It was not proudly announced at a press conference or rolled out in a White House event. Instead, the media uncovered that the administration had quietly asked nine universities, including Penn, Vanderbilt, MIT, Dartmouth, USC, Arizona, Brown, Texas, and Virginia, to sign on to a so-called “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” The language surrounding the Compact came cloaked in patriotic rhetoric about restoring standards, promoting fairness, and protecting taxpayers. The plan promised to put American universities “back on track” by tying federal support to “real accountability.” For many Americans frustrated with the cost of college and concerned about fairness, the language had an immediate surface appeal. But beneath the patriotic wrapping lies something much darker.

For those who have studied and experienced higher education globally, the Compact is not an American innovation. It is political plagiarism. The very structure of the Compact, in which federal funding is dangled as leverage to enforce political directives, mirrors the Chinese Communist Party’s governance model for controlling universities. It substitutes independence with obedience. It risks reshaping American higher education into something recognizably Chinese.

I speak from personal experience. In the 1990s, as an undergraduate, I was awarded an NIH Fogarty fellowship that sent me to China, where I saw firsthand how students and scholars navigated the tension between inquiry and ideology in the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Decades later, during my service as provost from 2023 to 2025, I returned to China multiple times to negotiate agreements with universities on behalf of Western Michigan University. Over four decades of visits, I saw the same story unfold again and again. Chinese institutions brimmed with ambition and talent, yet their independence was steadily constrained by Communist Party control, always justified in the name of the greater good.

That is why the Trump administration’s Compact should scare us. It is not a solution to the real challenges of tuition, admissions, or accountability. It is a copy of authoritarian control logic. I watched it unfold in China, and now I see it being imported into the United States.

What the Trump Compact Demands

According to reports, universities asked to sign the Compact must agree to a five-year tuition freeze, mandatory standardized testing in admissions, elimination of race and sex considerations in admissions and hiring, restrictions on international enrollment capped at fifteen percent, and federal “accountability metrics” tied to grading and outcomes. The Compact also calls for limits on faculty political expression, restructuring of units deemed hostile to conservative ideas, mandatory Justice Department audits, tuition refunds for students who drop out, cuts to administrative overhead, and free tuition in STEM fields at wealthy institutions.

In exchange, signatories will receive “substantial and meaningful federal grants,” preferential access to research funding, and invitations to policy discussions at the White House. The language of fairness, transparency, and excellence masks the reality. These are not voluntary suggestions. They are conditions for survival. Once universities agree to such terms, they will no longer be free actors. They will be dependent institutions obeying directives in order to maintain their funding streams.

The Federal Money Trap

This strategy of financial leverage is not new. The Daily Pennsylvanian reported that Penn has already had $175 million in research funding suspended pending compliance reviews. Brown has negotiated settlements under federal scrutiny. MIT has shut down its DEI office, and Vanderbilt and Virginia have faced civil rights inquiries. The timing of the Compact is no accident. The administration applied maximum financial pressure at the very moment when universities were already vulnerable, then offered them an escape route by signing the new agreement.

In reality, this is not partnership but coercion. Universities are free to reject the Compact, but only at the cost of exclusion from critical federal resources. This is how authoritarian control works. Step in line and you are rewarded. Refuse and you are punished. Once such a precedent is established, it does not stop. What begins with tuition freezes and testing mandates will soon expand to dictate curricula, research agendas, and faculty speech.

Breaking Down the Ten Provisions

1. Ban the use of race or sex in hiring and admissions
The Compact demands the elimination of race and sex as considerations in admissions and hiring. This is framed as fairness but in practice dismantles Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts. For decades, DEI has been about expanding opportunity and correcting purposeful exclusion, not about favoritism. Removing these tools entrenches privilege and narrows access. China has pursued the same logic. Programs focusing on minority groups like Uyghurs or Tibetans have been shuttered, and gender studies was banned in 2018. The message is clear: diversity is labeled divisive, neutrality is enforced, and identity is erased.

2. Freeze tuition for five years
A federally imposed tuition freeze may sound like relief but would act as a straitjacket. Universities manage complex budgets shaped by inflation, labor contracts, and research costs. Denying them the flexibility to adjust tuition means shifting control of financial priorities to Washington. China’s universities have long operated under similar constraints. Tuition is set centrally by the Party, leaving institutions dependent and financially brittle.

3. Cap international enrollment at 15 percent
International students bring not only tuition revenue but also vital global perspectives. A cap sends the message that America is closing itself off. China does the same, tightly monitoring international enrollment to extract benefits without allowing foreign influence to grow. The Compact mirrors this posture of suspicion and restriction, undermining the global openness that has long been a hallmark of American higher education.

4. Reinstate mandatory standardized testing
Requiring all applicants to take the SAT or ACT is framed as rigor but is in fact regression. Decades of research show that standardized tests reflect family wealth as much as aptitude. Schools that have gone test-optional expanded access without lowering quality. China’s gaokao exam demonstrates the endgame of mandatory testing: millions reduced to one number, creativity stifled, and conformity rewarded.

5. End or control grade inflation
The Compact shifts authority over grades from faculty to Washington. Grade distributions would become compliance metrics. In China, similar controls already exist. Departments are disciplined for deviating from Party expectations. Faculty lose the autonomy to assess students. Grading becomes about political alignment rather than learning.

6. Restrict political expression by employees
The Compact claims to promote a marketplace of ideas while banning political expression by faculty in their professional roles. This contradiction is telling. Silencing scholars in the name of neutrality is censorship. China operates the same way. Professors can teach economics but not critique Party economic policy, or teach history but not mention Tiananmen. Knowledge becomes truncated and sanitized.

7. Abolish or restructure units hostile to conservative ideas
By targeting academic units accused of hostility to conservative ideas, the Compact engages in ideological policing. Gender studies, race studies, and climate science are clear targets. China’s Communist Party has done the same, eliminating gender studies, constraining political science, and punishing scholars who explore sensitive topics. Once politicians dictate what counts as legitimate knowledge, no discipline is safe.

8. Require third-party audits with Justice Department oversight
Mandatory surveys and audits may sound like transparency but function as surveillance. Faculty and students will censor themselves if they know their responses feed into federal review. China’s universities already live under this system, where lectures are monitored, faculty are profiled, and dissent is flagged. Transparency becomes intimidation.

9. Refund tuition for dropouts and cut administrative costs
This provision punishes institutions that serve the most vulnerable students. Community colleges and regional universities, where students face greater financial pressures, would absorb enormous costs. Elite universities would remain untouched. Cutting administrative costs is equally misleading, since much of university administration exists to comply with federal regulations in financial aid, disability services, Title IX, and immigration. China’s demand for lean bureaucracies has not produced efficiency but overwork and brittleness.

10. Free tuition for STEM majors at wealthy institutions
The Compact proposes free tuition for STEM students at wealthy schools while sidelining the humanities and social sciences. This is an ideological attack. It privileges state-preferred disciplines and starves others. China has long done the same, pouring resources into engineering and applied sciences while marginalizing philosophy and the arts. The result is technocrats trained to serve the state but not citizens prepared to question it.

The danger is that this Compact is all too familiar to anyone who has observed Chinese higher education. I first traveled to China in the 1990s, when universities brimmed with ambition and openness. Yet even then, Communist Party control was visible. Presidents were appointed by the Party, curricula monitored for ideology, and sensitive research avoided. Decades later, as a provost, I returned to see the grip even tighter. Leaders were reshuffled overnight by fiat. Faculty and students self-censored to survive. The pattern was unmistakable. Party control begins with financial leverage, hardens into personnel decisions, and ends with absolute authority over scholarship and curriculum. The Compact brings that same logic to the United States.

Why It Matters

Students do not choose universities only for prestige. They choose them for independence, creativity, and courage. Faculty join institutions where they can pursue truth without fear. The Compact undermines both commitments. Signing it may preserve funding in the short term, but it mortgages independence in the long run. By branding obedience as “excellence,” the administration redefines what higher education means. Excellence has never been about compliance. It has always been about freedom, innovation, and pluralism.

American higher education has never been perfect, but its autonomy from political parties has made it the envy of the world. Its diversity—from community colleges to HBCUs to research universities—has fueled innovation. The Compact threatens to flatten this landscape. By enforcing conformity, it risks turning universities into instruments of political will rather than engines of discovery. China’s example shows the consequences. Academic life narrows, dissent disappears, and progress stalls. Once universities become mouthpieces for political parties, they no longer serve as guardians of truth.

This is the moment for courage. Students must demand that their institutions resist. Faculty must defend their freedom, even when uncomfortable. Administrators must remember that independence, not compliance, makes American higher education worth defending. If universities sign on, they will lose more than flexibility in admissions or tuition. They will lose the independence that has made them world leaders in research, innovation, and democratic thought.

The Compact is not about excellence. It is about obedience. It is not reform. It is political plagiarism. Borrowed from China’s playbook, it dares American universities to trade independence for funding. If that trade is made, the cost will not only be borne by administrators or faculty. It will be paid by students, by communities, and by a society that depends on universities to produce knowledge free from political control.

The choice is clear. China’s model rests on obedience, conformity, and censorship. America’s model rests on diversity, freedom, and discovery. If we surrender the latter in exchange for political dictates, we will lose the qualities that made American higher education the envy of the world and weaken the foundation of democracy itself.

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Julian Vasquez Heilig is a nationally recognized policy scholar, public intellectual, and civil rights advocate. A trusted voice in public policy, he has testified for state legislatures, the U.S. Congress, the United Nations, and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, while also advising presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. His work has been cited by major outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, and he has appeared on networks from MSNBC and PBS to NPR and DemocracyNow!. He is a recipient of more than 30 honors, including the 2025 NAACP Keeper of the Flame Award, Vasquez Heilig brings both scholarly rigor and grassroots commitment to the fight for equity and justice.