If you’ve been wondering how colleges have responded after receiving President Donald Trump’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” at the beginning of October, the answers have finally started rolling in. ICYMI, on Oct. 1, the Trump administration sent nine universities an offer that basically requested schools’ support for Trump’s agenda, with some perks in return. Once some of the schools started replying (unfavorably), the administration formally went out to three more colleges in hopes of collaborating, in addition to loosely offering the compact to all higher ed institutions. Here’s the latest on the stances these institutions are taking.
First, some backstory: The higher ed compact outlines a handful of policies that, if they sign, the schools would have to agree to: the number of international students enrolled each year must be capped, gender and race must cease to inform enrollment decisions, schools must commit to strict definitions of gender, and tuition costs must remain stagnant for five years. In return, universities and colleges that agreed to the terms would reportedly receive priority grants and federal funding, as well as invitations to White House events.Â
Many of the invited schools are not here for these terms: Of the original nine invited, the University of Southern California, the University of Virginia, Brown University, Dartmouth College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and The University of Pennsylvania have rejected the compact as of Oct. 24. Of the three additional invitees, Washington University St. Louis also declined. Further, officials have made it clear that while the University of Arizona, another originally invited school, rejected the first draft of the compact, the school is still in talks with the administration to find a potential agreement.
🚨 BREAKING NEWS | The @Penn has refused to sign the Trump administration’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, making it the third of the nine initial institutions that were presented the deal to publicly turn it down. https://t.co/kbTOZlbn5U pic.twitter.com/bGj0XV73Kl
— Inside Higher Ed (@insidehighered) October 16, 2025
Several administrators of these universities have spoken out about their institution’s decision to decline the policies. “I do not believe that the involvement of the government through a compact — whether it is a Republican- or Democratic-led White House — is the right way to focus America’s leading colleges and universities on their teaching and research mission,” Dartmouth College President Sian Leah Beilock wrote in an official statement declining the compact on Oct. 18. The statement was addressed directly to Linda McMahon, Secretary of Education, May Mailman, Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Policy Strategist, and Vince Haley, Director of the Domestic Policy Council, who are the leading advocates of Trump’s higher ed policies.Â
MIT’s leadership also shared its reasoning for declining the compact. “[Our] values and other MIT practices meet or exceed many standards outlined in the document you sent,” MIT President Sally Kornbluth wrote in a statement addressed directly to McMahon on Oct. 10. “We freely choose these values because they’re right, and we live by them because they support our mission — work of immense value to the prosperity, competitiveness, health and security of the United States. And of course, MIT abides by the law.”Â
Schools that have yet to announce their decisions include Vanderbilt University and the University of Texas at Austin from the initial invite list, and Arizona State University and University of Kansas from the second round of invitations. NPR has reported that the Trump administration has not commented on plans for the compact going forward.