Penn State would not sign the Trump administration’s controversial compact for higher education if asked to do so, according to university President Neeli Bendapudi.
The “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” is a proposal sent to nine universities in early October offering more favorable access to federal funding in exchange for agreeing to a series of demands.
Bendapudi was asked during a “State of State” forum on Thursday about how the university would approach the compact if asked to sign it.
“We have not been approached, as you know, and if we were we would not sign it,” Bendapudi said. “That’s because of a number of reasons we could go into but we would not sign it.”
While Bendapudi did not detail those reasons, WPSU reported that Bendapudi told student media after the event that “for us the notion of merit being the reason for why you would get grants or not is important. Academic freedom is a very important principle.”
The compact would require universities to commit to Trump administration priorities on admissions, women’s sports, free speech, student discipline and college affordability, among other topics.
Among the conditions, they would be asked to eliminate consideration of race, gender and other demographic factors in admissions and hiring, require SAT or ACT scores from prospective studenst and adopt a position of “institutional neutrality” on societal and political events.
Schools would be required to accept the government’s definition of gender and apply it to campus bathrooms, locker rooms and women’s sports teams. They would have to commit to “an intellectually open campus environment,” including “abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas,” and would be required to prohibit demonstrations that disrupt classes or libraries or heckle other students.
International enrollment would have a cap of 15% of a college’s undergraduate student body, and no more than 5% could come from a single country. Colleges would also be required to freeze tuition for U.S. students for five years.
In return, signatory universities would receive “substantial and meaningful federal grants” and “increased overhead payments where feasible.”
The proposal was initially sent for feedback to Vanderbilt, the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College, the University of Southern California, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Texas, the University of Arizona, Brown University and the University of Virginia. It was subsequently opened to any college to provide feedback.
Most of the initial recipients have indicated they would reject the compact. Vanderbilt expressed reservations but was noncommittal. The head of the University of Texas Board of Regents initially expressed enthusiasm for the deal, but the school has not yet responded.
No other major universities have said they would accept it, though the New College of Florida and the Valley Forge Military College in Pennsylvania volunteered their support.
In California, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom warned universities that agreeing to the compact could lead to a loss of state funding.
Bendapudi said Penn State has had no communication with Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, about the proposal.
The compact has been met nationally with backlash from faculty and higher education organizations.
Leaders of the American Association of University Professors and American Federation of Teachers wrote that the proposal “to give preferential treatment to colleges and universities in exchange for allegiance to a partisan ideological agenda stinks of favoritism, patronage, and bribery. It is entirely corrupt.”
The American Council on Education and a multitude of other higher ed associations issued a statement voicing their opposition to the compact, writing that it is “just the kind of excessive federal overreach and regulation, to the detriment of state and local input and control, that this administration says it is against.”
Locally, the AAUP’s Penn State chapter called on Bendapudi and the university’s Board of Trustees to “recognize the threat to academic freedom, free expression, civil rights, and colleagues and students in Pennsylvania and across the globe that this directive poses.”
“Supporting the compact or any future overreach into Penn State’s admissions, hiring, programs, and curriculum would render Penn State’s mission impossible and destroy academic freedom and free expression of ideas,” the chapter wrote. “This compact would hinder the work of faculty, staff, and students that make Penn State one of the top universities in the world.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
