Trump Administration’s Higher Ed Compact: Admirable Impulse, Bad Policy

The Trump administration’s proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” has provoked a wave of consternation across higher education.

Last week, nine high-profile colleges and universities were sent a letter signed by Education Secretary Linda McMahon, White House Domestic Policy Council director Vince Haley, and White House adviser May Mailman. The letter invited leaders to sign onto the “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.”

As with so much the Trump administration has done when it comes to college campuses, the ends are admirable but the means are profoundly problematic. The “Compact” would prioritize grant funding for institutions that agree to adopt tuition freezes, require admissions tests, combat grade inflation, cap foreign enrollment, adopt new protections for campus free inquiry, and embrace a bevy of other conditions.

Predictably, the higher ed blob is up in arms. American Council on Education president Ted Mitchell, a former official in the Obama Department of Education, slammed the proposition as “a naked exercise of power” that would set “a horrible precedent to cede power to the federal government.” Ed Trust president and CEO Denise Forte insisted that it poses “an existential threat to all institutions of higher learning.” Trinity Washington University president Pat McGuire termed it “extortion,” as did Wesleyan University president Michael Roth.

It’s tempting to dismiss as self-serving hypocrisy the hand-wringing from higher ed leaders and college presidents who’ve pocketed billions in taxpayer funds and cheerfully embraced federal directives under presidents Obama and Biden. But, in this instance, they have a point. Indeed, if this “Compact” had been devised by a Harris-Walz administration, Republicans would be (rightfully) livid. Republicans would be inveighing against massive federal overreach, asking what gave the secretary of education the power to condition federal funds on an arbitrary list of demands, and decrying the lawlessness of the exercise.

Again, on the merits, many of the particulars are appealing. Criticism of the exercise should not be read as a defense of higher ed. But there’s no obvious statutory basis for conditioning access to higher ed funding on a sweeping list of arbitrary demands. Proffering “priority” status to institutions that agree to sign is reminiscent of the worst concerns about naked favoritism and self-dealing that worried critics of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act or the CHIPS and Science Act—except without the part about actually being legislated by Congress.

While I’ve previously been critical of the administration’s legal adventurism in higher ed, I’ve also noted that there’s at least been an effort to ground it in legal provisions related to Title VI, Title IX, and the like. That same effort is not in evidence here. Rather, what we’re seeing is a relatively straightforward wish list of asks that are ungrounded in law.

Bizarrely, this list is offered by a secretary of education who insists her primarily goal is to “return education to the states” and get the federal government out of education. Yet, the compact includes a series of fuzzy demands that would necessitate a massive spike in federal oversight, activity, and litigation. For instance, if a college agrees to the proposed “five-year tuition freeze,” would it be allowed to raise fees? Room and board? Who will police the results? If a college agrees to require an admissions test, would it be required to put any weight on the results for admission? How much weight? Who will check that it’s keeping its word? These are the kinds of questions that historically open the door to whole new frontiers of bureaucratic intrusion.

Harvard University’s invaluable Danielle Allen has bravely challenged higher ed convention by making the case for the Compact’s potential value, if viewed as a chance to reset higher ed’s partnership with the American taxpayer and pursued appropriately. She is right. If the Republican Congress wanted to craft legislation instructing ED to direct more funds to colleges that embrace merit, combat grade inflation, and defend free inquiry, that would be terrific. (Indeed, I’ve sketched proposals that might help.) Or, if the administration took specific actions clearly rooted in statute, I’d be on board. (Again, I’ve previously offered suggestions.)

But it’s tough to regard this well-intended move as anything but a mistake. And that’s before we consider how the right may feel about this precedent in the fullness of time, if one day harnessed by a Newsom or AOC administration.

This post originally appeared on the AEIdeas blog.