In April 2025, the president of Yale University, USA, appointed a committee of professors from the university ‘to examine the problem of declining trust in higher education’, to engage with a variety of perspectives from within and outside and to look into a few important issues like the problem of self-censorship on campus. After wide-ranging deliberations, the committee submitted its report in April 2026. 

It is a wide-ranging report which discusses issues of tuition prices and admission policy, political bias on campus and technology in the classroom, self-censorship and university governance, and grade inflation. While the report is meant to be specific to Yale, it looks at the larger picture and draws lessons that any university administration can learn from. In this context, I briefly summarise two key aspects of the report. 

The first key aspect is the issue of declining ‘trust in higher education’. For centuries, universities have existed ‘to preserve, create and share knowledge’. This is the essential basis for public trust in higher educational institutions. However, in recent years, according to public surveys, almost 70% of Americans in 2025 believed that higher education in their country was headed in the wrong direction. The report identifies three key factors behind this perception. First, the soaring price of higher education in the United States; second, the complex college admissions system (who gets in and why); and third, a range of issues........

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