UA profs oppose ‘academic compact’; Trump admin gives school until Oct. 20 to submit ‘limited’ feedback

The White House has given nine universities—including the University of Arizona—until Oct. 20 to send “limited, targeted” feedback on a “compact” for higher education, agreeing to suppress campus criticism of conservatives and abandon DEI efforts in exchange for preferential treatment in federal funding.

Telling university leaders the document was “largely in its final form,” the White House sent UA officials the letter Wednesday, along with a nine nine-page document labeled the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”

The UA Faculty Senate voted overwhelmingly Monday afternoon to send a resolution to school President Suresh Garimella and state Board of Regents opposing the deal, which they said would “endanger the independence, excellence, and integrity” of the university.

Letter: Trump admin to UA on ‘academic compact’

Professors remarked that the university is “an easy target,” “over a barrel” and the Trump proposal would “infringe on the constitutional rights” of UA community members.

The document tells the top U.S. educational institutions they could get a leg up in return for signing the document, including “multiple positive benefits” regarding federal funding.

Document: Trump ‘Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education’

UA officials received the letter by email late on Oct 1, but despite requests from the Tucson Sentinel on Thursday and Friday, UA officials did not release the letter or a copy of the compact, to the public until Monday afternoon. The University of Virginia, one of the schools asked to sign the compact, released their letter to the public last week, the Arizona Daily Star reported.

“Schools that show clear alignment and a strong readiness to champion this effort will be invited to the White House to finalize language and to be initial signatories,” said White House officials in the letter to Garimella, and leaders at the other eight universities.

“We are aiming to have a signed agreement by no later than November 21, 2025,” the White House said.

The letter signed by Education Secretary Linda McMahon and other Trump administration officials told universities that signing the deal will “signal to students, parents, and contributors that learning and equality are university priorities.”

Further, the federal government would receive an “assurance that signatory schools are complying with civil rights law and pursuing Federal priorities with vigor.” 

In exchange, the agreement will “yield multiple positive benefits for the school, including allowance for increased overhead payments where feasible, substantial and meaningful federal grants, and other federal partnerships.”

The letter to Garimella and the compact itself are vague on what this means, mentioning only “substantial and meaningful federal grants,” and “increased overhead payments where feasible,” the Associated Press reported. The document implies not agreeing to Trump’s unilateral terms could jeopardize funding.

The compact would require signatories to agree with a 10-point plan, including a series of demands that have long been conservative bugbears about the nation’s universities.

Among the requirements is a ban on consideration of race, sex, ethnicity, political views, or sexual orientation for hiring and student admissions; policies that protect “conservative ideas”; a freeze of tuition for the next five years; require students to take standardized tests like the SAT and ACT; limit the number of international undergraduate students to 15 percent of students; a commitment to “institutional neutrality”; and agreeing to allow the Justice Department to enforce the agreement and financially-punish schools that fail to follow the agreement.

The document also requires university leaders to “certify” they are following the compact, and must poll students, faculty and staff to evaluate their adherence to the rules.

Under the terms announced by the White House, if Trump officials found any infraction by a university then it would be forced to pay back all federal funding, and offer to return private donations

The document allows religious institutions to maintain preferences in hiring and admissions, while “single-sex” institutions can keep sex-based preferences. And “any institution may maintain preferences in admissions for American citizens,” under the outlined agreement.

Universities are “free to develop models and values other than those below, if the institution elects to forego federal benefits” according to the document.

Brown University, Dartmouth College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, University of Texas at Austin, the University of Virginia, and Vanderbilt University also received the compact, Inside Higher Ed reported.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration sought to slash university funding cutting as many as 4,000 grants at over 600 universities and colleges, while freezing millions of dollars more. The Trump administration said it terminated grants valued as much as $8.2 billion, as part of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency project dubbed DOGE after a joke cryptocurrency with a cartoon dog for a mascot.

Those grants were worth about $209 million for universities in Arizona, including the UA, according to data from the Center for American Progress.

It remains unclear why the UA was included among the schools targeted by the Trump compact.

While the UA is land-grant college, many of the requirements were aimed at the Ivy League schools, including a demand for universities with an endowment exceeding $2 million per undergraduate student cannot charge tuition for students pursuing “hard science programs.” 

The UA has managed to pull together some substantial endowments, but has only about $30,000 in endowed funds per undergraduate student. UA’s total endowment fund totals about $1.2 billion. Harvard University has an endowment valued at more than $53 billion — contributing some $2.4 billion to that Ivy League school’s budget in 2024 alone.

Only five universities in the nation have endowments valued above $2 million  per undergraduate, including Princeton University, which has around $4 million, and Stanford University, which has about $2.1 million per student, according to data compiled by Inside Higher Ed.

The document also requires tuition to remain stable for five years, arguing universities “have a duty to control their costs, including by eliminating unnecessary administrative staff, reducing tuition burdens, engaging in transparent accounting and regular auditing for misuse of funds, and cutting unnecessary costs.”

Tuition has largely followed price increases across the rest of the economy, including rising health care costs and inflation. However, some tuition increases are caused by declining public funding, as well as attempts to improve campus life with new dorms and athletic facilities, as well as investments in technology, according to the American Council on Education.

Similarly, the document requires universities to limit the number of international undergraduate students to around 15 percent of the student body, and no more than 5 percent can be from a single country.

Universities are supposed to avoid “foreign entanglements,” and must provide information about international funding under Trump’s terms.

Last year, around 3.8 percent of undergrads and 16.7 percent of graduate students were international students at the UA.

However, because of the Trump administration’s clampdown on student visas, the number of international students dropped by 3,309 following what the UA called a “challenging year for students unable to obtain U.S. visas.” 

Through the spring, at least 1,300 students at more than 210 colleges and universities had their legal status changed by the State Department, including at least 50 Arizona State University students and at least 11 UA students.

There are 54,384 students at the UA, including 43,294 undergraduates and 11,090 graduate students.

UA Faculty Senate opposes compact

On Monday afternoon, the UA Faculty Senate voted 40-8 (with 1 person abstaining) to send a resolution to Garimella and the Arizona Board of Regents opposing the compact.

Introduced by Senate Faculty Chair Leila Hudson, the resolution states the White House’s agreement “contains provisions which endanger the independence, excellence, and integrity
of the University of Arizona and infringe on the constitutional rights of members of the University of Arizona community.” 

“Be it resolved that the Faculty Senate of the University of Arizona opposes this compact and calls upon President Garimella and the Arizona Board of Regents to reject this compact as well as any similar proposal compromising the mission, values and independence of the University,” the document stated.

During the meeting, several UA faculty members argued for opposition to the White House’s plan.

Roy Spece, a professor at the James E. Rogers College of Law, noted an analysis from UCLA that outlines “several constitutional and other possible infirmities” with the compact.

“I have been teaching constitutional law for 50 years, and the practice of constitutional law, and I agree with this analysis,” he said. He added the compact has “several provisions” which show “the federal government having power it doesn’t possess.” 

“Secondly, if it did possess this power, the power would be checked by states rights,” Spece said. He said the compact violates state’s rights under the 10th Amendment and “other provisions of the Constitution.” 

“It violates several tenets of the First Amendment and academic freedom,” Spece said and misuses the federal government’s spending power. 

“This compact effectively centralizes research,” said Dr. Lucy Ziurys, a chemistry and biochemistry professor with the College of Science. “You all be working on projects that they give money for, not your own research. It also kills excellence, not supports it, because the minute you take away free competition for grant money and the peer review process, and just give money away randomly, the motivation to work and to do excellent research goes away. 

“This just seems to be to me, another attack of the administration staff,” she said. “I asked President Garimella to say no to this compact. And not just no, hell no.”

However, Dr. Joellen Russell argued for caution telling the other faculty senators the UA remains in a “tough spot” after the recent budget battle. “We are in a really strategic moment,” Russel said, arguing that universities like Harvard can afford to fight the White House because it has large endowment, while the UA’s  budget situation is “precarious.”

“We can’t last a week without our current federal commitments,” she said. “We’re over a barrel.”

Dr. Marvin Slepian, a regents professor of medicine and assistant department head, said the UA was picked because after the last few years, it is an “easy target.” And, he argued the compact is part of out of the long-running conservative playbook known as Project 2025. 

‘Antithetical to mission’ 

While most of the universities have been guarded or silent about the
compact, officials with the University of Texas said they were “honored”
to join the compact, while Dartmouth officials rejected it.

Kevin P. Eltife, the head of  the University of Texas system Board of Regents, wrote he was “honored” the Austin campus was asked to sign on. “We look forward to working with the Trump Administration on it,” he wrote, reported Inside Higher Ed.

Sian
Leah Beilock, Dartmouth’s president, said hers was one of nine
universities “asked by the White House to give feedback” on a draft of
the compact. She added universities had until Oct. 20 to respond. 

“I
am deeply committed to Dartmouth’s academic mission and values and will
always defend our fierce independence,” Beilock wrote. “You have often
heard me say that higher education is not perfect and that we can do
better. At the same time, we will never compromise our academic freedom
and our ability to govern ourselves.” 

University of Virginia’s
own Faculty Senate passed a resolution Friday opposing the compact,
calling it “antithetical to the mission and traditions” of the
university.

In a letter to the university president, the group
asked the university to reject the document outright, “as well as any
similar proposal compromising the mission, values, and independence of
the University.”

They said the document “contains provisions which
endanger the independence and integrity” of the universities and
“likely violates state and federal law, and infringes upon the
constitutional rights of members of the University community.”

Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, said the proposed compact was “nothing short of a hostile takeover of America’s universities.” 

“It would
impose strict government-mandated definitions of academic terms, erase
diversity, and rip control away from campus leaders to install
government-mandated conservative ideology in its place,” he said. “It even dictates
how schools must spend their own endowments. Any institution that
resists could be hit with crushing fines or stripped of federal research
funding.”

Aping the president’s style of using all-caps, Newsom added if any California university signs “this radical agreement, they’ll lose billions in state funding—including Cal Grants—instantly. California will not bankroll schools that sell out their students, professors, researchers, and surrender academic freedom.” 

On Friday, the American Association of Colleges & Universities criticized the document. They noted in April dozens of higher education leaders asked for “constructive engagement” with the federal government “in response to unprecedented overreach and political interference in higher education.”

“Regrettably, the administration has continued to seek ways to impose its own ideologically driven vision for higher education through unilateral executive action and the coercive use of public funding,” the organization said, calling the compact “an ultimatum.”

UA stonewalling

The Sentinel first requested copies of the document from the University of Arizona on Thursday. UA officials acknowledged that they had received the so-called “compact,” but did not initially provide the public records.

Despite repeated requests Thursday and Friday, the UA did not turn over the records, or other communications related to them that the Sentinel also informed university bureaucrats they must release.

UA spokesman Mitch Zak refused to provide a copy of the document and the White House’s letter, telling reporters “you are welcome to file a request through the Office of Public Records.”

Arizona state law mandates that public records be “promptly” provided to anyone who asks to inspect them, and state courts have rejected government attempts to set up restrictive procedures for obtaining them.

UA finally released the documents on Monday, but did not provide the other communications on the issue as requested by the Sentinel last week.

“It’s sad that the University of Arizona has a longstanding record of failing to live up to its responsibilities under the law,” said Sentinel Editor & Co-Publisher Dylan Smith. “It’s more disappointing that this pattern is continuing.”

“It’s a shame that the university that is home to Arizona’s first law school somehow believes that is is above the law,” Smith said.