A common theme of Trump II is tackling important reform targets but going overboard in doing it. One example is President Trump’s effort to set new rules, often overbearing, for higher education.
U.S. colleges have become dens of progressive intellectual conformity and too often violators of civil-rights laws. The Administration is right to use the leverage of federal money to force schools to follow the law.
And spare us the complaints that Mr. Trump is unique in breaking “norms.” The Obama and Biden Administrations used federal funds to coerce schools to follow their cultural agenda on race, gender and handling sexual harassment allegations. The latter railroaded the innocent. The main difference between the Biden and Trump efforts is that Biden officials were pushing on an open campus door with school officials who agreed with them.
Trump officials want to change a culture that is often hostile to American principles. The rub comes over how to use coercive power to drive wholesale academic reform.
The Administration’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, leaked to the press, offers schools preferential funding if they follow certain rules. Schools that agree to meet the Trump benchmarks would be eligible for “multiple positive benefits,” and “substantial and meaningful federal grants.”
Some rules are common sense. The memo specifies that universities in the compact must end the use of race or gender preferences in hiring or admission on campus. This is the law. Also sensible is embracing so-called institutional neutrality so schools don’t take sides in social and political issues unrelated to the university. Professors can opine in their private capacity, but the history department can’t dictate a certain view of the Arab-Israel conflict.
The memo encourages a “vibrant marketplace of ideas,” and that can’t be said often enough. Many schools are making good efforts to address progressive monoculture, including left-leaning faculty rosters. Kudos to schools like the University of Texas, which has created a school of Civic Leadership, and others like Vanderbilt that have hosted events to emphasize a return to free-speech principles. The Trump compact seems to have backed off attempts to dictate faculty hiring, a welcome development.
Where the compact goes too far is with its demand that schools freeze tuition for five years and cap the enrollment of international students at 15%. Mitch Daniels proved at Purdue that tuition can be frozen over several years, but this should be up to the schools themselves.
And where does the 15% cap on foreign students come from—a dartboard? International students are a source of full-freight tuition for many schools. Students from overseas were 26% of the University of Southern California student body in 2025. Limiting tuition and international students at the same time could leave schools with a budget shortfall.
More understandable is the demand that the schools “promptly and fully disclose” funding from foreign institutions or individuals. This is no doubt aimed at Middle Eastern and Chinese donors who want to dictate what certain departments can teach.
Well-intentioned but hard to implement is the compact’s effort to combat grade inflation. The compact demands that schools “commit to grade integrity and the use of defensible standards for whether students are achieving their goals.” Good luck trying to figure that out. Will a fleet of auditors investigate if slackers really deserved an A- in Econ 101?
The compact demands certification each year by top school officials, as well as an independent poll of faculty and students. The Department of Justice will decide if schools are meeting their commitments, which is a sharp sword hanging over those that sign. The cost of noncompliance is losing funds, even in areas of research that have nothing do to with asserted violations by the school. This is overkill that will alienate potential allies, such as in the science faculties.
