[BrenBarn]

The article is saying that Trump's actions have illustrated how dependency on federal funds makes colleges vulnerable. The proposed solution is to eliminate that funding. But what I'm saying is that what is better is to remove the loopholes in our system that allow Trump to threaten it.

Rereading the article, it does seem to have a bit more generic right-wing-flavored "government shouldn't do stuff" than stuck with me on the first read, which may be why my logic was a bit unclear. Basically my point is that the government cannot use funding to control universities unless some individuals have discretion over how and whether to award that funding. I'm saying what should be reduced is not funding but discretion.

(I'm open to rethinking the system to make it less discretion-dependent; the article does have some ideas that could be relevant there that I wouldn't dismiss out of hand. But that an issue of how schools get funded, not whether.)