Trump’s Trade School Idea Is a $3 Billion Winner

The president recently expressed his support for a great idea: investing an additional $3 billion in trade schools. That he suggested taking the money from scientific and medical research grants allocated to Harvard University — a counterproductive move unlikely to survive a court challenge — should not detract from the idea’s merit. Nor should it obscure the issue’s strong bipartisan appeal.

To be clear, the administration’s fight with Harvard and its Ivy League peers is a bad idea. One can criticize those schools for many things — in particular, their thoroughgoing failure to combat anti-Semitism in recent years — without obliterating research budgets at some of America’s most important academic institutions. One hopes the provocation was the point.