“When there’s a vacuum, there are going to be entities that step into it,” Chris Lehane told me. “This is an example of that.” Lehane is the head of global policy for Airbnb, which ran a commercial this month that alluded (without profanity) to Trump’s “shithole countries” remark and promoted those very places as travel destinations. It spoke to another vacuum — a moral one — being filled by companies, many of which are more high-minded, forward-thinking and solutions-oriented than the federal government on immigration, L.G.B.T. rights, climate change and more.

Lehane noted that democratic governments are designed to proceed with caution, but the pace of change in a digital world of automation and, now, artificial intelligence is brisker than ever. The nimbleness of corporations gives them an edge over hoary, complacent institutions, including those in higher education. Corporations’ creep into that sphere is looking more and more like a sprint.

“They are very frustrated with what they’re getting from our educational institutions,” said Philip Zelikow, a University of Virginia professor who collaborated with corporate leaders like Howard Schultz of Starbucks on a 2015 report titled “America’s Moment: Creating Opportunity in the Connected Age.” “The American labor market is dysfunctional and broke.”

In an effort to make sure that employees have up-to-the-minute technical skills — or are simply adept at critical thinking and creative problem solving — more companies have developed academies of their own. That’s likely to accelerate.

“I think enterprises like Amazon and Google are going to build universities that teach coding and things the nation needs,” Margaret Spellings, the president of the University of North Carolina System, recently told me. Spellings was education secretary under President George W. Bush.

Donald Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, has mulled the same possibility. Speaking to the U.S. Conference of Mayors last month, she recalled a conversation with the Israeli ambassador: “He was baffled as to why America’s businesses haven’t simply stepped in to create their own education programs to equip individuals with the necessary skills, instead of relying on others to get it right for them.” Some businesses have done precisely that, though DeVos was obviously wondering whether that effort was enough. She said that there were six million job openings in America and suggested that schools weren’t graduating students with the know-how to fill them.

Corporations have long been engines of innovation, sources of philanthropy and even laboratories for social policy. But the situation feels increasingly lopsided these days. I’m struck, for example, by the intensity of conversation over the last year about what Facebook and its algorithms should do to stanch the destructive tribalism in American life. It’s true that Mark Zuckerberg’s monster has badly aggravated that dynamic, in part by allowing its platform to be manipulated by bad actors. But so has Washington, and we seem less hopeful that it’s redeemable and likely to shepherd us to a healthier place.