Trump’s Policy Puts Foreign Student Admissions at Risk

The Trump administration is planning to reorient higher education towards his policy. Accordingly, plans are afoot to cut off government funding for universities not restricting admission to international students. The administration sent letters to a group of top-tier universities on Wednesday proposing a compact that would cap international students, ban the use of race or sex in hiring, and require standardized testing as part of the admission process, to get preferential access to federal funding.

Labeled the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education”, the programme underscores that universities that agree to the terms will enjoy benefits including access to federal student loans, approval of visas for foreign scholars, grants and contracts as well as research funding, and preferential treatment under the tax code.

Earlier this week, Trump suggested Harvard University, which he primarily targeted, was close to finalizing a $500 million settlement with the administration that would see the school fund trade programs. The universities to which the memo was sent included Vanderbilt University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas, the University of Arizona, and others.

The administration sent the memo to select universities because their leadership had indicated in some way they could help the government in the mission.

The White House is seeking pledges from the versities on various issues like disallowing consideration of sex, ethnicity, race, nationality, political views, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious associations in admission or financial aid decisions, adopting policies protecting academic freedom and abolishing “institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas, requiring all university employees to abstain in their official capacity from actions or speech related to politics, free tuition for students pursuing hard science programs at universities with an endowment exceeding $2 million per undergraduate student, disclosure of all funding and others.

The compact also mentions that sticking to the above principles will be subject to review by the Department of Justice, and that violations will result in a loss of access to federal benefits for no less than two years. At the same time, the compact also says that universities resistant to the demands “are free to develop models and values other than those below, if the institution would prefer to forego federal benefits.”

Gradually, a few universities have started yielding to the pressure from the White House. The University of Pennsylvania had agreed to change policies related to transgender athletes while Columbia University has shown readiness to pay more than $200 million to settle complaints around discriminatory hiring and antisemitism. Reportedly, Brown University said it would use $50 million over the next 10 years to fund local workforce development programs.