\n<\/p>\n
Four of the nine universities initially asked to sign have rejected the document.<\/p>\n
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison\/Inside Higher Ed | Jumping Rocks\/Universal Images Group\/Getty Images | Mario Tama\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
The Universities of Pennsylvania and Southern California have now refused to sign the Trump administration\u2019s \u201cCompact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,\u201d making them the third and fourth of the nine initial institutions that were presented the deal to publicly turn it down. No institution has agreed to sign so far.<\/p>\n
Both announcements came Thursday, a few days before the Oct.\u00a020 deadline to provide feedback on the proposal. Beong-Soo Kim, interim president of the University of Southern California, shared his message to Education Secretary Linda McMahon, which outlined how USC already seems to adhere to the compact.<\/p>\n
\u201cNotwithstanding these areas of alignment, we are concerned that even though the Compact would be voluntary, tying research benefits to it would, over time, undermine the same values of free inquiry and academic excellence that the Compact seeks to promote,\u201d Kim wrote. \u201cOther countries whose governments lack America\u2019s commitment to freedom and democracy have shown how academic excellence can suffer when shifting external priorities tilt the research playing field away from free, meritocratic competition.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kim added that the compact does raise issues \u201cworthy of a broader national conversation to which USC would be eager to contribute its insights and expertise.\u201d<\/p>\n
California governor Gavin Newsom, a possible Democratic presidential contender in 2028, had threatened that any university in his state that signed the compact would \u201cinstantly\u201d lose billions of state dollars.<\/p>\n
Over at Penn, President J. Larry Jameson wrote in a message to his community Thursday that his university \u201crespectfully declines to sign the proposed Compact.\u201d He added that his university did provide feedback to the department on the proposal. <\/p>\n
Penn spokespeople didn\u2019t say Thursday whether the university would sign any possible amended version of the compact that addressed the university\u2019s concerns, nor did they provide Inside Higher Ed <\/em>a copy of the feedback provided to the Trump administration. (Penn is the only university of the four that didn\u2019t provide its response to McMahon.)<\/p>\n The White House also didn\u2019t provide a copy of Penn\u2019s feedback, but it emailed a statement apparently threatening funding cuts for universities that don\u2019t sign the compact.<\/p>\n \u201cMerit should be the primary criteria for federal grant funding. Yet too many universities have abandoned academic excellence in favor of divisive and destructive efforts such as \u2018diversity, equity, and inclusion,\u2019\u201d spokesperson Liz Huston said in the statement. \u201cThe Compact for Academic Excellence embraces universities that reform their institutions to elevate common sense once again, ushering a new era of American innovation. Any higher education institution unwilling to assume accountability and confront these overdue and necessary reforms will find itself without future government and taxpayers support.\u201d <\/p>\n Brown University announced it had rejected the compact Wednesday, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did the same last Friday. Following MIT\u2019s rejection, the Trump administration said the compact was open to all colleges and universities that want to sign it.<\/p>\n The compact is a boilerplate contract asking colleges to voluntarily agree to overhaul or abolish departments \u201cthat purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas,\u201d without further defining what those terms mean. It also asks universities to, among other things, commit to not considering transgender women to be women, to reject foreign applicants \u201cwho demonstrate hostility to the United States, its allies, or its values\u201d and to freeze \u201ceffective tuition rates charged to American students for the next five years.\u201d<\/p>\n In exchange for these agreements, the White House has said signatories would \u201cbe given [funding] priority when possible as well as invitations to collaborate with the White House.\u201d But the White House hasn\u2019t revealed how much extra funding universities would be eligible for, and the nine-page compact doesn\u2019t detail the potential benefits. The compact, and the Thursday statement from the White House, can also be read as threatening colleges\u2019 current federal funding if they don\u2019t sign. Multiple higher ed organizations have allied in calling on universities to reject the compact.<\/p>\n Jameson said in his statement that \u201cat Penn, we are committed to merit-based achievement and accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier this year, the Trump administration said that Penn violated Title\u00a0IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 when it allowed a transgender woman to swim on the women\u2019s team in 2022, and officials issued several demands to the university. Penn ultimately conceded to those demands over the summer, a decision that the administration said restored about $175\u00a0million in frozen federal funds.<\/p>\n Marc Rowan, a Penn graduate with two degrees from its Wharton School of Business who\u2019s now chief executive officer and board chair for Apollo Global Management, wrote in The New York Times<\/em> that he \u201cplayed a part in the compact\u2019s initial formulation, working alongside an administration working group.\u201d Rowan argued that the compact doesn\u2019t threaten free speech or academic freedom. <\/p>\n Apollo has funded the online, for-profit University of Phoenix. AP VIII Queso Holdings LP\u2014the previous name for majority owner of the University of Phoenix\u2014was the successor of Apollo Education Group, which went private in 2017 in a $1.1\u00a0billion deal backed by Apollo Global Management Inc. and the Vistria Group. <\/p>\n AP VIII Queso Holdings LP was recently renamed Phoenix Education Partners as part of a new deal to take the company public once again. Phoenix Education Partners, now owner of the University of Phoenix and backed by both Apollo and Vistria,\u00a0started trading on the stock market last week and was valued at about $1.35\u00a0billion after the first day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Four of the nine universities initially asked to sign have rejected the document. Photo illustration by Justin Morrison\/Inside Higher Ed | Jumping Rocks\/Universal Images Group\/Getty Images | Mario Tama\/Getty Images The Universities of Pennsylvania and Southern California have now refused to sign the Trump administration\u2019s \u201cCompact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,\u201d making them the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[667,10497,2478,1468,6493,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-28597","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-compact","10":"tag-penn","11":"tag-reject","12":"tag-southern","13":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}