White House Asks Colleges to Sign Sweeping Agreement 全文

The Trump administration is laying out a set of operating principles that it wants universities to agree to in exchange for preferential access to federal funds.

The expansive 10-point memo, dubbed the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” puts forth a wide-ranging set of terms the administration says are intended to elevate university standards and performance. Universities that sign on will get “multiple positive benefits,” including “substantial and meaningful federal grants,” according to a letter addressed to university leaders.

“Our hope is that a lot of schools see that this is highly reasonable,” said May Mailman, senior adviser for special projects at the White House.
The memo demands that schools ban the use of race or sex in hiring and admissions; freeze tuition for five years; cap international undergrad enrollment at 15%; require that applicants take the SAT or a similar test; and quell grade inflation.

Much of the document focuses on the campus political climate.
 

The compact asks universities to ensure a “vibrant marketplace of ideas on campus” and to bar employees from expressing political views on behalf of their employer, unless the matter affects the school. It seeks to create a more welcoming environment for conservatives, asking colleges to make governance changes and abolish departments that “purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”

“Institutions of higher education are free to develop models and values other than those” in the memo, if the institution elects to forgo federal benefits, the document says.

Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, which represents more than 1,500 presidents of colleges and universities, said he found the idea of a compact troubling, particularly its points regarding political expression and views.
“Who decides if the intellectual environment is vigorous and open-ended? This is not something the federal government should be involved in and adjudicating,” he said. “The implications for free speech are horrifying.”

On Wednesday night, the White House sent letters inviting an initial round of nine universities to sign on to the agreement. The letter explains that signing on “will signal to students, parents and contributors that learning and equality are university priorities” and that the federal government would “have assurance” that the schools are complying with civil-rights law and “pursuing federal priorities with vigor.”
In an interview, Mailman said the purpose is to push schools to lead “in things that are not hard decisions, but they are hard to go at it alone,” such as steadying tuition rises. Mailman has been driving the White House efforts to crack down on schools over concerns about antisemitism and diversity initiatives.

Letters on Wednesday were going out to solicit agreement and feedback from Vanderbilt University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Arizona, Brown University and the University of Virginia, according to an administration official.

The schools either declined to comment or didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The White House chose the schools because it believed they are, or could be, “good actors,” Mailman said.

“They have a president who is a reformer or a board that has really indicated they are committed to a higher-quality education,” she said.

Mailman said that the Trump administration doesn’t plan to limit federal funding solely to schools that sign the compact but that they would be given priority for grants when possible as well as invitations for White House events and discussions with officials.
The compact comes as the Trump administration has for months battled against universities over allegations of antisemitism and concerns about diversity practices. Some schools, including Columbia University and Brown University, have struck multimillion-dollar deals with the administration, while others, including Harvard, are still at odds.

If universities sign and then violate the terms of the compact, they could be forced to return any money given to them by the federal government that year as well as any private contributions.
Beyond addressing campus politics, the compact seeks to tame the cost of college.

 

It asks schools to freeze tuition for five years and reduce administrative costs as far as possible. Schools are asked to post earnings after graduation for each academic program and to refund tuition for students who drop out during the first semester. Universities with an endowment of $2 million per undergraduate student are asked to waive tuition for students who pursue “hard science” programs.
 

Schools that sign the compact are asked to police themselves by hiring an independent auditor to conduct anonymous polling among faculty, students and staff to evaluate the university’s performance against the agreement. The results would be made public and reviewed by the Justice Department.