Iowa lawmakers urge regent universities to be first to sign Trump’s higher ed compact

IOWA CITY — None of the nine campuses the Trump administration has asked to sign a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” have done so, but two conservative lawmakers in Iowa are urging the Board of Regents to be the first.

“Iowa has a chance to be a leader in higher education reform by having our universities be the first to sign on to this compact,” Sen. Lynn Evans, R-Aurelia, chair of the Committee on Education, and Rep. Taylor Collins, R-Mediapolis, chair of the Committee on Higher Education, wrote in a joint letter to the board Sunday. “We hope the board recognizes the importance of this moment, and will do the right thing for Iowa taxpayers and students by signing on to the compact as soon as possible.”

The Trump administration sent the compact to nine institutions Oct. 1, offering them “multiple positive benefits” in exchange for reformed admissions and hiring practices, capped international enrollment, frozen tuition, and protection of conservative ideas — among other things.

“A vibrant marketplace of ideas requires an intellectually open campus environment, with a broad spectrum of ideological viewpoints present and no single ideology dominant,” according to the proposed compact. “Signatories commit themselves to revising governance structures as necessary to create such an environment, including but not limited to transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”

The proposed compact went to Brown University, Dartmouth College, and the University of Pennsylvania in the Ivy League; the private Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Vanderbilt University, and University of Southern California; and the public universities of Arizona, Virginia, and Texas at Austin.

Although the compact didn’t go to any colleges or universities in Iowa, USC is in the University of Iowa’s Big Ten Conference, and the University of Arizona is in Iowa State University’s Big 12 Conference.

And White House officials have said other schools “may be given the opportunity” to sign — with another adviser indicating the compact could extend to all higher education institutions, according to national media outlets.

“These common sense reforms would not only be welcome news for Iowa students and taxpayers, but joining this compact would greatly benefit Iowa’s universities by giving them preferred access to federal funding,” Evans and Collins wrote in their letter to the Board of Regents over the weekend, referencing a portion of the letter offering “substantial and meaningful federal grants” to campuses that comply.

The lawmakers’ letter opens by reminding the board that President Donald Trump “won a decisive victory” a year ago after running, in part, on a commitment to reform the nation’s higher education system.

“Since January, President Trump has implemented the platform he ran on,” according to the letter that touches on the compact’s eight areas of commitment.

Compact commitments

The compact’s “equality in admissions” section requires universities to comply with the Supreme Court ruling barring campuses from privileging applicants based on race and to — in proving compliance — publicly report anonymized data for admitted and rejected students, including GPA and other scores by race, national origin, and sex.

The “civil discourse” portion requires universities to not only abolish units belittling conservative ideas but maintain an intellectually-open environment with “rigorous, good faith, empirical assessment of a broad spectrum of viewpoints among faculty, students, and staff at all levels and to sharing the results of such assessments with the public.”

The “faculty and administrative hiring” section requires campuses to base decisions on merit, not race.

The “institutional neutrality” section mandates universities prevent employees and academic units from making political pronouncements on behalf of the institution.“

The “student learning” section committed signatories to “grade integrity and the use of defensible standards for whether students are achieving their goals,” with signatories acknowledging a grade “must not be inflated, or deflated, for any non-academic reason, but only rigorously reflect the demonstrated mastery of a subject that the grade purports to represent.”

The “student equality” portion charges the campuses to treat students as individuals “and not on the basis of their immutable characteristics.” Women’s equality, according to the compact, “requires single-sex spaces, such as bathrooms and locker rooms, and fair competition, such as in sports.” The agreement requires institutions to commit to defining “male,” “female,” “woman,” and “man” according to “reproductive function and biological processes.”

The “financial responsibility” section would have the campuses freeze tuition for five years;

And the “foreign entanglements” section would cap campuses’ international enrollment at no more than 15 percent of its undergraduate student population, allowing no more than 5 percent to be from any one country.

Campuses react

The campuses offered the compact have responded in a variety of ways — although only MIT formally responded with a rejection on Oct. 10. That campus’ President Sally Kornbluth in a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said MIT already has values that “meet or exceed many standards outlined in the document you sent.”

“The document also includes principles with which we disagree, including those that would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution,” Kornbluth wrote. “And fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone.”

To that point, she said America’s science and innovation “depends on independent thinking and open competition for excellence.”

“In that free marketplace of ideas, the people of MIT gladly compete with the very best, without preferences,” she wrote. “Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education.”

Conversely, Kevin P. Eltife, who leads the University of Texas system Board of Regents, responded positively to the proposal, according to national media reports, saying he was “honored” to be invited.

“We look forward to working with the Trump administration on it,” he said, according to Inisde Higher Ed.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

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