When the Trump administration introduced its “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” last fall, it failed miserably. And rightly so — all nine colleges invited to participate declined to sign on the basis of its threat to academic freedom, research funding, international student enrollment, tuition rate increases and policies surrounding race and gender. But the federal government has far from given up on its goal of shaping higher education towards political ends.
On Aug. 3, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon issued a public letter to universities across the country, asking that they submit statements outlining their plans and commitments to the Trump administration's educational priorities before the end of the year. Several of these priorities include merit-based admissions, intellectual pluralism, free speech and the elimination of foreign influence. Though the fate of universities that refuse to detail such commitments is uncertain, this new compact makes no threat of eliminating federal funding. McMahon claims that these suggested priorities are to improve trust in higher education, which has, in recent years, declined among members of both political parties.
The underlying premise of the letter is undeniable — higher education indeed has a trust problem, but we should hesitate to rely on the federal government to define its causes for us.
The Department of Education touts the priorities listed in the letter as reasonable and ideologically neutral — after all, it is only right that Americans should want to restore order, rigor and fairness to academia. But these statements are familiar — they betray a similar logic as the compact. That is, the offending contents are politically loaded. It does not seem possible to separate concerns about intellectual pluralism from calls for deliberately hiring conservative faculty. Nor can concerns about the “dilution of academic standards” be separated from attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion programs and debates over the United States’ complex racial history. And it is difficult to discuss foreign influence without considering an administration that has subjected international students and scholars to heightened scrutiny and immigration enforcement. Above all, how can we separate this letter from lawsuits, funding threats and the assertion of federal power in university governance and academic life?
The erosion of public trust in higher education is complex. A 2024 American Association of University Professors report outlined how conservative think tanks helped manufacture political backlash over education, focusing on issues of race, gender and LGBTQ+ identity in K-12 and higher education. Some of these concerns are legitimate, but they have also been amplified by a broader political narrative, propagated in part by conservative think tanks, that casts higher education as increasingly ideological and disconnected from the public. Per a Gallup poll, the three primary sources of distrust in higher education among Americans in recent years have been high costs, a perceived lack of workforce preparation and the perception of political agendas.
In 2026, Americans deemed high costs in higher education as increasingly important, while the percentage concerned about political agendas actually declined. 8 percent of Americans even reported that they did not have faith in universities because of the Trump administration’s interference. Even so, many of the letter’s targets are not wholly illegitimate — there is a point about rising costs and another about the impact of artificial intelligence. But it is deeply unclear whether the more political demands in this letter are stable bases for any structural, long-term reform. Public trust is shaped by ever-changing political and economic concerns, and universities should be wary of shaping institutional values around any administration’s particular diagnosis of distrust.
The letter’s questions are not merely matters of theoretical debate — there is also the implicit threat of what a poor relationship with the federal government could mean in a funding landscape increasingly shaped by political interests, as well as risks of retributive lawsuits and reputational damage. And the letter’s objectives may inform legislative priorities. Within days of the letter’s release, the Heritage Foundation — a far-right think tank with deep ties to the Trump administration — released a model bill for state legislatures based on these tenets that, if implemented, would be nothing short of disastrous for academic freedom by removing institutional autonomy writ large.
If universities want to rebuild trust, they should begin by asking whom they have lost and why. Students and families concerned about cost and workforce preparation, faculty concerned about academic freedom and communities concerned about the economic role of universities all have different reasons to question higher education. Listening to those stakeholders would offer a more durable foundation for reform than allowing any administration to decide which grievances deserve institutional attention.
In the future, we will need to address cost, one of the most pressing concerns for Americans regarding higher education today. We will need to maintain high academic standards while simultaneously preparing students for a world increasingly shaped by AI. But higher education cannot move at power’s whim. We will not restore long-term trust by answering to whoever currently holds power — indeed, a university’s legitimacy comes from a clear mission and long-standing institutional principles. The University would do well to affirm its own.
Universities have clear problems. They should address them. But they should do so because their students, faculty and communities demand better, not because Washington has supplied a political definition of what “better” means. We should see these objectives for what they are, and make every attempt to remember higher education’s promise — to educate students free of political interference. Let us break from federal coercion, and work, finally, to imagine a future for ourselves on our own terms.
As Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) said, “There will be an America after Donald Trump.” We ought to remember that there will be universities after Trump, too.
Grace Clippinger is a senior opinion columnist who writes about politics for The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at opinion@cavalierdaily.com
The opinions represented in this column are not necessarily those of The Cavalier Daily. Columns represent the views of the authors alone.
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