Northeastern has yet to receive an offer to sign on to the Trump administration’s higher education compact, according to a university spokesperson Oct. 21, which would require institutions to align their policies with the administration’s political agenda in exchange for access to federal research funds.
The Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education was initially sent to nine universities nationwide Oct. 1, requiring them to join or reject by Oct. 20. The compact reflects the Trump administration’s goal to scrub “wokeness” from higher education in America and proposes universities change their policies in exchange for preferential federal funding.
The universities that initially received the compact included Brown University, Dartmouth College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or M.I.T., University of Arizona, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, University of Texas at Austin, University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University.
As of publication, the University of Texas and Vanderbilt University have not publicly signed or rejected the offer and the remaining seven have publicly rejected the offer.
As of Oct. 25, the offer has been extended to three more institutions, including Washington University, which rejected the compact, and Arizona State University and University of Kansas, which have not yet made any public statements.
By signing the compact, universities would agree to restrict definitions of gender, cap international student enrollment and adjust institutional structures to prohibit any behavior that would “punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”
Additionally, the compact calls for a commitment to institutional political neutrality, freezing tuition for five years, restricting faculty and staff from expressing political opinions on behalf of their institution and eliminating cultural buildings, spaces, programming and scholarships.
The compact requires that universities with large populations of international students reduce the number of spots available for “deserving American students,” and that this could possibly lead to a campus with “anti-Semitism and other anti-American values, creating national security risks.”
The compact does not permit any universities to have more than 15% of their undergraduate population enrolled in the Student Visa Exchange Program. Based on Northeastern’s 2024-25 student demographics data, international students make up 12.8% of the undergraduate population at Northeastern.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump indicated the compact would eventually be open to all higher education institutions, writing that those looking to pursue his goals are “invited to enter into a forward looking Agreement with the Federal Government to help bring about the Golden Age of Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”
“Higher Education has lost its way, and is now corrupting our Youth and Society with WOKE, SOCIALIST, and ANTI-AMERICAN Ideology,” Trump wrote. “My Administration is fixing this, and FAST, with our Great Reform Agenda in Higher Education.”
