At home of ‘Harvard of the Midwest,’ Trump’s populist war against higher ed hits differently

NORTHFIELD — The Trump administration’s war on higher education — cutting more than $10 billion in research grants and taking aim at international students — has trickled down to the leafy quads of this small town south of the Twin Cities, home to two elite private colleges that put this otherwise quiet community on the map.

Carleton College, consistently ranked among the nation’s top liberal arts colleges and with a sticker price of more than $90,000, has already lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grants. International students make up more than a tenth of the enrollment, and at least 10 incoming freshmen are struggling to get visas.

St. Olaf College, too, prides itself on its international focus as a school built by Norwegian immigrants and historically welcoming to outsiders. With a price tag approaching $80,000, St. Olaf bills itself as among the top 20 baccalaureate colleges in the country for international enrollment. Last year, students from more than 100 countries attended St. Olaf.

Some international students at the two schools chose to stay in Northfield for the summer, fearing that going home could mean being unable to re-enter the United States. Locals offered free housing and scrambled to help them find jobs and internships.

Yet such elite higher education institutions are in a precarious situation, their future uncertain and their perceived elitism held up as a case study in America’s class divisions. Using elite universities as a symbol for what it brands out-of-touch academia, the Trump administration has accused schools such as Harvard, Columbia and Northwestern of fostering antisemitism and anti-conservatism. The administration has threatened to cut off or limit massive amounts of federal funds: Harvard has $9 billion at stake, according to The New York Times, while the administration canceled $400 million in grants to Columbia, targeted Cornell for $1 billion in cuts and is rescinding $790 million from Northwestern.

Among area conservatives, the nonprofit colleges can be portrayed as a drain on resources while not paying a fair share of property taxes, from which they are mostly exempt. However, Carleton and St. Olaf make $80,000 annual contributions to Northfield.

The slower, contemplative academic approach to local issues can rankle business owners. Local politics can seem controlled by the colleges: The current mayor works at Carleton, the previous mayor was a St. Olaf grad.

And the City Council, some local conservatives say, can push a liberal agenda, such as new bike lanes that they portray as unnecessary. The council’s makeup reflects the town-vs.-gown dynamic: A townie and Marine who works in construction, a Carleton grad who owns the Content Bookstore downtown, greater Minnesota’s first trans man to hold elected office.

Just outside city limits, where Northfield blue bleeds into Rice County red, resentment toward perceived elitism becomes more pronounced. While nearly three-quarters of Northfield voters chose Democrat Kamala Harris for president in 2024, more than half of Rice County voters picked Republican Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, a housing crunch has priced many blue-collar families out of the market. Within the 178-square-mile school district, fewer than 30 houses are for sale. Median listing prices have surpassed $400,000.

A frequent annoyance for local conservatives is that the 5,000 college students who live in Northfield only temporarily skew the electorate of this riverside town of 21,000.

“It’s not a town pulling itself apart, but there are divisions,” said former Carleton political science professor Steven Schier. “A lot of that is led by lower-income, long-term townies not happy with a City Council largely driven by the academic community.”

The divide, some say, is written in the sidewalks, with poems stamped in concrete in more than 260 spots.

“If you want a hardware store, go to Faribault,” said Doug Jones, a vocal conservative who lives on farmland outside Northfield. “If you want poetry, go to Northfield.”

Since Trump began his second term, higher education has been a main front in the culture wars: Are upper-crust colleges and universities part of what makes America great or are they beset by institutional bloat and elitism?

Trump and his supporters believe that higher education does not represent conservative viewpoints.

“If we spend all this money, shouldn’t we have a say?” said David Hann, former chair of the Minnesota Republican Party. “The answer is, don’t spend the money. Don’t buy-down tuition by taxpayer dollars. There’s no question that would be a significant disruption in the status quo. But is that a bad thing, given that the status quo is so bloated and expensive and out of touch?”

For academics, the attacks on higher education are as confusing as they are counterproductive to the country.

“Talented students from around the world are clamoring to come to America, and we don’t think that’s a good thing?” said Alison Byerly, Carleton’s president.

“The idea that we would be shutting down one of our major sources of influence, prestige and economic value in the world for no particular reason other than the government wants to make a point about elite institutions? It’s hard to decipher what the point even is.”

Both Carleton and St. Olaf push back against the division by staying involved in the community. Carleton students each year transport 70,000 pounds of food from grocery stores to the local food shelf, and St. Olaf students who are certified nursing assistants work at rural health clinics. College football players run the local youth flag football program. Carleton donated $2 million toward Northfield’s new high school.

And the elite-sounding costs can be misleading; the majority of the schools’ students receive financial aid.

“The cure to the ivory tower image is to have our faculty, staff and students out in the community as well as bringing the community to the Hill,” said St. Olaf President Susan Rundell Singer.

The overarching feeling in Northfield toward the two private colleges is pride. They’ve been part of the city’s fabric since the start: Both were founded soon after Northfield was established in 1855.

Even if townies sometimes complain, they realize the benefits of being a small town on the Cannon River with a global outlook. Residents use amenities like St. Olaf’s 430-acre Natural Lands preserve or Carleton’s 800-acre Cowling Arboretum. The robust public library is attributed to the town’s intellectualism. The vibrant theater and arts scene is unusual for the 58th-largest city in Minnesota.

A recent study found the two colleges generate an annual economic impact of more than $300 million in Rice County, sustaining more than 2,000 jobs and creating nearly $17 million in local and state taxes.

But when a town’s main industry is intellectualism, the tax base is unbalanced.

When Post Consumer Brands took over the Malt-O-Meal factory a decade ago, there was a community-wide gasp: Would one of Northfield’s top employers close? The facility continues to operate, but the city’s moment of panic underscored the overreliance on higher ed.

That overreliance means high property taxes, which compounds the problem of attracting new industry.

Property taxes have increased 50% in the past four years. Jones said he believes the colleges should contribute $2 million annually to lower them.

Both tenured professors and working Joes see threats to higher education as a threat to Northfield’s lifeblood.

“We, the quote-unquote ‘elite institutions,’ have this very large symbolic influence,” said Byerly, the Carleton president. “It’s very weird to have that turned on its head.

“Some of it comes about through the politicization of higher ed, some of which we bear some responsibility for. But a lot is a deliberate effort to undermine higher education by associating it with political views and implying there’s a much stronger ideology at work than anyone who is in higher ed would say.”

On the Carleton campus on a recent afternoon, students tossed Frisbees between giant bur oak trees near the Bald Spot, the main quad. Inside a building nearby, a couple hundred local high school and middle school theater kids gathered for a screening of “Karate Kid: Legends,” where the film’s star, Northfield native Ben Wang, sat in the front row and talked about the joy of growing up there.

“A lot of my friends were the kids of professors, but a lot of my friends were the kids of farmers,” Wang said. “I took piano lessons at St. Olaf from a piano professor, a music Ph.D. professor who was offering lessons to kids.

“My personal lived experience is quite different than the norm you get with young actors in Hollywood, and that’s to my advantage.”

Rich Larson, who runs the local radio station, KYMN, falls in the more liberal part of Northfield’s population. But in a former life he was “Northfield’s favorite bartender,” as he puts it. Between bartending and community radio, Larson has his finger on the pulse of this town’s divide.

Sure, he said, college folks sip craft beer at Imminent Brewing while townies drink Coors Light at the VFW. But as overheated as things can get on social media — and as intense as the national political talk often gets — everyday life is still mostly content.

“It’s not the Sharks and the Jets,” Larson said. “Every town like Northfield that’s got great colleges in a rural area, you’re going to have X amount of snobs and X amount of rednecks in pickup trucks. Those two people aren’t going to understand much about each other.

“But it’s not like we’re star-bellied Sneetches,” he added in a reference to characters in a Dr. Seuss story about prejudice, “and you’re not a star-bellied Sneetch so you can’t hang out with me. We just get along.”