White House Asks Colleges to Sign Sweeping Agreement to Get Funding Advantage
An initial round of nine schools is being asked to sign a wide-ranging accord.
The Trump administration is laying out a set of operating principles that it wants universities to agree to in exchange for preferential access to federal funds.
The expansive 10-point memo, dubbed the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” puts forth a wide-ranging set of terms the administration says are intended to elevate university standards and performance. Universities that sign on will get “multiple positive benefits,” including “substantial and meaningful federal grants,” according to a letter addressed to university leaders.
“Our hope is that a lot of schools see that this is highly reasonable,” said May Mailman, senior adviser for special projects at the White House.
The memo demands that schools ban the use of race or sex in hiring and admissions, freeze tuition for five years, cap international undergrad enrollment at 15%, require that applicants take the SAT or a similar test, and quell grade inflation.
The compact asks universities to ensure a “vibrant marketplace of ideas on campus” and to bar employees from expressing political views on behalf of their employer, unless the matter affects the school.
“Institutions of higher education are free to develop models and values other than those” in the memo, if the institution elects to forgo federal benefits, the document says.
On Wednesday night, the White House sent letters inviting an initial round of nine universities to sign on to the agreement. The letter explains that signing on “will signal to students, parents and contributors that learning and equality are university priorities” and that the federal government would “have assurance” that the schools are complying with civil-rights law and “pursuing federal priorities with vigor.”
In an interview, Mailman said the purpose is to push schools to lead “in things that are not hard decisions but they are hard to go at it alone,” like steadying tuition rises. Mailman has been driving the White House efforts to crack down on schools over concerns about antisemitism and diversity initiatives.
Letters on Wednesday were going out to solicit agreement and feedback from Vanderbilt University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Texas, the University of Arizona, Brown University and the University of Virginia, according to an administration official.
The White House chose the schools because it believed they are, or could be, “good actors,” Mailman said.
“They have a president who is a reformer or a board that has really indicated they are committed to a higher quality education,” she said.
Mailman said the Trump administration doesn’t plan to limit federal funding solely to schools that sign the compact but that they would be given priority for grants when possible as well as invitations for White House events and discussions with officials.
The compact comes as the Trump administration has for months battled against elite universities over allegations of antisemitism and concerns about diversity practices. Some schools, including Columbia University and Brown University, have struck multimillion-dollar deals with the administration, while others, including Harvard, are still at odds.
If universities sign and then violate the terms of the compact, they could be forced to return any money given to them by the federal government that year as well as any private contributions.
Write to Natalie Andrews at natalie.andrews@wsj.com and Douglas Belkin at Doug.Belkin@wsj.com
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