With the surprising emergence of boisterous Donald Trump and the growing concerns about truthfulness surrounding frontrunner Hillary Clinton, a dozen administrative leaders from significant state universities anticipate a wild fall on campus.

It will involve the emotional and loud voices of activist faculty and concerned students, perhaps as never heard before.

They foresee a tortuous and razor-thin presidential election in 2016, one that will see escalating intensity among the campus combatants.

The university presidents, contacted over the past two weeks, said they anticipate record heights of participation in student government and in campus political organizations, caused by the unquestioned importance of America’s future direction and questions surrounding topics like soaring costs of a college education and the record number of graduates who leave academia buried in hopeless loan debt.

There is no anticipation of states coming to any immediate rescue with added funding for public colleges and universities; most expect more of the same, continued over reliance on higher tuition and fees.

Most administrators admit to the importance of maintaining undergraduate enrollments, or growing them slightly, while favoring increases in graduate attendees, especially from out of state locations. These students pay much higher tuition and fees, often two to two and a half times more, than state residents.

This explains why state universities are working to enroll more able international students who often live in campus housing. It makes economic sense, and pragmatic state legislators applaud the logic in these especially tough economic times.

It should be stressed that a majority of international students have a record of staying as long as it takes to graduate since many enjoy financial support from their home countries. American businesses have a keen interest in them, too, since the economy is truly global.

All of the participants expect interest in schools of business to continue to move upward, with many major universities, like Kansas University, building massive new business school buildings, many funded by private sources.

By the same token, the chief executives are distressed with the slippage in interest in the arts and sciences. All of them expressed unquestioned support for the humanities and the fine arts. Faculty share that troubled outlook and believe a college degree rings hollow without a reasonable dose of these historically valued classroom experiences.

Several of the presidents questioned, for the first time, how much longer there will be such high interest in schools of business and industry. There was also some question about future enrollments in schools of medicine, nursing and engineering.

There is no doubt that the role and treatment of women on campuses, once again, will rise to the top of the institutional consciousness as it did in the 2014-15 academic year. And it should, especially at a time when the crisis has captured a national media audience and when more than half of the students at these 12 universities are female and the figure is growing. Parents are rightfully queasy over the issue.

The chief executives expect heightened focus on the role of big-time athletics as costs soar and income becomes static. But there are new concerns with the likely threat of diminished attendance at football and basketball games. The threat of overreliance on television revenues is real for presidents and athletic directors. Many in the media are hinting at diminished returns in the not-too-distant future, leaving the colleges and universities with massive bonding debt and few plausible answers.

To say the horse is out of the barn when it comes to college athletics is a vast and deeply concerning understatement.

— Gene Budig is the past president/chancellor of three large state universities, including Kansas University, and of Major League Baseball’s American League. Alan Heaps was a vice president at the College Board in New York City.