Trump’s Higher Ed “Compact” Meets Resistance—and Opportunity?

Where presidents and academic insiders see more federal overreach, some see an opportunity for internal-driven reform.

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October kicked off with the Trump Administration making an offer to nine universities: Join a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” and get preferential federal funding. The Compact, now reportedly open to any institution, “represents the priorities of the U.S. government” and includes eight areas of requirements for signatories ranging from abolishing discriminatory admissions policies and faculty hiring practices to freezing effective tuition rates for students for five years, in addition to adopting institutional neutrality and maintaining a “vibrant marketplace of ideas.”

The Compact has unsurprisingly generated swift commentary from the leaders of the nine universities asked to sign, as well as their campus communities.

The University of Texas was quick to signal interest with Kevin P. Eltife, the chairman of the University of Texas Board of Regents, saying that UT Austin is “honored” to have been invited to sign the Compact. Other campus groups such as The Texas Faculty Association and the UT Austin AAUP chapter denounced the compact and urged UT Austin President Jim Davis to reject the offer.

Other memo recipients were less enthusiastic.

Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock quickly put out a commanding statement: “I am deeply committed to Dartmouth’s academic mission and values and will always defend our fierce independence… we will never compromise our academic freedom and our ability to govern ourselves.”

MIT President Sally Kornbluth formally rejected the Trump Administration’s offer on October 10th (making MIT the only institution yet to do so). Her official letter to the U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon, emphasized autonomy and independence, echoing Beilock:

In our view, America’s leadership in science and innovation depends on independent thinking and open competition for excellence. In that free marketplace of ideas, the people of MIT gladly compete with the very best, without preferences. Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education.

Brown President Christina H. Paxson, who reached a voluntary agreement with the federal government in July to restore funding, wrote to the community that “We need to decide, as a community, how or whether to respond to the invitation to provide comments” prior to the October 20th deadline.

The University of Arizona, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, University of Virginia, and Vanderbilt University all similarly communicated they are reviewing the contract. Faculty and other campus stakeholders at some of these universities are also organizing to persuade their leaders to reject the compact.

Commentators distinguished between the goals of the Compact and its means, with many raising concerns that joining would compromise institutional autonomy and self- governance. The statements from the presidents of Dartmouth and MIT, for instance, focus more on the government intrusion of the Compact, with MIT stating that they already “meet or exceed many standards outlined in the document.”

Institutional leaders who have not received the memo, including Michael S. Roth, President of Wesleyan, and Erwin Chemerinsky, Law Dean at UC Berkeley, simply termed the Compact “extortion”.

Jonathan Zimmerman of Penn, one of the nine universities that received the memo, said to The New York Times, “The parts of the order that drive me crazy are the ones that I actually agree with, like we should have ideological diversity, we shouldn’t stigmatize conservative thought — I’m down with all that,” before adding. “But the federal government being the determinant of that is terrifying.”

And the conservative AEI education policy director Frederick H. Hess similarly said that “the ends are admirable but the means are profoundly problematic… Criticism of the exercise should not be read as a defense of higher ed. But there’s no obvious statutory basis for conditioning access to higher ed funding on a sweeping list of arbitrary demands.”

Other commentators point to the partisan nature of the demands, in addition to threats to university autonomy. Austin Sarat of Amherst College wrote in Inside Higher Ed, “If colleges relent, they will… send the message that the pursuit of truth matters less than loyalty to a political agenda and that colleges and universities can be made to give up their independence if the price of freedom is high enough.”

There are, however, some who are positive about the Compact. Reporting by the New York Times revealed that the billionaire Marc Rowan, a financier and prior Trustee of Penn, and Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chief executive of investment firm Blackstone, have been influencing parts of the Trump agenda on higher ed for a while, including shaping the Compact. In a subsequent Times op-ed, Rowan said, “With these reforms, America’s institutions of higher education can return to their proper mission.”

Some politicians are also rallying behind the Compact, calling on their state universities to join in. Iowa lawmakers sent a letter to the Iowa Board of Regents Sunday, urging them to “be the first to sign on to this compact.” (Though others, such as California Governor Gavin Newsom immediately shared that any California university who signs will “instantly” lose state funding).

And some within the academy see this moment as an opportunity to lead reform internally as an organized academic coalition. Danielle Allen at Harvard argued in The Chronicle of Higher Education that, “No, I don’t think the compact as proposed should be signed. But it’s still an excellent idea to have a coalition of strong universities work together to negotiate a package of reforms for higher education.”

This echoes similar calls from other faculty like Anna Krylov of USC, who views the Compact positively overall and has called for USC to sign. Citing reservations about some details, Krylov says she would like to see “organizations such as FIRE, the AFA, the Heterodox Academy, and the American Academy of Sciences and Letters be involved in shaping the Compact, and universities play a greater role,” calling for greater collaboration with academia to shape the Compact.

There are still some days left until the initial October 20th deadline before we learn what might be next. Many legal questions about the Compact remain open given Trump’s varied legal adventures in higher ed. And it’s unclear what the White House’s response will be if none of the initial universities sign, given MIT’s lead in rejecting the Compact. And with the reported opening of the contract to any institution, it’s likely that universities in deep red states will be eager to sign.

We’ll see if the cascade of commentary turns into one of resistance, capitulation—or something else entirely.