Simulating a Trump victory and what it could mean for colleges and universities

How might a Donald Trump election victory impact higher education?

Last week we explored this on the Future Trends Forum through an interactive session. With the help of colleagues I created a scenario in two parts: first, the week after the November 5th election; second, the week after Trump’s re-inauguration. My goal was to make this story credible in order to encourage participants to think and plan ahead, should such an event come to pass. I based this scenario on a mix of Project 2025, Agenda 47, and a sense of Trump’s ongoing statements.

Today I’d like to share notes on the scenario exercise, including a full recording and extracts from the very active chat session. And this week we’ll run another scenario, based on an alternative future: a Harris victory.

Here are the slides we used to anchor presentations and discussion. And here’s the full recording:

I led the session. Tom Haymes expanded on the political science and government aspects.

For the chat, I’m going to organize it by topics and share quotes, rather than just posting the whole 2685 words. All comments are anonymized. I’ve edited for typos and…