White House calls on universities to agree to demands for expanded access to federal funding

Source: CNN Politics

PUBLISHED Oct 2, 2025, 12:09 PM ET


The White House is asking nine major colleges and universities to sign onto a series of demands in return for expanded access to federal funding. The letters sent to schools on Wednesday mark an unprecedented effort by the Trump administration to employ the power of the federal government to reshape higher education in line with President Donald Trump’s agenda.

In what is described as a “compact for academic excellence in higher education,” top Trump officials are calling for these schools to implement policies to remove factors like sex and ethnicity from admissions consideration, to foster “a vibrant marketplace of ideas on campus” with “no single ideology dominant, both along political and other relevant lines,” and to assess faculty and staff viewpoints, according to a copy of the document obtained by CNN.

The compact, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, also calls for a commitment to “grade integrity” and a mandatory five-year freeze on tuition costs. Signing onto the compact will provide these universities “a competitive advantage,” a White House official said. The schools that choose to enter into the agreement “would be given priority for grants when possible as well as invitations for White House events and discussions with officials.”

The letters were sent to a mix of public and private schools, according to the official: Vanderbilt University, University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College, University of Southern California, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Texas at Austin, University of Arizona, Brown University and University of Virginia.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/02/politics/white-house-higher-education-compact-federal-funding