(light music) - [Pamela] Tonight: What's Happening to local universities?

- I think higher education is in a big crisis.

- [Pamela] And did the burning of a British ship in Rhode Island waters ignite the American Revolution?

One man is going to court to prove it.

- We light the ship on the fire, flames get down to the powder magazine, and kaboom, the first fireworks ever on Narragansett Bay.

- Then, Governor McKee's troubling poll numbers with Ted Nesi.

(bright music) (bright music continues) Good evening, and welcome to "Rhode Island PBS Weekly."

I'm Pamela Watts.

Michelle San Miguel is on maternity leave for the next few months, and we wanna welcome Anaridis Rodriguez, who will be with us and filling in for Michelle.

And it's wonderful to have you here.

- Thank you, Pamela, it's wonderful to be here.

I look forward to working with you and the "Weekly" team.

For our first story tonight, we take a look at the intense pressure that higher education is under amid massive change in Washington and ongoing financial issues that predate the Trump administration.

Our contributor Steph Machado recently sat down with Dan Egan, president of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, which represent the state's eight private colleges.

- [Steph] Dan Egan, thank you for joining me.

- Thank you, Steph, it's a pleasure to be with you.

- So let me just start big picture.

Is higher education in crisis?

- Higher education is in a big crisis, and if you look at the plan 2025 and what the Republican Party and this current administration are trying to achieve, self-described as forcing a recession on higher education, they are well on their way to trying or well on their way to achieving that.

- Elaborate on that, what is happening?

- Oh, there's a number of things, started right off in the first 100 days with a number of executive orders by the administration focused on DEI, pausing research grants, just to name a few, and reconnoitering this week with aggressive crackdown on foreign students and blocking foreign students from attending our institutions.

Clearly there's a desire to change the way higher education operates.

And I think at this point, coupled with the pending reconciliation and the budget bill, there will be an opportunity, or there will be a chance that the great harm will be reflected on the sector going forward and for long-term damage, quite frankly.

- What is the effect, not only on Brown, but also on the state, if these cuts to scientific research continue?

- The impact is about 238 million in research dollars.

That's actually what comes into the state.

If you were to cut that by 40, 20, 50%, whatever it may be, it's a huge impact.

And with that lost revenue, there will be layoffs and/or reductions in staffs, just by the nature of not having the research dollars to come in to perform that research.

That's just the economic reality, and that will harm small businesses, local businesses, local communities, when folks are no longer working in part of the community and part of the economic engine that is higher ed.

And then the long-term risk to science and healthcare, and what is happening on these campuses is really gonna be stalled and create some long-term problems for the country and our state.

- President Trump has threatened to cut about half a billion dollars from Brown, has not specified exactly what would be cut or over how many years.

If that comes to fruition, what does that mean for Brown University?

- Well, it would mean a serious reduction, I think, in their workforce.

I think the- - Layoffs?

- Layoffs, I think and unfortunately, I think the sector in the Northeast in particular, being blue states, I think is hurt more than others.

The number of students enrolling or ability to enroll in higher ed in the Northeast has declined dramatically.

And so institutions don't have the amount of students, incoming students, that they used to have.

And so there's this race to recruit students from other parts of the country, other regions.

But quite frankly, the demographics, the number of students coming across the country is smaller.

- [Steph] Those enrollment problems are part of why Johnson & Wales University recently said it will lay off 91 faculty members, about 5% of its workforce.

- We're there right now.

There will be a downsizing of the workforce, given the fiscal pressures being forced upon us by Washington.

- What can be done to reverse this problem?

- A lot is gonna lay in the hands of the United States Senate as the reconciliation bill moves forward beginning, I think, as early as next week.

Those cuts hurt the sector across the board.

I think a lot of people are mistaken to think that this is solely about the elite institutions, the Harvards, the Browns, the MITs, and it's not.

This is an attack on the entire higher education sector in our country.

- [Steph] Among Egan's concerns, a proposal in the House-passed bill to strip Pell Grants from many part-time students.

- Not every student's a traditional student.

There are students that have to work 30, 40 hours a week and just can't carry 12 credits or 15 credits to meet that mark.

And eight credits or nine credits or six will be the right, you know, it's gonna take them longer, but their financial situation and their family situation and their economic situation require that, and now you're limiting that tool.

It's very damning.

- There's criticism that Brown and other liberal arts colleges in the Northeast have become so far politically left that they are hostile to people who are more conservative or moderate.

Are the universities harming their own ability to get more students from other parts of the country to come here?

- I think that argument is not true.

I mean, I think that you tend to have a more left-leaning base on a campus just by the nature of the inquisitive nature and mind of young people.

I think institutions across our membership know and value the need to have diverse thought.

Quite honestly, I think the culture war that's attacking it is really harming the economic engine that is higher ed more than it's changing the culture of campuses.

- Right, President Trump has attacked particularly Ivy League universities for the pro-Palestinian protests that have taken place, saying that the campuses are anti-Semitic.

What do you say to that?

- I think it was troubling, some of the debate and protests that were seen on campuses and I can understand that.

I think it's bigger than that.

I think it's about, again, forcing a recession on higher ed.

I'm not so sure that that's the sole focus.

I think the sole focus is changing higher ed's ability to do what it does.

- You sort of see it as an excuse?

- It's a list of grievances I think the administration has against institutions, and maybe an appropriate one.

But I think at the end of the day, they've been pretty clear what they're trying to achieve here.

- The Trump administration has paused student visas for international students.

But what does that do to Rhode Island's universities?

- It's significant.

I think it's about 5,000 students attend, international students attend institutions in Rhode Island.

It's about 10% of the population.

And so you know, quite frankly, not all of them are gonna be targeted.

There are, you know, as this week showed, there's a renewed push on Chinese foreign students.

You know, so a percentage of that 10% is a big number of our marketplace and of our students that, again, we talked about our full-pays that come here, spend tons of money traveling, tons of money in the local economy, rent, and so forth, and then help really move the infrastructure along for higher ed to provide education for all Americans.

- Are international students more likely to pay the full sticker price?

- I think typically, yeah.

I think typically, you know, they don't have the benefit of the Federal Aid Programs, you know the benefit of the Student Aid Programs, but typically, yeah, we see that they tend to be full-pays.

- And let's talk about the high cost of tuition, because some of these private colleges are charging 80, $90,000 a year, including room and board.

That has to be contributing to the enrollment issues, no?

- I don't think so.

Again, we've seen record enrollment across the country.

We have declining enrollment in the Northeast to a degree.

I think the sticker price, which is referred to 80, 90,000, is what very few people pay.

- Meaning, after scholarships?

- After scholarships, grants- - Aid.

- Grant aid and support, which is typically at most institutions about 50% less than what the sticker price is.

- College endowments started to be taxed for the first time during Trump's first term, and the House Republicans' new budget proposal would dramatically increase that tax.

Currently, Brown is the only university in Rhode Island whose endowment reaches the threshold to be taxed.

How will that impact Brown?

- I think we're talking in the tens or 20 millions of dollars of tax.

I mean, it's legitimate dollars.

And it's just another cut, right, combined with an approximate 25 million in hits to NIH funding, combined with, you know, an ongoing deficit, combined with all of the pressures that they have.

You know, you start to have some real financial impacts to any institution.

- There are obviously people who are not super sympathetic to Brown's financial troubles.

They see it as an elite Ivy League institution that doesn't contribute enough money to the city.

They don't have to pay taxes.

They obviously make a payment in lieu of taxes.

That's voluntary.

What do you say to those critics?

- Well, I think the economic impact of the eight schools, the four particularly in Providence and Brown alone, you know, we're the second largest non-government employee sector in the state, education, so you know, we employ quite a few Rhode Islanders.

And I think that, when you look at what each institution does, every one of our institutions has some formal or informal agreement with their host community.

The one that Brown and its three partners in the city, Providence College, Johnson & Wales, and RISD, completed two years ago, is pretty phenomenal gift to the city.

I mean, it's a contribution that they do as a partnership.

And we're talking $177 million over 20 years.

It's impactful.

And I think, you know, for those that question the value, Brown, the economic impact, you need to go look at some of those local businesses, those pizza shops, those dry cleaners.

- What is your biggest fear?

- I think we're living in it right now.

Yeah, I think we're at a point where we're questioning the value of higher education.

I find it ironic that around the globe, we're the envy of the world in higher education.

But yet, in our own country, from not only our leaders, but the general public, we're not seen in even a similar equal light.

- And to hear more of Steph's interview, please go to the "Rhode Island Report" podcast at globe.com/rhodeisland.

Up next: as the country begins to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, the semiquincentennial, Rhode Island honors an event that happened four years earlier when local colonists burned a British revenue schooner, the HMS Gaspee.

To many, this was the first act of rebellion against England's rule.

But as we first reported in June of 2024, that event is rarely mentioned as every school child learns about the Boston Tea Party and the shot heard round the world.

So who really started the tiff with the British?

One local man believes he's got the answer.

- Well, all we have to do is look to good old Harvard up in Massachusetts, where historians were writing the history of the American Revolution.

And they didn't wanna travel very far, and they found this story about hurling tea into the harbor, and they made a big deal out of it.

- [Pamela] And that big deal up in Boston more than 250 years ago has been known ever since as the moment American colonists would begin to break away from the empire.

But could they have gotten that all wrong?

(guns cracking) (flutes sounding) Was a small group of Rhode Islanders really responsible for sparking America's fight for freedom?

There are those who ardently believe so.

- [Marchers] Boston's not the first shot.

- [Pamela] Every year, Warwick celebrates Gaspee Days, commemorating a naval assault by local colonists taking aim at the British customs schooner the HMS Gaspee.

The annual parade runs right past the spot offshore where the first crack at freedom took place.

Most history books credit Massachusetts as the cradle of the American Revolution, but.

- [Group] Just a minute, man, Boston's not the first shot.

- [Pamela] That's the motto being engaged in a war of words with neighboring Massachusetts.

It's a campaign to drum up what some claim is a more accurate historical record.

The ringleader, Bob Burke, restaurateur, raconteur, and revolutionary?

- Total revolutionary, absolutely.

We're gonna create a revolution here in Rhode Island, and we're going to take back our rightful claim to history.

So where are you all from?

- [Pamela] Burke is rallying support at his Pot au Feu restaurant in Providence, where he's added on a tavern as a visitor's center.

Tourists from around the country stop here to learn about the nation's history through food.

They sample colonial favorites, chowder and cod.

Also on the menu, a discussion of Burke's bold action to set the record straight.

- And what we have done is is that we have actually sent out cease and desist orders to all those folks, Lexington, Concord, Boston, Massachusetts.

- [Pamela] Burke has even sent these legal documents to the secretary of the interior.

He believes it is a clear case of identity theft, and Massachusetts is reaping a huge economic benefit.

- The Gaspee really is disturbing, because you go to Boston, and my gosh, they are earning, truly, billions of dollars from tourists from around the world who crave to hear the story of freedom.

There are laws against identity theft.

There's a law against defrauding people by telling them that you've got something, that it's authentic and genuine, and you sell it to them, and they pay good money for that.

- Isn't this all just a tempest in a teapot?

- No, no, no.

Boston's a tempest in a teapot.

Rhode Island is the true beginnings of the Revolution.

- [Pamela] That first major act of armed rebellion and bloodshed took place on the night of June 9, 1772, 18 months before the Boston Tea Party and three years before the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

Merchant ships of Rhode Island smugglers were being boarded and subjected to taxation without representation from the royal revenue ship the HMS Gaspee.

- So you can imagine that Lieutenant William Duddingston, the captain of that ship, was not a well-liked man in the colony of Rhode Island.

They disliked him so much, they all decided that they would trick him into running aground.

- [Pamela] While stranded on a sandbar at low tide in the moonlight.

- They row out right from that wharf, eight longboats with muffled oars, being very quiet.

They get down off Pawtuxet to where he's run aground.

They spread out, surround him.

They call the captain out.

He comes out in his nightshirt.

Joseph Bucklin takes a shot, hits him.

He goes down, the 29 sailors panic.

Our sailors clamor aboard, take them prisoner.

We light the ship on fire, flames get down to the powder magazine and kaboom, the first fireworks ever on Narragansett Bay.

- [Pamela] A king's ransom was offered for the names of the raiders, yet even with the huge bounty, no one revealed the identities of the patriot perpetrators.

- And the reason that our own university, Brown, wasn't writing about it is because they didn't wanna put the names down and tell the story.

Who knew when the king might send his armies and navies back and take over the United States?

- [Pamela] Burke, a fourth-generation Rhode Islander, is so passionate about local history, he created the Independence Trail, a three-mile green line walking tour through Providence with 36 historic stops.

- Increasingly now, people wanna do it on their phone, so we're now adapting our app.

- For now, he's content to stir the pot, pitting Massachusetts' Minuteman against Rhode Island's Independent Man.

But after a few more letters to cease and desist, he says he's prepared to take his claim to federal court.

You're serious about this?

- I'm absolutely serious.

- [Pamela] He says, especially today, in a world confronting fake news and AI.

- There's a very, very serious side to this that addresses this issue of what information can freely be disseminated, and what the obligations are for the people who are disseminating that information to make sure that that information is as accurate as possible.

And in America, thank God, our founding fathers established the courts, and the courts are there to settle these kinds of differences between two states.

- You don't think the judge is gonna throw this out?

- I think that the judge is going to do exactly what any serious federal judge does, he will, we hope, hear the evidence, listen to both sides of the case, argue it out.

- [Pamela] And he says the timing is right.

There may be a groundswell of interest in his case because 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.

(fire hissing) In the meantime, Burke is having a bit of fun lighting up what he hopes will be a battle royal for first dibs in American history books.

- If we can engender that pride for generations of Rhode Islanders to come, think of what we can do with that confidence.

Think of what the state can become with the confidence that it has in its heritage, in its grounding, in its foundation.

You know, look at this white hair.

I'm not gonna be on this planet forever.

And if I can leave that as a legacy to the people of Rhode Island, a belief in themselves, a belief in what they did and how they did it, then I think that that will be something worthwhile to have left behind.

- You'll find stories like this one about our state's part in the Revolution across all platforms of Rhode Island PBS and The Public's Radio.

We'll be reporting and celebrating the country's 250th anniversary throughout the next year.

And finally, on tonight's episode of "Weekly Insight," Anaridis and our contributor, WPRI 12's politics editor, Ted Nesi, discuss the latest financial challenges facing Providence.

But first, a new poll reveals the governor's job approval rating dips to an all-time low.

- Ted, it's good to be with you.

The University of New Hampshire's Survey Center recently released one of its periodic polls of Rhode Island voters.

Let's talk about some of the results.

First, a worrying result for Democratic Governor Dan McKee as he looks ahead to his reelection race next year.

UNH putting the governor's job approval rating at just 19% and his disapproval rating at 71%.

Republican President Donald Trump fared significantly better in the survey.

UNH finding Trump's job approval at 37% in Rhode Island, with 61% disapproving.

Ted, on Governor McKee, these are the types of poll numbers that make people wonder whether or not he could actually run again in 2026.

- Definitely, it's only fueled more speculation about that, Anaridis.

I mean, 19% is just a dismal finding.

It's the territory former Governor Lincoln Chafee got into, and he was not able to run for reelection when that happened to him.

You know, you talk to the McKee team and McKee himself, they point out to other polls that are somewhat better for him.

But you know, none of them are super robust, you know?

The best one recently was in the 40s, and that was a few months ago now.

Hence, the skepticism, as you say.

Especially when you already have former CVS executive, Helena Foulkes, she hasn't announced, but she's clearly running again in the Democratic primary against McKee.

She's already raised twice as much money as him too.

So I think that's part of why there's so much feeling of will he be able to run.

- And 74% of respondents of this poll also said that he should not seek reelection.

However, there is no indication that that's going to be the case.

- Just the opposite, right?

He just announced, McKee, that he's just hired a campaign manager for his 2026 reelection race.

He's hired a finance director to help boost his fundraising.

And I think that was a shot across the bow to everyone at the State House and in Rhode Island politics saying, "Don't write me off.

I'm not going anywhere."

You know, we know McKee's very competitive.

And I think it would be hard for him to walk away, and I think he wants to send that message to everybody.

- It seems like he's going to have to convince a lot of people.

- Quite a few people still need to be convinced, I think that's fair to say.

- We'll make sure to watch this closely as the midterm election gets closer next year.

Let's talk about Providence, where Mayor Brett Smiley is still working to win General Assembly approval of a 7.5% tax hike to pay for a Rhode Island Department of Education settlement that would fund millions into the public schools.

But no surprise that this is not a popular proposal.

Voters went to the City Council and overwhelmingly said they can't afford a higher tax bill.

And last week, Representative Grace Diaz was on Spanish talk radio and received really tough criticism for her vote in approving this proposal, voters telling her that they will not vote for her again.

- I'm not surprised, right, Anaridis.

People don't like their taxes going up.

They really don't like their taxes going up in a well above what's usually allowed, which is the whole reason Smiley's having to go to the General Assembly for authorization here.

This is a city with an already high tax burden.

So the backlash does not shock me, but it's something that all these elected officials have to deal with right now.

- The mayor also defended his approach during a recent appearance on channel 12 and tried to reassure taxpayers that this is the right path.

Let's take a listen to what he had to say.

- I made the cuts that didn't affect services in this proposal.

The next round of cuts are gonna affect services.

That means libraries are gonna be closed a couple days a week, some of our pools and rec centers won't be opened every day like they used to, no new school construction, and a diminished city services.

This is the only time that we're gonna have to ask permission from the General Assembly to go over the 4% cap.

- Okay.

- Because Providence is growing, which is a good thing, we have a lot of new taxpayers every year.

- His message echoing what members of the legislature have been saying is that the alternative would've been much worse.

And you said this before, you really connect this to the city's long-term pension problem.

- Yeah, and you know, peoples' eyes glaze over, I understand, when you start talking about pension benefits and retirement obligations, Anaridis.

But you know, this goes all the way back to 2010, right after the 2010 financial crisis in Providence, where Mayor Angel Taveras committed the city.

You know, he did his best to clean up the pension fund, but committed the city to paying down its obligations that have been built up over generations.

Providence owes, I think, roughly $1 billion currently is the shortfall there.

And it's gonna take a long time to work that down, and it's still one of the worst funded systems in the country.

So just in the last two years, the mayor had to put, I believe it's roughly $13 million more into the pension fund above what was already going in.

Well, he needs 15 million for this schools issue that you mentioned earlier.

So the amount of money being shoveled into the pension fund every year is going to continue to put pressure on the city budget through 2040, which is how long it's supposed to take them to pay down this debt.

So unfortunately, I think this might be something taxpayers have to sorta get used to in Providence until that pension issue is dealt with.

- Not good news, but Ted, it's good to see you.

- Good to see you.

- And that's our broadcast this evening.

Thank you for joining us.

I'm Pamela Watts.

- And I'm Anaridis Rodriguez.

We'll be back next week with another edition of "Rhode Island PBS Weekly."

You can now listen to our entire broadcast every Monday night at 7:00 on The Public's Radio.

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Goodnight.

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