Source: The American Prospect
by Robert Kuttner
“Trump’s latest scheme to take universities into receivership, a proposed ‘Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education’, has turned out to be a gift to dithering college presidents. Trump’s offer that they couldn’t refuse, sent on October 1 to nine universities that were expected to be malleable, offered preferential access to federal funding in exchange for compliance with several demands. These included freezing tuition rates for five years, capping international student enrollment, adopting definitions of sex/gender aligned with biological sex, ending consideration of race or gender in admissions and hiring, as well as ‘institutional neutrality’ on political and social issues. But Trump’s scheme was so crass and half-baked that several college presidents politely told him to stuff it. So far, he has no takers. Universities that explicitly rejected the deal citing academic freedom include Brown, MIT, Penn, USC, and Dartmouth.” (10/17/25)
https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2025-10-17-trump-keeps-overreaching-will-it-backfire/