The NPR Politics Podcast - How The Trump Administration Is Pressuring Universities To Fall In Line

Episode Date: October 27, 2025

The Trump administration has said universities that sign a compact agreeing to certain policy priorities will get preferential treatment when it comes to get federal funding. Though no schools have signed the agreement yet, some say they are in discussions with the administration about it. We discuss the compact and other tactics by an administration that has made reshaping higher education a priority.This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, education correspondent Elissa Nadworny, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.This podcast was produced by Bria Suggs and edited by Rachel Baye. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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process of other scientists reading and critiquing my work. Okay, enjoy the show. I don't know why that one got me. I was just not expecting that go that way. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And NPR education correspondent, Alyssa, Alyssa, is also here with us. Hi, Alyssa. Hello. It's great to have you here. Thank you. And today on the show, we are talking about higher education. The Trump administration has been trying to push schools toward the president's priorities most recently with a so-called compact that the administration has asked some university leaders to sign. And Alyssa, I'm hoping we just back up for a second because

is Trump and many Republicans have had a lot of issues over the years with universities, specifically accusing them of all different manners of liberal bias. What are their specific goals when it comes to changing colleges? Well, I guess I would say that there are kind of five priorities that they have cited over the last, say, eight months. The first is getting race out of admissions. So this follows the Supreme Court decision in 2023 to essentially ban affirmative action. Then there is DEI initiatives, diversity, equity, and inclusion. This kind of like falls in that race bucket.

Antisemitism on campus, alleged anti-Semitism and confirmed anti-Semitism. International students. There's been a number of executive orders to basically curb the influence of foreign governments through kind of students coming into the U.S. and studying here. And then kind of these hot-button cultural issues like transgender use of bathrooms or making sure schools only recognize two genders. It's interesting. I feel like, Domenico, a lot of those issues kind of line up very cleanly with a lot of things Trump ran on in 2024, more broadly, even unrelated to colleges. Yeah, it's been striking to me because, you know, obviously

conservatives have for a long time felt like colleges and universities impose what they feel as a liberal agenda. You'll have a kid who comes from a conservative community as they see it. Then they go off to college, learn things. And then, you know, are brainwashed, right? I mean, you've heard this for a long time from conservatives, but obviously this is a way for Trump to sort of specifically and in a micro sort of way try to get these universities to align with his agenda and with his cultural point of view, which is something obviously, as you're alluding to, that he ran on not just in 2024, but in 2016 as well. I mean, the idea that you wouldn't have race in admissions, you wouldn't have race as a consideration in hiring. All of that.

stuff has been something that has been a huge touchstone for Trump and conservatives for a long time. So, Alyssa, this so-called compact is a way that the Trump administration seems to be trying to push some of these colleges toward their priorities. What was this compact and what was it specifically asking colleges to do? So the compact was kind of a policy document sent to nine colleges, public and private, pretty elite institutions like Brown University was on it, University of Texas, Austin. This was sent out at the beginning of October. They had about 20 days to get back to the administration. And it essentially asked colleges to sign on to these political priorities in order to get preferential treatment in federal funding. So some of the things that asked colleges to do were to have equality in admissions, essentially to take race out of admissions. A lot of the stuff we talked about at the top. And then there were some kind of more palatable, less controversial things. such as freezing tuition for five years, which some colleges have actually already done, separate from this. Another one was requiring the SAT and ACT for admissions, which, again, many colleges do.

It's not standardized, but that's certainly something to discuss. Okay, so some mainstream ideas and then some kind of, as you put it, more controversial ideas in education. How have the colleges broadly kind of responded to the idea of this compact? Well, there was a deadline for feedback. And as that deadline approached, the majority of colleges said, we're not going to sign this. It interferes with what we perceive as the role or the firewall kind of between academia and the federal government. It doesn't have anything in here that says that our academic freedom is protected. So a lot of colleges were worried about that. But some colleges kind of put out statements that said we're excited to talk to the administration to open up this dialogue about changes in higher ed policy. Does that surprise you at all, Domenico, that so many of these colleges, I guess, did initially decline this compact request? I mean, I think that there's a lot of universities that are struggling to figure out how to deal with life in the Trump administration, just like we've seen with a lot of private industry groups, whether it's the media or law firms,

some of whom have tried to have these deals, side deals with the Trump administration, thinking maybe it'll help them grease the wheels for whatever it is, mostly to have the Trump administration leave them alone and continue to do the things that they normally do. So I think that this has been a decision that some schools have decided to say, you know, yeah, let's try to take an open-minded approach and let's work with them so that they're in favor with the Trump administration. And other universities are saying, no, this is our autonomy and we don't want to allow any room for a government. for the administration, for any administration, to say, hey, this is how you need to do things, and we're going to agree to that. Well, I wonder whether some of these colleges are feeling more emboldened to say no to this, because I'm a little confused about what the stakes are for the colleges that do say no. Like, preferential treatment for federal funds, what does that actually mean? Like, what are, what is the risk to a college that decides they aren't going to sign this compact in clear terms, Alyssa? Well, I think that is absolutely what's kind of motivating a number of these schools to be okay with saying no, because it's not super clear. The language is really vague in the compact. And, you know, potentially what's at stake, of course, is billions of dollars in federal funding for research grants. The student loan system, that's kind of props up tuition. A lot of Republicans argue. And so that's at stake. So there's certainly like the potential for real implications. And yet the compact really doesn't clearly

spell it out. And so I think there was some kind of like confusion perhaps or like, you know, and the administration has said again and again, like in the following week from this deadline passing that this is the beginning of a conversation. This is kind of the first step in reforming higher ed. They're much more loose on their language than kind of punitive if you don't sign. Here are the consequences. Well, just taking a step back a little bit on this compact too, it seems to me this is a little bit of a changing of tactics from the Trump administration. Is that right? I mean, in terms of actually trying to get buy-in from the university as opposed to like, we're just going to tell you what to do and you're going to have to live with it? Yeah, I think this can be read as kind of a more carrot approach than the stick.

You know, I mean, the first six months were marked by the administration putting out executive orders or investigating colleges for improper use of what they saw as a political priority or cutting billions of dollars in federal research grants. And so now we're kind of seeing this shift to this seems to be a negotiation rather than kind of a punitive like a regulation or an investigation. Which I guess makes sense then why some colleges are kind of welcoming that as opposed to the alternative, right? That's right. Yeah. All right. Well, let's take a quick break and more in just a moment. It's tempting to try to maximize your productivity.

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or about what global events mean for the price of your coffee. Listen to the state of the world podcast from NPR. And we're back. And we've been talking about this college compact. The Trump administration has been asking some university leaders to sign on to that relates to their priorities when it comes to higher education. I do wonder about the idea of academic freedom and just kind of like whether some of these schools are looking at this as a little bit of a slippery slope that if they sign on to something like this, like this is not the end of requests, I guess, coming from political administrations, whether this one or the next one. Do you think that's how universities are looking at this? I think there is a deep fear in academia that once you kind of sign onto something like this that could set a precedent, that the kind of like bigger picture idea of a binding agreement such as this, which dictates a lot of what goes on in a college or in a university, is antithetical to kind of like the freedom of speech and freedom of expression that we have in America. There were a number of organizations that basically warned colleges not to sign this that said, like, we think this compact is a step. in the wrong direction. Domenico, I do wonder, though, about the risk, I guess, of crossing the Trump administration in any way. I mean, you mentioned the, you know, other different aspects of society, whether it's law firms, media organizations. It is a dangerous game, I guess, to say,

no, we're not going to sign on to this because of all the different tactics, I guess the Trump administration has shown that they're willing to use when it comes to retribution. Yeah, I think a lot of them are probably nervous when they look at a letter, even if it seems like something that in the words they might be able to agree to, you never know with the Trump administration just how punitive it's going to be if you decide to go against them or what winds up filtering up to Trump himself and he gets annoyed about or sees. You know, I mean, you think about just what he did with, you know, Canadian trade talks because he saw one advertisement that got him upset and decided to, you know, call it all off. I mean, if one, you know, university president decides to say

something out of line in how Trump sees it, then his administration has a lot of tools at its disposal to go after them and go after them hard. And we've seen university presidents bow out of their jobs, in fact, in the first 10 months of the Trump presidency this second time around. So I think a lot of them are very skittish and very concerned about how they're going to deal with the Trump administration and trying to strike that balance. Now, one kind of side effect of what Domenico is talking about is a lot of the college presidents and chancellors and boards that I've been talking to, do say that the lines of communication between them and the White House have really opened up in a way that they haven't in kind of recent memory, which, you know, could potentially be what all this is for. Broadening out from the compact a little bit, what other tactics has the Trump administration used to try to push universities in the direction of their political priorities? Well, a huge one has been investigations and kind of using every aspect of the federal government to do this. So the education department has opened investigations, the Justice Department, HHS.

There was just a recent agreement between the federal government and the University of Virginia. And this was over their use of DEI initiatives on campus and also race in admissions and anti-Semitism. So essentially the Justice Department opens up these investigations and they made a deal to pause them temporarily. And what I think is kind of interesting about this deal is that no money exchanged hands. there's no fine. And essentially, UVA agreed to, in this very legal document, abide by federal civil rights law. Which is not, I guess, controversial. Is that the underlying assumption? That's actually how the system is supposed to work and how it has worked in previous administrations. I mean, I think this is something that people don't realize, but investigating a college for not following federal law is pretty common.

Every administration has done it. And often they reach agreements like the one they reached with UVA, where the college says, Yep. We did something wrong. We're going to fix it, update you, and you'll close the investigations. Got it. To what extent is all of this new? I keep trying to come to an answer on, like, what is unprecedented in all different facets of kind of Trump administration round two? I mean, when you kind of look at this, whether it's the use of investigations, whether it's this compact, I mean, is this business as usual? Yeah, I think that that's the issue with Trump is that you're not sure ever. what they're going to exactly go after you on. He's got a huge reach, a huge megaphone and being able to, you know, embarrass whether it's university presidents or the schools themselves. I mean, we have seen past presidents, you know, try to affect higher education in different ways. I mean,

the Biden administration really tried to tackle affordability, going after things like free community college, student loan forgiveness, a lot of which was shut down by the Supreme Court. And we saw Biden and the Obama administration really target for-profit colleges because of low graduation rates, low placement rates. They didn't think that they were a very good use of people's money. Obama, you know, really tried to increase Pell Grant funding. Again, a lot of it really had to do with affordability, but also looking at teacher training in the K-12 space so that kids were more ready for college. You know, George W. Bush obviously had a big initiative for K to 12. with no child left behind, but also tried to tackle things like affordability and service with

some incentives, really, where it was a thing that he pushed for more. The only thing that's sort of parallel in some respects is looking back at the Reagan administration and what Ronald Reagan tried to do ideologically with feeling that colleges were too dependent on the federal government for grants. He changed a lot of the grant structure to loans and really felt like the federal government was spending too much money on these colleges and wanted to. colleges to sort of reverse that a bit and be able to spend money that they get from tuition on some of the initiatives that they wanted rather than have the federal government step in.

So we've seen presidents want to have their hand in some respects to try to shape what colleges and universities do and how they function, but not necessarily what they teach, not necessarily who they hire. Yeah. Well, let's leave it there for today. NPR education correspondent, Alyssa Naderwurney. Thanks for being with us. You bet.

I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent. And thank you for listening to the MPR Politics Podcast.