Finding Common Ground on Trump’s College Compact
As with so much in 2025, the Trump administration’s proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” provoked predictably tribal reactions from college leaders and politicians. As predictable? What risks getting lost is the opportunity to find fruitful common ground on what’s needed to improve higher education in a sustainable way.
Last week, nine high-profile colleges and universities received a letter from Education Secretary Linda McMahon and two White House officials. The letter invited leaders to sign onto a “Compact” in return for “multiple positive benefits for the school, including allowance for increased overhead payments where feasible, substantial and meaningful federal grants, and other federal partnerships.”
Institutions would agree to adopt tuition freezes, require specific admissions tests, combat grade inflation, cap foreign enrollment, adopt new protections for campus free inquiry, and embrace a bevy of other conditions in exchange for favorable treatment.
Higher education’s mandarins were aghast. The same officials who cheered the Biden administration’s diktats on equity, loan forgiveness, and gender identity, denounced this “naked exercise of power” and exercise in “extortion.” Meanwhile, the same Republicans who’d bitterly contested Biden’s overreach seemed unperturbed by this push to supersize federal influence.
The hot rhetoric highlighted the hypocrisy but obscured the opportunity ahead.
The critics have a point. This is not how the American government is supposed to work. Cabinet secretaries should not be sending letters out to major companies, institutions, or nonprofits containing arbitrary directives and implied threats. There is nothing in federal law that even vaguely empowers the Secretary of Education to tell colleges to freeze tuition, require an admissions test, or combat grade inflation—no matter how worthy the goals.
That said, there’s plenty here to like. Trust in higher education has plunged for a reason. Grade inflation is rampant. Elite colleges boast eye-popping sticker prices even as their faculty complain students don’t read or come to class. Even progressives now concede that ideological bias is a real issue on campus. There’s a chance, and a need, to reset the relationship between colleges and taxpayers.
The problem is the administration’s approach. Think about it in terms of three buckets. There are those things that violate the law, as with the ironic demand that campuses “protect free speech” by “abolishing” departments that “punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.” This vaguely Orwellian dictate (with federal bureaucrats deciding what it means to “belittle conservative ideas”) runs smack into the First Amendment. Then there are meritorious measures, such as promoting intellectual diversity among faculty, which would require federal officials to play an inappropriate, overly intrusive role. Finally, there are the things that are sensible and appropriate, such as increasing transparency around foreign funding for colleges (consistent with the too often ignored current law).
Happily, there is a body that is already empowered to sort through these questions: The United States Congress.
The work of setting priorities for federal funds belongs to the legislative branch. The Trump administration should work with Congress to craft legislation that encourages institutions, which pocket vast sums in taxpayer grants, loans, tuition subsidies, and research funding, to take far more seriously the work of controlling costs, policing rigor, rejecting discriminatory practices, and promoting free inquiry. The legislative process would offer a chance to kick the tires on the particulars, address concerns about workability and coherence, and ensure that a new agreement is grounded in shared principles.
It would be a very good thing if colleges froze tuition, addressed runaway grade inflation, and did much more to ground admissions in transparent measures of merit that sent clearer signals to prospective students. As constructed, however, this compact is not the way to advance those aims. In the letter to colleges, McMahon told college leaders that they’re free to “develop models and values” other than those listed if they "forego federal benefits". While a college’s access to federal funds is indeed conditioned on honoring federal law, that doesn’t empower the executive branch to craft wish-lists and tell colleges to sign on or suffer the consequences.
Indeed, federal law makes very clear that the Secretary of Education does not have that authority: “No provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution.”
Determining whether campuses are keeping their promises would pose a raft of questions. What does it mean to combat grade inflation? Are colleges doing what they promised? What are the consequences for failure to do so? This would create a pile of new paperwork and demands for federal enforcement, yielding an odd and unfortunate about-face given McMahon’s repeated insistence that federal command-and-control is a poor model for American education.
If the administration wants to drive meaningful change, the way to do it is through the legislative process, with all the attendant back-and-forth. Otherwise, this is a theatrical exercise that may stir the hornet’s nest while missing a chance to really tackle campus dysfunction.
