The Impact of the Militarization of Higher Education on Universities’ Commitment to Educational Principles 11 views

For my technical project, I worked on the Hypersonic ReEntry Deployable Glider Experiment-2, which is also referred to as HEDGE-2. HEDGE-2 is a design-build-fly project that aims to demonstrate that an affordable, hypersonic flight experiment is possible. Hypersonic testing usually costs tens of millions of dollars, but this project is aiming to do it using between $40,000 and $50,000. To make this project possible, HEDGE-2 extends the 2024-2025 RockSat-X experiment by improving the structural, avionics design, and thermal protection designs. The actual vehicle will combine elements of a glider and CubeSat, and it will be launched from a rocket in NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in June. HEDGE-2 will be launched into extreme low Earth orbit, and as the vehicle reenters Earth’s atmosphere, it is expected to reach Mach 5, and slow down for ocean landing, near Wallops Island. With this project, HEDGE-2 aims to further the availability of hypersonic flight. My technical project is connected to my STS thesis. My STS research paper focuses on the impact military influence has on universities’ commitment to core educational principles. Because my technical project focuses on hypersonics, the companies interested in our project are defense contractors and the US Navy. If our project were to be successful, it would serve as encouragement for other universities to engage in hypersonic research. This project mutually benefits the Department of War and the University of Virginia, for the university receives an increased amount of funding, while the Department of War gets better trained engineers and more efficiently conducts hypersonics research through American universities. My STS thesis argued that partnerships between the military and higher education institutions undermines universities’ commitment to the principles of education because it challenges the identity of universities as civilian institutions, it restricts the academic freedom available at universities for faculty and students, and it weakens the responsibility students feel over the ethical repercussions of the research they conduct. To make this argument I used academic journals that focused on historical context, as well as the current state of the relationship between universities and the military. I also used international policy documents that establish current expectations for what the relationship between education and the military should be, along with government funding data that highlights funding sources for the Department of Education from 1970 to 2020 and the allocation of the federal budget in 2026.

BS (Bachelor of Science)

Militarization; Higher Education; Academic Freedom; Ethics

School of Engineering and Applied Science Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering Technical Advisor: Chris Goyne STS Advisor: Karina Ripley Technical Team Members: Elizabeth Armstrong, Olivia Sauber, Hannah Soberman, Humza Rubel, Nand Patel, Saba Niknam, Christian Wright, Rishika Deshmukh, Zachary Davis, Logan Tolbert, Edison Wong, Tristan Scott

English

All rights reserved by the author (no additional license for public reuse)

2026-05-07