What’s in a name? The new partisan battlefront in college sector

Ideological conflict in US higher education is moving into the realm of naming rights, with activists on both the left and the right fighting upstart entrants on the grounds of protecting students from confusion.

In the state of New Hampshire, a partisan producer of classroom instructional videos, Prager University, has been accused by a gubernatorial candidate of illegally using the “university” term in its name to hide its ideological agenda.

In Florida, meanwhile, state officials threatened legal action against an effort to privately revive the New College of Florida, the public institution whose leaders were pushed out by a governing board of partisan appointees.

New College had long been known as a politically progressive campus until Ron DeSantis, the state’s Republican governor and a 2024 candidate for US president, engineered the ousting of its leadership. Now, some former New College faculty are organising to teach free and subsidised courses under the name Alt New College.

Attorneys representing New College wrote to Alt New College demanding that it stop using the “confusingly similar” name. The attorneys cited New College’s top national rankings in the liberal arts – built up over decades ahead of the DeSantis takeover – in warning Alt New College: “Our client views its intellectual property rights as one of its most vital assets which must be vigorously protected.”

Alt New College subsequently agreed to rename itself Alt Liberal Arts.

Prager University, meanwhile, is being pursued by Cinde Warmington, one of five members of New Hampshire’s executive council, an entity that shares some of the policymaking powers of the state’s governor. Ms Warmington, a Democrat standing for governor in 2024, has asked the state’s attorney general to disqualify PragerU from operating in New Hampshire, on the basis of a state law that limits the use of the terms “college” and “university” to entities incorporated for that purpose.

Her more fundamental concern, however, centres on PragerU’s expansion into the realm of public education. Prager produces videos in the style of classroom instruction that convey right-wing perspectives on public policy issues, and several states – including Florida, Texas, Oklahoma and Montana – have authorised them for use in their schools.

“It only further blurs the line between credible education and partisan ideology,” Ms Warmington said.

According to Christina Pretorius, the policy director at Reaching Higher NH, an advocacy group for public education and college preparation, part of the problem is a New Hampshire programme known as Learn Everywhere, and similar provisions in other states, which allows outside vendors to supply public school content that counts for academic credit.

Learn Everywhere has more than a dozen suppliers, generally running non-ideological activities such as a robotics competition that counts towards science education and a karate studio that is approved as a physical education course. But that arrangement has always posed risks to academic integrity and college preparation, and PragerU has emerged as an especially problematic case, Ms Pretorius said.

Even more broadly, said another expert, the Alt New College and PragerU cases show the danger of the poorly regulated environments in which they are allowed to operate.

PragerU probably faces no real legal risk over its choice of name because the words “college” and “university” are pretty widely used by various businesses, said Jack Schneider, a professor of education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Alt New College faced a greater challenge on grounds of trademark infringement, he said.

But either way, the two cases help to show “how dangerous a mostly unregulated advertising landscape can be”, Professor Schneider said. “Whereas purveyors of pharmaceuticals have to play by a clear set of rules designed to protect consumers, those peddling educational snake oil can largely act with impunity.”

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com