Trump offers universities a choice: Comply for preferential funding

On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration offered nine schools a deal: Run your universities in a way that aligns with administration priorities and receive “substantial and meaningful federal grants” as well as other benefits. Failure to pass this deal would result in the elimination of federal programs, which would likely harm most universities. In the proposal, sent to both public and private universities, the government would dictate everything from hiring and admissions standards to evaluations, and contains provisions that appear designed to make conservative ideas more welcome on campus.

The paper was sent to the University of Arizona, Brown University, Dartmouth College, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, University of Texas, Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia. However, independent reports indicate that the administration will eventually expand the agreement to all colleges and universities.

Ars obtained a copy of the proposed “Higher Education Academic Excellence Compact,” which clearly shows the scope of the deal. “Institutions of higher education are free to develop models and values ​​different from those outlined below if the institution chooses to forego federal benefits,” he suggests, while noting that these benefits include access to fundamental needs such as student loans, federal contracts, research funding, tax credits, and immigrant visas for students and faculty.

It's hard to imagine how one could run a large university without access to these programs, making it less of a compact and more of an ultimatum.

Poorly thought out

The treaty itself stipulates that universities will agree to turn over admissions standards to the federal government. In this case, the government requires that only “objective” criteria, such as GPA and standardized test scores, be used as the basis for admissions decisions, and that schools publish these criteria on their websites. They would also have to publish anonymous data comparing the performance of accepted and rejected students on these criteria.