Great article! Your points of that conservatism and populism with respect to education are very important, but I would add another factor I think matters quite a bit.

Given the Trump Republican Party is more than ever dominated by Evangelical Christians, the traditional Evangelical disdain for higher education probably plays a role in the Republicans' increasing disdain.

I grew up Evangelical, and I sat in pews all the time listening to preachers, including my father, warning the congregation that the more education a person received, the less likely they were to remain faithful to the Lord. This isn't difficult to understand given that to be Evangelical means you have to believe some crazy shit about the world and the universe. Like it's only 6,000 years old and fossils exist because of Noah's flood.

To this day, Evangelical Christians are in general proud of eschewing higher education except for the small "Bible colleges" they run and sometimes Christian universities, though they can be leery of those too. (Minor doctrinal differences in inter-Evangelical circle set their teeth to gnashing, so one Evangelical's virtuous university is another's pit of heretical hellfire. This would be hilarious if they didn't take it so deadly seriously.)

I don't think Evangelical disdain for education used to matter as much on the public stage as it does now, because in the past organized Evangelical Christianity avoided politics. Now Evangelical leaders avidly seek political power and as we saw in the Trump Administration, they will sacrifice any principle to exercise power. They'll even stand up in favor of caging small children and forcibly separating them from their parents.

They're bringing their hatred of higher education right along with them on their quest to run the country.