Triumphalism in Decline: A Critique of “They Attack Because We’re Strong”

In his recent Inside Higher Ed opinion piece, “They Attack Because We’re Strong,” Frank Fernandez argues that American higher education is under fire not because it is failing, but because it is too powerful and influential. He calls for a long-view perspective that celebrates the accomplishments of U.S. colleges and universities over the past century. But his essay—well-intentioned as it may be—reads less as a sober reflection and more as institutional nostalgia, untethered from the brutal realities of the present.

Fernandez’s triumphalism overlooks or distorts several truths. It is true that U.S. universities have had moments of undeniable achievement: scientific breakthroughs, professional training, and expansion of access. But to say “higher education won” is to ignore the hollowing out of public trust, the corporatization of academia, and the structural harm inflicted on millions of students and contingent workers. If this is victory, it has come at a staggering cost.

“Higher Education Won”? Who Lost?

One of the glaring absences in Fernandez’s narrative is any sustained acknowledgment of the student debt crisis—more than $1.7 trillion in outstanding loans that have left borrowers in financial limbo for decades. The author does not address how rising tuition, stagnating wages, and declining public investment have turned the promise of higher education into a burden for the working class and communities of color.

Nor does he wrestle with the implications of an adjunct majority workforce. Most college instructors today work under precarious contracts with little pay, no benefits, and no job security. This is not a sign of institutional strength. It is a labor crisis.

The rhetorical move to compare today’s struggles with the early 20th century glosses over the fact that the institutions that once expanded access are now increasingly exclusionary. Public flagships and elite privates alike are doubling down on selectivity, building billion-dollar endowments, and investing in luxury amenities while cutting humanities departments and hiking student fees.

If the past 100 years have brought expansion, the past 20 have brought erosion.

Legitimacy Cannot Be Willed into Being

Fernandez concedes that “our challenge in this new era is primarily one of legitimacy.” But he frames this as a problem of perception, not performance. He cites faculty critiques over gendered language in a voter turnout study as a distraction, implying that the real work of the academy is hindered by too much internal debate. But that line of thinking presumes that legitimacy can be restored by tone and unity, not by systemic reform.

Legitimacy is not gained by declaring relevance—it is earned through material impact. That means resisting extractive tuition models, ending the abuse of contingent labor, and seriously confronting how the industry has facilitated racial and economic stratification.

It also means acknowledging that some of the conservative critiques—about administrative bloat, about ideological insularity, about weak accountability mechanisms—are not entirely without merit. These issues are not the inventions of “Trump acolytes,” but of decades of elite capture and mission drift.

A House Divided

Perhaps most troubling is Fernandez’s call for national solidarity among faculty and institutional leaders, modeled after the early AAUP. But today’s higher education system is profoundly stratified. Community colleges face declining enrollments and funding cliffs. HBCUs and regional publics have long been underresourced. For-profit colleges exploit the most vulnerable. And elite institutions continue to hoard wealth and status.

There is no shared struggle here. There is no unified front. The idea that faculty from a state university in Texas or an adjunct at a California community college share the same institutional mission as leadership at Princeton or Stanford is a comforting illusion. Solidarity will not emerge without reckoning with this inequality.

Conclusion

Fernandez asks us to see the attacks on higher ed as a signal of strength. But what if these attacks are, in part, the result of decades of institutional failure? What if irrelevance is not imposed from the outside but cultivated from within—through inaccessibility, arrogance, and systemic exploitation?

If higher education is to have a future worth defending, it will require more than collective nostalgia and appeals to tradition. It will require a commitment to equity, transparency, and accountability—not just to the ideals of the past, but to the people failed by the system today.

Sources:

• U.S. Department of Education. “Student Loan Portfolio Summary.” Federal Student Aid.

• AAUP. “Data Snapshot: Contingent Faculty in US Higher Ed.”

• Center for American Progress. “The Cost of Cuts: A Look at the Ongoing Crisis in Public Higher Education.”

• Georgetown University CEW. “The College Payoff.”

• The Century Foundation. “How Public Colleges Have Been Undermined.”

• National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS).