The University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California have become the latest two universities to reject the Trump administration’s offer of favored treatment for government funding in exchange for a compact full of changes to curriculum and policies. MIT and Brown University had previously turned down the same offer.
The “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” outlines 10 key points related to hiring, admissions and school finances. They amount to demands that universities change campus culture and reduce foreign enrollment to no more than 15% of the undergraduate student population.
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In addition, the universities would have to freeze their tuition for five years, define sex as only male and female and adopt policies outlining neutrality on political and social events.
Why the offer was presented
In exchange for these and other concessions, the universities would get priority in federal funding decisions, including substantial federal grants.
“Merit should be the primary criteria for federal grant funding,” White House spokesperson Liz Huston told Politico. “Yet too many universities have abandoned academic excellence in favor of divisive and destructive efforts such as diversity, equity and inclusion.“
“The Compact for Academic Excellence embraces universities that reform their institutions to elevate common sense once again, ushering a new era of American innovation,” Huston added.
Reaction from university leaders
University leaders have balked at the offer. Penn President J. Larry Jameson said he had “substantive concerns” after speaking with faculty members, alumni, students and staff. He rejected the offer after the Penn Faculty Senate called the White House demands “unprecedented and unconstitutional” and said that signing the compact would compromise the university’s academic freedom and scholarly diversity.
In a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon, USC Interim President Beong-Soo Kim wrote, ”We are concerned that even though the Compact would be voluntary, tying research benefits to it would, over time, undermine the same values of free inquiry and academic excellence that the Compact seeks to promote.”
MIT was the first school to reject the Trump administration’s compact offer. The Hill reported that the school’s president, Sally Kornbluth, told McMahon that MIT disagrees with its principles and believes the compact would restrict freedom of expression and the university’s independence.
Other schools receiving the offer — Vanderbilt University, Dartmouth College, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Arizona and the University of Virginia — have not yet responded to the administration.
The White House has warned that universities unwilling to embrace the principles specified in the compact could lose federal funding altogether.
