Most of the nine high-profile institutions that initially received the Trump administration’s “compact” have rejected its proposed new terms of engagement with higher education. But the more-nuanced responses that came on Monday — the administration’s stated deadline for institutions to offer feedback — signaled a willingness to talk with the White House, and point to a continued division in the sector about how to interact with the Trump administration.
Vanderbilt University’s chancellor on Monday declined to explicitly reject or accept the compact, but pledged that his institution would “provide feedback and comments as part of an ongoing dialogue.” The University of Arizona declined to sign, but sent the administration its own statement of principles as a “contribution toward a national conversation about the future relationship between universities and the federal government.” Before ending his letter, Suresh Garimella, Arizona’s president, wrote: “I look forward to further discussion.”
The same day, Washington University in St. Louis also announced it would participate in that conversation. Though WashU wasn’t among the nine institutions to receive the compact — which has since been opened to all of academe — it did join a Friday meeting with Trump administration officials. Explaining the institution’s rationale, Andrew D. Martin, the chancellor, wrote in a letter to campus that, “It’s important for WashU to have a seat at the table for these discussions.”
Such responses suggest what may be an emerging desire among higher-ed leaders to enter into a dialogue and perhaps even shape the sector’s relationship with the White House as it tries to exert influence over admissions and hiring practices, “viewpoint diversity,” and enrollment in exchange for preference in federal funding.
They also mark a departure from the October 10 statement by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s president, Sally Kornbluth, who was the first to reject the compact. Brown University and the Universities of Pennsylvania and Southern California followed suit. On Friday, the White House invited the recipients who hadn’t yet responded to join a virtual meeting with administration officials. After that call, Dartmouth College and the University of Virginia opted out, with Arizona and Vanderbilt issuing their statements on Monday. (The University of Texas at Austin is the only original recipient not to have offered a public response.)
But even some of those in the “no” camp have acknowledged that common ground exists between their institutions and the federal government, with Kornbluth referring to “the priorities we share for American higher education” in her letter to White House officials. Other institutions have noted that they already abide by some of the principles outlined in the compact, while Garimella of Arizona acknowledged Monday that “Our national higher education system could benefit from reforms that have been much too slow to develop.”
Differing Responses
The range of responses to the compact reflects the realities of a decentralized and highly distributed higher-ed sector. “Each of these schools is doing what they think is in the best interest of their school,” said H. Holden Thorp, a former chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a former provost of WashU.
That, he added, “frustrates a lot of people who want to see some kind of movement, but the university presidents don’t get paid to save the whole country. They get paid to protect their school and the people who work at their school, and I think all of them came to different conclusions about how to do that. There certainly wasn’t a collective response, and I didn’t expect one.”
But Vanderbilt and WashU in particular, by indicating their willingness to keep talking, may open themselves up to a different risk, Thorp said. “Lucy could pull the football on them, as we’ve seen multiple times with the administration, where you agree to something and then you have to start all over again.” Notably, those institutions’ chancellors have made headlines in recent months for arguing that reform, not resistance, is higher ed’s best path forward, a stance for which they attracted accusations of opportunism and of carrying out Trump-administration priorities.
The differing responses, Thorp said, could mark a win for the White House. “The higher-education sector remains disorganized,” he said, and “the Trump administration will continue to use that to their advantage.”
