\u201cUniversities have been upping their lobbying game to try to be influential, either try to directly influence the White House or, probably in a lot of cases, trying to lobby members of Congress with perceived influence in the White House,\u201d said Thomas Holyoke, a political science professor at California State University, Fresno who has researched lobbying for over 20 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At least 11 universities and the University of California (UC) system shelled out more than $1 million each lobbying the government in the first nine months of the year. The UC system \u2014 which includes UC Berkeley and UC Los Angeles \u2014 spent more than $3.2 million this year on lobbying alone.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trailing behind it are Northwestern University, Columbia University and Johns Hopkins University, which collectively spent more than $4.9 million. Harvard University, which has challenged<\/a> the federal government in court, already spent $1 million this year on lobbying.<\/p>\n Yale University, also under pressure, spent more than $1.2 million. The University of Pennsylvania spent $1.4 million, while Cornell University and the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor both spent $1.1 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n Experts predict colleges will spend even more before the year\u2019s end as the Trump administration continues to shake up higher education. This month, the Department of Education and White House officials asked schools to sign on to a 10-point federal funding compact that sparked concerns<\/a> from university administrators. As of now, at least seven universities declined to sign it<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Universities lobbied on issues ranging from campus safety<\/a> to federal funding<\/a> to visas for international students in the first nine months of the year, as the federal government yanked allocated funds and initiated investigations into antisemitism on multiple campuses.<\/p>\n \u201cThe focus of our advocacy efforts, including direct lobbying, centers on issues that are important to students, faculty and staff on our campus, whether that’s federal funding for scientific research, student financial aid, immigration policy, college athletics or other matters,\u201d said Brian Clark, vice president for news and strategic campus communications at Brown University.<\/p>\n He added that both public and private universities, alongside other industries, had seen a rise in lobbying activity this year, especially before the passage of the \u201cbig, beautiful bill\u2019 \u2014 a tax and spending package that included wide-ranging funding cuts and changes affecting higher education<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n In their efforts to exert influence in Washington, universities have increasingly leaned on lobbying groups, spending up to eight times as much to retain influential firms than the year before.<\/p>\n At least 15 universities hired new lobbying firms after Trump won the election in November. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Duke University, Brown and Yale registered to lobby through firms this year after exclusively using in-house lobbyists all of 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n Vanderbilt University, after years of in-house lobbying, hired three new firms after Trump returned to office. Georgetown University also retained three lobbying firms.\u00a0<\/p>\n Firms hired included BGR Governmental Affairs, Ballard, S-3 Group and Miller Strategies \u2014 all of which have strong ties to the Trump administration or GOP lawmakers \u2014 and leading firms such as Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.\u00a0<\/p>\n BGR Governmental Affairs and Ballard\u2019s alumni include two members of Trump\u2019s Cabinet: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Attorney General Pam Bondi. According to Politico, these firms have seen<\/a> major boosts to their bottom lines during Trump 2.0.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cLobbying has become intensely personal, to where they\u2019re trying to find someone who has the ear of the president,\u201d said Robert Kelchen, head of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Tennessee.<\/p>\n \u201cNot just working through Congress \u2014 as has often been the case \u2014 but going through the president, as power in Washington has really flown away from Congress and toward the White House.\u201d<\/p>\n Kelchen said it isn\u2019t uncommon for universities to invest in in-house and firm lobbying.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think the question is, under the second Trump administration, which one of these strategies works better?\u201d He said. \u201cAnd I don’t think there’s a clear answer to that yet.\u201d<\/p>\n Even universities not directly in Trump\u2019s line of fire quietly began investing more in lobbying to counter the administration\u2019s far-ranging actions toward higher education. Rice University has spent $510,000 lobbying the federal government in 2025 and after years of outsourcing, the University of Notre Dame began pouring money into in-house lobbying.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Trump administration has created, very intentionally, a climate of fear throughout the country, and it’s leaving colleges and universities wondering who will be next in the crosshairs,\u201d said Mia McIver, the executive director of the American Association of University Professors.<\/p>\n But she called universities\u2019 lobbying efforts misguided.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt represents an effort to curry favor with an administration that is no friend to college students, no friend to college teachers,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n While spending by universities increased across the board in the first half of the year, some universities scaled back their spending in the third quarter.<\/p>\n Brown, Cornell and Northwestern cut back their spending by tens of thousands of dollars this past quarter, with Brown and Northwestern\u2019s spending falling by more than $100,000. Brown signed a deal<\/a> with the Trump administration, restoring $500 million in funding. Cornell and Northwestern have yet to negotiate a deal since the administration froze more than $1.8 billion at both schools earlier this year.<\/p>\n Jodie Ferise, a former lobbyist and college administrator, described Trump\u2019s budget bill as a flash point for colleges, with many private universities pouring money into trying to influence the bill\u2019s provisions.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe \u2018big, beautiful bill\u2019 caused tremendous anxiety in the industry as it went through its various iterations,\u201d Ferise said. \u201cThere was widespread concern that it was not being directed at a particular institution, we felt it was being targeted much more widespread across the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n The bill, which Trump signed into law July 4, had several consequential changes for colleges and universities buried in it. It included provisions<\/a> that allow the federal government to raise universities\u2019 endowment tax rate to up to 8 percent. It also placed limits<\/a> on federal student loans for graduate schools, potentially hurting the bottom lines of college graduate programs.<\/p>\n Following the bill\u2019s passage, Ferise said, universities may have had less of a reason to lobby the administration. During the past couple of months, universities\u2019 individual relationships with the Trump administration have also changed, with some capitulating or fighting it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Columbia and Harvard, which have faced heavy scrutiny from the Trump administration, maintained high levels of spending in the third quarter, though Harvard\u2019s decreased slightly. Columbia \u2014 which has already spent more than twice as much lobbying this year than it did previously \u2014 made a deal<\/a> with the administration to pay a $221 million settlement over three years, to restore $400 million in yanked federal funds.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n