University leaders in the US should spend their time engaging with the Trump administration rather than acting as “cheerleaders-in-chief” for their own institutions, according to a college president.

In the face of unprecedented reforms to the US sector, universities have expressed differing opinions on how involved they should be with federal lawmakers – with some being heavily criticised for making deals or negotiating.

“We have taken the approach, and this goes well before the re-election of Donald Trump, that it was important to be engaged across the political aisle with both parties, because policy that comes out of Washington DC has really profound impact on our institutions,” said Andrew Martin, chancellor of Washington University in St Louis (WashU).

Martin, who has for appeasing Trump, said the sector should be more “self-reflective” about the things it could be doing better, and that not engaging leaves it in “quite a vulnerable position”.

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“Our job as a university president or chancellor is to be the cheerleader-in-chief, and a significant amount of our jobs is fundraising, alumni engagement and political advocacy.

“In my experience, going into Washington and telling everybody how great you are doesn’t really get you that far, but to actually have an honest conversation [about] what’s working, what’s not working and what the government could do to help, that tends to get you a little bit further along.”

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Martin, WashU’s chancellor since 2019, said even though some of Trump’s proposed actions around endowments and federal research funding would be “catastrophic” for the sector, he thinks honestly is still the best policy.

“One of the things that gets you in trouble as a leader is when you say different things to different people. I just keep saying the same things over and over again to everybody. I think that that level of candour and transparency is a good thing, at least for us.”

The political scientist said an unsustainable level of federal funding is one of the challenges that the sector faces, along with the cost of education, return on investment for some degrees, a lack of ideological diversity on campus, and the demographic cliff-edge.

But he added: “The fundamental challenge is that we’ve lost the trust of the American people, and for a set of institutions which have enjoyed broad bipartisan support really since the end of World War II, that puts us in a quite a challenging place.”

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Although WashU did provide some feedback to the federal government about Trump’s “Compact” deal, Martin said it was a “document that I certainly wouldn’t sign as chancellor” and that staff, students and the board of trustees were aligned on that.

Alongside Vanderbilt University president Daniel Diermeier, Martin is trying to establish a new group called “Universities for America’s Future”, which he said will be part of broader advocacy efforts to “engage the right people around the importance of research”.

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com