The White House has asked nine of the nation’s most selective universities to sign a sweeping policy agreement that links adherence to federal education priorities with enhanced access to funding. On Wednesday, institutions including MIT, Brown, Vanderbilt, and the University of Pennsylvania received the ten-page Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, outlining new guidelines on admissions, tuition, campus governance, and sports.
The compact requires universities to remove race, gender, and other demographic factors from admissions, reinstate mandatory SAT/ACT testing, and adopt federal gender definitions for sports and facilities. International student enrollment would be limited to 15% of the undergraduate population, with no more than 5% coming from a single country. Additionally, U.S. student tuition would be capped for five years, and the wealthiest universities would need to offer tuition-free access for certain “hard science programs.”
Compliance would be monitored through annual surveys of students and faculty under the oversight of the Justice Department. Institutions that fail to comply could lose compact benefits for at least one year, with repeated violations potentially resulting in a two-year suspension. While federal funding remains available to all universities, those that sign the compact would gain preferential access to grants and White House forums.
Reactions among universities have been mixed. Kevin Eltife, chair of the Texas Board of Regents, welcomed the initiative, describing it as an “honoured” opportunity that could bring funding advantages for the University of Texas at Austin. Other institutions mentioned in the compact have not yet commented.
The Trump administration has previously used federal funding leverage, notably withholding research funds from Harvard and Columbia while advocating governance changes. The compact also emphasizes free speech protections on campus, urging universities to “transform or abolish institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, or incite violence against conservative ideas.”
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