Four of the nine universities initially requested to sign rejected the document.
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The University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California have now refused to sign the Trump administration’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, making them the third and fourth of the nine institutions that initially submitted public rejections of the agreement. So far, no agency has agreed to sign on.
Both announcements were made on Thursday, days before the Oct. 20 deadline for providing feedback on the proposal. USC Interim President Beong-Soo Kim delivered his message to Education Secretary Linda McMahon outlining that USC appears to have complied with the protocol.
“Despite these areas of consistency, we are concerned that, while the Compact is voluntary, tying research interests to it over time would undermine the values of free inquiry and academic excellence that the Compact seeks to promote,” King wrote. “Other countries whose governments lack the same commitment to freedom and democracy as the United States have shown how academic achievement can be affected when external priorities change in a way that shifts the research playing field away from free, meritocratic competition.”
King added that the agreement does raise “issues that deserve a broader national conversation, and USC is eager to contribute its insights and expertise.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a likely 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, has threatened that any university in the state that signed the agreement would “immediately” lose billions of state dollars.
At the University of Pennsylvania, President J. Larry Jameson wrote in a letter to the community Thursday that his university “respectfully declines to sign the proposed agreement.” He added that his university did provide feedback to the department on the proposal.
A Penn spokesman would not say Thursday whether the university would sign any possible revised version of the agreement to address the university’s concerns or provide any information. Inside higher education Copy of feedback provided to the Trump administration. (Penn was the only one of the four universities that did not respond to McMahon.)
The White House also did not provide a copy of Penn’s feedback, but it emailed a statement apparently threatening to cut funding for universities that did not sign the agreement.
“Merit should be the first criterion for federal funding. Yet too many universities have abandoned academic excellence in favor of divisive and damaging efforts like diversity, equity and inclusion,” spokesperson Liz Huston said in a statement. “The Compact on Academic Excellence encourages universities to transform their institutions, once again advance common sense, and usher in a new era of American innovation. Any higher education institution unwilling to take responsibility and face these long-overdue, necessary reforms will find itself without government and taxpayer support in the future.”
Brown University announced its rejection of the agreement on Wednesday, and MIT did the same on Friday. After MIT declined, the Trump administration said the agreement was open to any college and university that wanted to sign.
The compact, a boilerplate contract, requires universities to voluntarily agree to overhaul or eliminate departments that “deliberately punish, demean or even provoke violence against conservative ideas,” without further defining what those terms mean. It also requires universities to commit to not treating transgender women as women, to reject foreign applicants who “demonstrate hostility to the United States, its allies, or its values” and to freeze “effective tuition fees charged to U.S. students for the next five years.”
The White House said that in exchange for these agreements, signatories would “receive [funding] Prioritize whenever possible and invite collaboration with the White House. But the White House has yet to reveal how much additional funding colleges are eligible to receive, and the nine-page agreement does not detail potential benefits. The agreement, along with a statement from the White House on Thursday, could also be interpreted as threatening colleges’ current federal funding if they don’t sign on. Multiple higher education organizations have joined forces to call on colleges to reject the agreement.
“At Penn, we are committed to merit-based achievement and accountability,” Jameson said in the statement.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration said the University of Pennsylvania violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 by allowing transgender women to compete on the 2022 women’s swimming team, and officials made several requests to the university. Payne eventually acknowledged the demands this summer, a decision the government said restored about $175 million in frozen federal funds.
Marc Rowan, a University of Pennsylvania graduate with two degrees from the Wharton School, is CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors at Apollo Global Management, where he new york times He “worked with government working groups and played a role in the initial development of the compact.” Rowan believes the compact does not threaten free speech or academic freedom.
Apollo funds the online for-profit University of Phoenix. AP VIII Queso Holdings LP (formerly majority owner of the University of Phoenix) is the successor to Apollo Education Group, which was taken private in 2017 in a $1.1 billion deal backed by Apollo Global Management Inc. and Vistria Group.
AP VIII Queso Holdings LP recently changed its name to Phoenix Education Partners as part of a new deal to relist the company. Phoenix Education Partners, which now owns the University of Phoenix and is backed by Apollo and Vistria, began trading on the stock market last week, valuing it at about $1.35 billion on its first day of trading.
