itself. This sense of crisis led President Eisenhower to dramatically increase and extend investment in education, assuaging the people that the U.S. would grow a mightier STEM workforce.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and newly established NASA began funding research and educational programs to fuel the space race. Total federal R&D spending quadrupled from $2.8 billion pre-Sputnik to $12 billion within a decade. Congress passed the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) in 1958, injecting over $1 billion into STEM education. The act established the nation’s first federal student loan program available for use at both private and public institutions. The Eisenhower Administration, followed by Kennedy’s, also invested in K–12 STEM curricula and teacher training. Significantly, the NDEA explicitly linked education to America’s national defense needs. And ultimately, the Sputnik response amplified America’s innovative spirit, extending STEM education support beyond a few research universities to a nationwide pursuit of discovery and progress.

Today’s Quasi-Cold War: ?

Thirty-five years since the end of the Cold War, geopolitical competition is bubbling up again today as we race for technological superiority. The Special Competitive Studies Project, a non-partisan security think tank, identified AI, semiconductors, and 5G as today’s key technologies for long-term leadership. These critical areas require a workforce with both advanced STEM expertise and specialized vocational skills. From AI researchers to semiconductor technicians, and from network architects to 5G installers, our 21st century competitiveness hinges on a symbiosis between university and vocational education.

However, there has been a policy imbalance between university programs and shorter-term credentials. The tilt has over-favored the former for far too long, with U.S. students owing $1.7 trillion in debt. Although in the most recent years, policymakers have started to guide a course-correction, advocating nation-wide support for shorter-term credentials. The CHIPS Act allocated $13.2 billion for STEM education and workforce development, underscoring public-private partnerships between community colleges and emerging tech industries. The American Rescue Plan allocated $40 billion to higher education institutions with an emphasis on community college workforce programs and student services. 29 states have created 59 short-term credential programs that total almost $4 billion in investments. From a bottom-up perspective, the student loan crisis has contributed to Americans' skepticism towards and disenchantment with a university education. Enrollments in two-year programs rose 16% in 2023, but in four-year programs only 1%. The number of 18-20 year old students who complete certificates has increased 11% YoY; and these young learners made up the largest portion of microcredential students in 2023, a category historically dominated by adult learners.

Our shift away from university education is sensible. We have a shortage of talent in vocational roles like welders and electricians. Some vocational wages are comparable to professional wages, yet under-pursued. As the CHIPS Act states, we need more vocational talent as we onshore advanced manufacturing and compete in industries key to our economic and national security. At the heart of it, diverse educational infrastructure is needed to support the diverse pathways to good-paying jobs. 

Be these as they may, there are potential long-term consequences that warrant a top-down rebalancing; we must ensure that our policies and rhetoric do not over-correct in championing shorter-term credentials at the expense of the university education. Geopolitical competition demands increasing the size and depth of our advanced STEM talent pool. Devaluing university education risks narrowing the volume of student interest we could otherwise cultivate for the kinds of expertise needed to charge our technological leadership.

But deeper than national security concerns, the shift away from university education is a fundamental disconnection with the American Dream. From the Civil War to WWII to the Cold War, each era has propelled us to enact ambitious policies that aim to realize James Truslow Adams' words, where each person regardless of circumstance “shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable.” Devaluing university education could dissuade individuals from exploring their full potential. 

Harvard economist Susan Dynarski, for instance, has pointedly illustrated this dynamic. Partnered with one of the nation’s top public universities, the University of Michigan, Dynarski’s team identified 4,000 low-income Michigan students whose test scores and grades were competitive for admission. The team ran an experiment where half of the students received personalized notice that they were eligible for the university’s free tuition benefit if they applied and got admitted. Closing this insight gap proved powerful as the intervention more than doubled the likelihood that low-income students applied to the university and also the share of those who ultimately enrolled. Dynarski further found that one-quarter of the enrollment effect was driven by students who otherwise would not have attended college at all. The psychological impact that perceived affordance has on low-income students’ decision-making is real.

Equally real is that people innately want to strive for their best outcome—their American Dream. It would be consequential if our policies and rhetoric favored one mode of education over another. These actions could inadvertently crimp people’s ability to make the best educational choices for their goals. An over-correction would induce not only labor market inefficiencies but also social bifurcation—where lower-income students, inculcated with the belief that pursuing university education is unwise, will limit the universe of their aspirations. An over-correction will systematically channel lower-income students into vocational paths while their higher-income peers continue pursuing university  for professional paths.

Decidedly, there are too many moving pieces in the education and workforce landscape for our policy and rhetoric to maintain biases. On one hand, the median earning for a bachelor's degree has been 35% higher than that of an associate's degree; on the other hand, the demand for vocational skills is estimated to outpace net new supply by 20-fold in the next decade, which signals wage growth. On one hand, AI might replace humans in service and labor jobs; on the other hand, the computing power to run AI is so costly that the accountant currently stands to be replaced before the technician. The labor market's deep entanglement with dynamic forces like emerging technologies and geopolitics makes it unlikely that we can design prescient policies. The federal government's higher education policy should therefore be rooted in the principle that no mode of education is inherently superior; we should instead equip people in choosing the path best for them.

Closing the Gap and Fostering Empowerment

To equip good decision-making, the federal government should facilitate closing the insight gap and fostering financial empowerment. The Obama Administration's College Scorecard initiative provides a starting ground for the first part in addressing information asymmetry. For all institutions that utilize federal aid, the Scorecard catalogs graduation rate, average annual cost, median debt, median earnings overall, and median earnings at the fields of study level. Unfortunately, awareness of this tool has largely been sequestered to academic researchers studying ROI. Socializing this database to schools and families would improve access to critical insight for students’ decision-making. The trove of data has the potential to not only steer students away from unsustainable debt but also kindle more interest in good-paying, advanced STEM fields that are vital for our innovation and competitiveness.

In tandem with making insight accessible, the next administration must renovate our mechanisms to finance higher education. A step in this direction would be provisioning block grants for state governments to create universal 529 college savings plans. Half of Americans do not even know what 529s are, representing an untapped resource in our educational arsenal. By automatically establishing a 529 account for every newborn, the administration would make a profound statement, underscoring our nation's commitment to supporting the prospect and agency of every person like how Lincoln, Roosevelt and Eisenhower strived to do in their eras. Practically, a universal 529 plan would minimize future debt for both the government and individual.

As interest on our national debt has surpassed our defense spending, the sobering reality portends an increasing struggle for resources. Areas like education and defense within our discretionary budget will be pitted against one another in a zero-sum game when, ironically, both are indispensable for economic and national security. The administration will have to practice a degree of financial austerity, leveraging existing infrastructure and focusing on solutions that are high-impact but low-cost such as the two aforementioned proposals.

Above all else, the vision from the bully pulpit must remain commensurate with the aspirations of its people. How will the next president propel us to reach the American Dream? The ever-looming war across the Pacific Ocean seems closer today than our grasp of this dream, yet it is precisely this tension that we ought to seize as our era's inflection point. The posture of the 47th presidency will decide if our trajectory soars or falls.

Nina Qin (MBA ‘26) is from Georgia. Prior to HBS, she received a B.S. from Georgia Tech and M.A. from Teachers College, Columbia University. She has worked in education, economic development, and government.