UA among 9 schools asked to sign restrictive Trump ‘compact’ or forgo funding access

The University of Arizona is among nine schools asked to sign a “compact” for higher education, agreeing to suppress campus criticism of conservatives and abandon DEI efforts in exchange for preferential treatment in federal funding.

UA officials have stonewalled on releasing documents related to the Trump proposal.

A letter attached to the nine-page document, labeled as the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” tells the top U.S. educational institutions they could get a leg-up in return, including “multiple positive benefits” regarding federal funding.

The document is 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.

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

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. 

UA officials have not provided any indication how they’re preparing to respond to the missive, nor have they given their assessment of the potential ramifications of refusing to agree to it. UA spokesman Mitch Zak did not respond to specific questions posed by the Sentinel.

Reacting to the Trump letter, the chair of the UA faculty, Prof. Leila Hudson, wrote to UA President Suresh Garimella that the school’s “institutional mission transcends all partisan politics and the dirty
compromises that partisan politics demands. Our mission does not work
without a bedrock commitment on the part of our leadership to everyone’s
freedoms — constitutional, academic and otherwise.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday that the situation is a “code red” and that the University of California, Berkeley must reject the proposed pact.

“We’re
losing this country,” Newsom said. “We’re losing it in real time. This
is a chaos presidency. He is a wrecking ball. This is unlike anything
we’ve experienced in our lifetime. It is code red. No time for
neutrality. It’s time to stand up, pick a side, and be firm and
resolute.

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs did not provide any comment on the issue, nor did state Board of Regents, which oversees the university.

The communication to the universities was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The document was sent to the UA  on Wednesday, said UA’s Mitch Zak.

“The university first learned of the compact when we received it on Oct. 1. We are reviewing it carefully,” he told the Tucson Sentinel.

Zak did not provide any additional comment and refused to provide a copy of the document and the White House’s letter to the Sentinel, despite multiple requests over days this week. The Sentinel obtained the “compact” document through other sources, but has not been provided the individual communication sent to the Tucson university, despite it clearly being a public record under Arizona law.

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.” 

While the UA has managed to pull together some substantial endowments, the university 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.

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.”

“The compact is, in effect, an ultimatum: sign and receive “multiple positive benefits,” including “substantial and meaningful federal grants,” or retain the freedom to “develop models and values other than those” of the administration, and “forgo federal funding,” the group said. 

“This is not constructive engagement,” said AAC&U.

The organization said there is a “well-established legal and administrative processes” for oversight and these are “far more effective than executive fiat in promoting reform and strengthening higher education.” 

The group said leaders would consider proposals for reform, but said leaders “cannot trade academic freedom for federal funding—and should not be asked to do so.” 

“America’s colleges and universities are open to change and have always welcomed constructive reform,” said AAC&U. “Indeed, their historic partnership with government has been a key driver of innovation and improvement.” 

“In renewing the call for constructive engagement, AAC&U also strongly opposes any alternative that would erode or eviscerate essential freedoms and promote instability by making America’s colleges and universities subject not to the law and the principles that have served us so well for centuries, but to the changing priorities of successive administrations,” the group said.

UA stonewalling continues

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 provide the public records.

Despite repeated requests, UA has not turned 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.

“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.”

“Despite the firm pledges by Suresh Garimella in his first months as UA president that he would be transparent, he’s gone squishy and the university has continued its duck and dodge routine,” Smith said.

“This is yet another example of UA’s abjectly embarrassing record of stonewalling, continuing unabated under this president,” Smith said. “The school knows it has a responsibility to provide records when told the public needs to see them, yet fails to do so again and again. They have refused to provide documents requested by the Sentinel and other local news outlets for years.”

“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.