Higher Education Lobbying

The first year of the second Trump administration inspired a bonanza of federal lobbying across sectors. Higher education was no exception. Parts of the sector — including major research universities and some of the wealthiest liberal-arts colleges — increased their spending on outside lobbying firms by millions of dollars, in aggregate, between 2024 and 2025. Whether they were trying to fend off attacks on their own institutions or influence policies that affect large swaths of higher ed, it wasn’t always clear what they got for their money, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports.