Trump Has a Road Map for Universities That Want Federal Grants to Keep Coming

The Trump administration unveiled a plan for colleges and universities to ensure the continued flow of federal funding: stop raising tuition costs for five years, end racial and other preferences for admissions and hiring, and limit international student enrollment.

The 10-point “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” also calls for requiring college applicants take the SAT exam for admission and for colleges to avoid grade inflation, The Wall Street Journal reported.  

A letter to university presidents said higher education institutions that sign on will get “multiple positive benefits” that include “substantial and meaningful federal grants,” according to the Journal.

This is among the latest moves by the Trump administration that may cause a clash with the higher education establishment. Education Secretary Linda McMahon and other agency heads have criticized universities and colleges for restricting free speech; promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion policies; and allowing antisemitism to flourish on campus.

Among the points listed in the compact are a ban on the use of race or sex for admissions and hiring, freezing tuition for five years, and capping international student enrollment to 15% of the student body. 

The compact also asks schools to publicly post estimated earnings of graduates for each academic program. Further, students who drop out during the first semester would get a refund. It requests universities with an endowment of $2 million or more to give tuition waivers for students majoring in “hard sciences” such as physics, chemistry, and biology. 

The compact further calls for universities to foster a “vibrant marketplace of ideas on campus.” It asks institutions to do away with departments that “purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”

The White House sent letters Wednesday inviting an initial round of nine institutions to sign on or provide feedback, the Journal reported. The nine were Vanderbilt University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Arizona, Brown University, and the University of Virginia.

The White House says it reached out to these schools because it believed they could be “good actors,” with reform-minded leadership, May Mailman, senior adviser for special projects at the White House, told the Journal. 

“Our hope is that a lot of schools see that this is highly reasonable,” Mailman said.

However, Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, objected. The council represents more than 1,500 presidents of colleges and universities.

“Who decides if the intellectual environment is vigorous and open-ended? This is not something the federal government should be involved in and adjudicating,” Mitchell said. “The implications for free speech are horrifying.”

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