Trump Opens Up Compact to All of Higher Ed. Now What?

On Sunday, President Trump told his 10 million followers on Truth Social that, “tragically,” higher education in this country has lost its way, and he touted his administration’s efforts to fix it.

“Our Nation’s Great Institutions will once again prioritize Merit and Hard Work before ‘group identity,’ resulting in tremendous new Research and Opportunity to benefit all Americans, and Equality being honored in American Businesses, Courts, and Culture,” he wrote.

Then he laid out the stark choice he believes America’s colleges and universities must make. They can “continue to illegally discriminate based on Race or Sex,” he wrote. Or, those that prefer to “return to the pursuit of Truth and Achievement” are “invited to enter into a forward looking Agreement with the Federal Government to help bring about the Golden Age of Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”

The post came a few days after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology publicly declined to sign on to the administration’s 10-page compact, which was sent to nine universities earlier this month and spurred widespread condemnation. Under the agreement, institutions would have to make sweeping changes or risk their federal funding.

The other eight universities have until Oct. 20 to send feedback.

Trump’s open invitation to colleges to sign on to the document did not come as a surprise. Several experts predicted such a development, and a White House official told Inside Higher Ed last week that other institutions had already reached out. However, the timing of Trump’s post raised some eyebrows.

“The administration is reading the writing on the wall that they wouldn’t be able to run the table on the nine and that there would be substantial pushback,” said Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education. “And they didn’t want to own that, so they looked for more buyers.”

Mitchell and others have warned universities against signing, saying it threatens institutions’ autonomy and undermines free speech. The potential benefits, they said, aren’t worth the compromises that would be necessary to comply.

Not a Formal Invite

As of Tuesday afternoon, no university leader had taken the president up on his offer—at least not publicly.

Inside Higher Ed reached out to 15 colleges and universities about whether they planned to sign the compact or were talking with the administration about doing so.

A Grand Canyon University spokesperson said officials there believe the institution’s policies and mission align with the compact.

“However, we have not yet received any official information or invitation from the Department of Education, nor do we know if any revisions have been made based on initial feedback,” the spokesperson said. “We’ll await those developments before determining any next steps or making further comment.”

The initial nine universities received signed letters and a copy of the agreement as part of the invitation to provide feedback. For the rest of higher ed, the invite arrived via the 326-word Truth Social post with no information about how a university could sign on—but a threat of federal investigations if they didn’t.

It wasn’t until late Monday evening that Bloomberg, citing an unnamed official, reported that Trump’s post was in fact an invitation for colleges to sign on.

Neither the White House nor the Education Department responded to a request for more details.

Mitchell said using the president’s platform on Truth Social to share the invitation “speaks to the sense of urgency that the administration feels.” Further, the president and his team could be looking to use social media to pressure the colleges to act.

Changing the Game

Expanding the potential signatories to more than 5,000 institutions changes the game for the administration, said Frederick Hess, a senior fellow and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank.

“Originally, it looked like a prestige play—an attempt to get prominent colleges to sign on because academia runs on reputation,” he said, adding that if the administration could get wealthy, selective institutions to sign on, that could create a shift.

With a broader pool, he said, the administration could get some takers.

“It’s easier to imagine second-tier institutions that don’t get much in the way of federal grant money seeing this as a way to help their prospects,” said Hess, who has criticized the administration’s approach to the compact, though he likes some of what’s in it.

But who signs will affect how the document is viewed and the message it sends.

“Depending on the names, it might wind up looking more like Walgreens than some high-end boutique,” Hess said.

Some institutions are under pressure to sign. Two state lawmakers in Iowa asked the Iowa Board of Regents to join the compact “as soon as possible,” the Capital Dispatch reported. The regents are reviewing the document.

University of Texas system Board of Regents chairman Kevin P. Eltife said Oct. 2 that “we welcome the new opportunity presented to us” and would review the compact. (The University of Texas at Austin was one of the initial nine, along with MIT, Dartmouth, Vanderbilt, Brown, Penn, the University of Virginia, the University of Arizona and the University of Southern California.)

Dozens of college leaders did endorse an Oct. 3 statement from the American Association of Colleges and Universities that sharply criticized the compact. The statement said in part that college and university presidents “cannot trade academic freedom for federal funding” and that institutions shouldn’t be subject “to the changing priorities of successive administrations.”

Inside Higher Ed reached out to some of the endorsers of that AAC&U statement about their plans regarding Trump’s invite, but none responded.

Brian Rosenberg, a former president of Macalester College, said he wouldn’t have signed the compact if he was still leading an institution.

“First of all, regardless of what’s in it, I don’t think the government should be in the position of asking colleges and universities in a democracy to sign a loyalty oath, and I don’t trust this particular government to be a good-faith partner,” he said.

He does think that some presidents will sign on because of political pressure.

“I find it hard to believe that any college presidents will sign it and feel good about signing it,” he said.

Meanwhile, faculty and students at the initial group of universities continue to put pressure on their administrators to join MIT. Dozens of faculty at the University of Arizona detailed in a letter to the president what they see as some of the “institutionally significant legal and practical flaws” in the proposal. At Dartmouth College, hundreds of faculty signed a petition against the compact.

In the face of growing pushback, the administration appears to be doubling down on the compact, Mitchell said.

“This is a collection of many of the individual bones that they have to pick with higher ed, and they put it all in one place,” he said. “They have to double down because going back to doing admissions one at a time—they saw that wasn’t going to work. Now that they have a global approach, anything different would be seen as a retreat.”