To Save Higher Ed, Melt Down Your Iron Gates
Why proactive community engagement beats reactive lobbying.
Editorial Note: This is a guest post in the “Summer School at College Towns” series.
Matthew J. Camp, PhD, is the founder of Campfire Strategies in Massachusetts, helping nonprofits develop political relationships, community power, and sustained engagement to advance their missions.
He served as Vice President of Education Policy at the Commission on Independent Colleges & Universities in New York. He spent 20 years in government and community engagement at Columbia University and Princeton University. His research focuses on higher education lobbying.
Enjoy. -Ryan
On August 3, 2026, U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon released a “national call to action” to universities to describe “to the American public your commitments to rigorous teaching, pathbreaking research, and national service,” continuing the Secretary’s attempt to align higher education with Trump administration goals.
In response to administration challenges like these, and the urgent need to recoup lost research and development dollars, some institutions doubled or even tripled their government relations budgets. But is writing bigger checks to lobbyists the best way to shore up higher education’s future?
The problem is, colleges tend to put time, effort, and money towards government and community relations in a reactive way, as a response to negative public policy. Indeed, my last two government relations positions at universities were created as reactions to deleterious state policies.
In addition to governmental relations, higher education should do more community engagement: a deeper, less transactional, and more service-oriented proactive relationship building. This allows a college to make strong inroads to elected officials and governmental agencies for the long run. It is valuable to not only develop crucial staff relationships, but also to connect to local officials who often move up to higher office. And it’s valuable to boost eroding student belonging, support communities and the health of our democracy, and help rebuild the lost trust in higher education.
Lobbying—the First Amendment right to petition government—is necessary and vital in a healthy democracy, but a deeper community engagement strategy is as important today because politicians from the left and the right target colleges as not doing their full public service, citing, among other factors, ideological narrowing and high tuition.
We see the Trump administration implementing gainful employment rules designed by the Obama administration. We see Republicans and Democrats at federal and local levels pushing endowment tax bills, and bills to revoke nonprofit status. We’ve seen communities advocating for payments in lieu of taxes and community benefit agreements with universities and even the newly opened Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.
The federal government may be creating a tsunami of challenges for higher education right now, so not losing sight of “the local” is more important than ever. Universities must prove themselves to their local communities, elected officials, students, and families. A thoughtful community engagement strategy can do this if it is proactive, positive, and sustained.
Add-On vs. Core Competency
Many universities are doing notable community engagement work. Hartwick College in New York places students in local nonprofit organizations and governmental agencies, with some undergraduate students even running for mayor. Tufts University’s Tisch College of Civic Life is a national leader in the study and practice of civic engagement, with students serving k-12 schools and the medical profession. And the University of Texas at Austin’s Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life keeps the University and its students deeply rooted in Texas state government and the Austin community. The All in Campus Democracy challenge and its partner Campus Compact give schools tools to embed voting and civic action within all elements of the student experience. For example, Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania went from a below-average participation rate to an impressive 75% student voter participation rate thanks to All In.
Community engagement should be a core competency of any college student to boost civic readiness. Colleges that place students in community, government, and policy organizations offer students career pathways and a look into how our civic world works. Place students in state and local government; give them credit and give them stipends. Those students will be more likely to vote and less likely to be jaded by politics. They’ll feel connected. They might even be happier citizens—and happier alumni.
Institutions have the structural tools to make this happen. In addition to linking tenure to community engagement, colleges can leverage their federal work-study funds. Federal work-study rules require that colleges must use at least 7% of their work-study allocations to employ students in community service jobs such as reading tutoring. Spending work-study funding this way is a great way to build local rapport and student experience. It is all the more important to demonstrate impact given recent administration and Congressional calls to end work-study as a whole.
Citizens, Not Just Workers
The debate about the purpose of higher education underlies this discussion, and nearly any major decision made by higher education leaders. Should higher education prepare students for jobs or to be well-rounded citizens? I argue it can be both, and community engagement is the perfect way to bridge the two goals.
On the one hand, one can’t blame higher education leaders for recalibrating their internal operations to rank higher in US News or Money Magazine’s list of best colleges for the money (disclosure: I did the data work on an early version of the latter). And one can’t blame leaders for adjusting their degree programs to avoid getting hit by gainful employment regulations.
On the other hand, it’s unlikely any college president would be able to sleep at night knowing that they were preparing students to just be cogs in the economy, which is changing by the minute due to AI. Colleges’ role in critical thinking and civic engagement is even more important given the rise of AI, which is better at the “whats” than the “hows” and “whys” of education. Enlightened leaders like Williams College President Maud Mandel understand the what/how difference and cultivate campuses as spaces to grapple with complex and conflictual ideas, teaching students “how to think” rather than “what to think”, and have civil, civic dialogues. Universities can be places for critical thinking, questioning, and yes, protest.
Since governmental support is no longer guaranteed, and now comes with many strings attached, colleges must support each other and show civic leaders the value of higher education. We need local leaders to go to bat for us. Show them data demonstrating that when a small private college goes under, the whole region suffers. Colleges have a tendency to split apart and compete when funding shrinks or when going gets tough. This is a counterproductive strategy; colleges should instead band together in regional, cross-sector coalitions across public and private, large and small.
Colleges can then remind elected leaders that college towns are unique places, ready-made to build community, and are rare intergenerational, interdisciplinary, and walkable places. They are local economic engines. They bring people together and are “third place” bastions against the loneliness epidemic by offering communities arts, sports, skill building, and even help with farms and home gardens. More Americans, especially our local civic leaders, need to see and feel these benefits, so open your doors and melt down your iron gates. As Walt Whitman, the poet of democracy, said, “Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!”
Mutual Transformation
Community engagement is not a one-way street. It is open, reciprocal relationship-building. A university shouldn’t throw their students at a community-based organization or civic group for its own sake. Students must be given training, guidelines, and accountability to ensure that they are not a burden on the external organization. Universities can place students to build capacity at these local groups, which include elected offices and education departments stretched thin.
A deeper community engagement changes the student, the community, and the college. This work can be humbling for an institution of higher education: the community organization might not want any help, or it might desperately need the help, but on its own terms, not the university’s. Higher education officials can start by listening, doing their due diligence on community needs—not unlike what a good and responsive elected official might do. Being present and showing up is crucial. It’s no wonder, then, that President Mandel considers herself in—and of—the community.
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