Trump's Academic 'Compact' for Universities Gets Its 2nd No

UPDATE Oct 16, 2025 2:30 AM CDT

Make that two: Brown University is following MIT's lead in rejecting the Trump administration's offer of preferential access to federal funding, which would have required the school to overhaul its policies in alignment with the administration's college compact. The compact "by its nature and by various provisions would restrict academic freedom and undermine the autonomy of Brown's governance," the university's president said in a letter to administration officials, per the Guardian. "Additionally, a fundamental part of academic excellence is awarding research funding on the merits of the research being proposed. The cover letter describing the compact contemplates funding research on criteria other than the soundness and likely impact of research, which would ultimately damage the health and prosperity of Americans." Sources tell the Chronicle the president of Dartmouth College has also privately indicated she will not endorse the compact.

Oct 10, 2025 12:05 PM CDT

MIT has declined an offer from the Trump administration that would have given the university priority access to federal funding, citing concerns over academic independence and merit-based research funding. President Sally Kornbluth made the decision public in a letter released Friday, stressing that MIT values free expression and opposes any measures that would compromise institutional autonomy, reports the Washington Post. The Trump administration's "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education" was extended to nine universities, promising competitive advantages to those that agreed to a set of sweeping conditions. These included prohibiting consideration of gender, race, or political views in admissions and scholarships; freezing tuition for five years; enforcing a strict definition of gender; and requiring institutional neutrality on all levels.

The offer, an apparent attempt to align universities with the administration's ideological priorities, also implied that declining the compact could put research funding and student loan access at risk. While one Texas university leader welcomed the invitation, free-speech advocates and higher education experts warned that such conditions threaten universities' independence. The compact's conditions even allow for the revocation of visas for international students and scholars at institutions that sign off on the compact, then breach it.

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Some of the other schools that were said to have received the proposal included Dartmouth, Brown, USC, and the University of Pennsylvania, per the AP. Kornbluth, the first university leader to publicly reject the proposal, emphasized that MIT already meets or exceeds many of the compact's intended outcomes—most undergraduate degrees are in STEM fields, for example, and the school offers significant tuition support, per the Post. However, she objected to policies she said would limit free speech and undermine the principle that scientific funding should be awarded purely on merit. "We cannot support the proposed approach," she wrote, noting MIT's long-standing partnership with the federal government. A Friday op-ed in the New York Times by Marc Rowan—the CEO of Apollo Global Management who helped write the compact, per the Wall Street Journal—defends its deployment.