The Compact for Academic Excellence: a wolf in colorblind clothing

Two years after the Supreme Court struck down Affirmative Action, a new political project is underway to finish the job — not by banning racial consideration in college admissions, but by making it legally toxic to even think about a student’s background. The so-called “college compact”  now championed by the Trump administration isn’t some good-faith reform meant to fix the problems of academia, which any UTD student would know there are plenty of; it’s a hostile takeover of higher education disguised as a supposed plea for fairness and neutrality in exchange for favorable funding. Its sweeping provisions, framed in the soothing language of “non-discrimination,” “equality” and “neutrality,” are designed to systemically dismantle every tool universities have to promote equal opportunity if they are dumb or desperate enough to accept the compact. Based on UTD administration’s prior decision making, I worry they might fall into the former category.  

Supporters of the compact like Apollo Global Management Executive Marc Rowan argue the compact is the perfect panacea for American scholars — it is a more prudent investment of taxpayer dollars, a return to merit-based selection, a deterrent to grade inflation and a rebirth of transparency for students. The vague notions of viewpoint diversity and nondiscrimination espoused in the compact and Rowan’s writings may at first glance sound nice, but let’s be completely clear: this opens the door for segregation via litigation and censorship by procedure.  

The core mechanism outlined in section one of the compact, “Equality in Admissions,” says it seeks to eliminate discriminatory admissions processes by ensuring that no factor such as “sex, ethnicity, race, nationality, political views, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious associations or proxies for any of those shall be considered.” This section doesn’t simply ban a holistic interpretation of university applicants, it bans the use of any “proxy” for it. This single, deliberately vague word is the trapdoor that will swallow any remaining pathways for marginalized students. 

Like any good bureaucrat with a destructive goal, the compact’s architects understand that you don’t need to ban a practice outright; you just need to make it so legally perilous that universities abandon it out of fear. Consider the impossible choice the compact creates: if a university considers a student’s experience overcoming poverty or being the first in their family to attend college, it can be sued on the grounds that these factors are “proxies” for race. When given the choice between abandoning holistic review or dealing with endless frivolous lawsuits, a risk-adverse administration is nearly guaranteed to abandon its potential marginalized students in the name of risk management.  

The compact not only expects this overcorrection but demands it by requiring that university “admissions decisions shall be based upon and evaluated against objective criteria.” In this instance, the Trump administration sees objective criteria as standardized tests and GPAs, which would then be made available to the general public. Organizations like the National Education Association and National Education Policy Center have emphasized for years that standardized testing is not an objective measure of a student’s ability or intelligence, and that the format as a whole has failed students at large. Researchers have found that wealthy students, who were typically from white families, scored disproportionately better on the SAT than their low-income peers. There is a reason an overwhelming majority of U.S. universities are test-optional, and by making scores public, universities are again opened up for litigation on the grounds that someone was unfairly denied when people with lower scores are admitted despite the different circumstances of each applicant.  

This is the breathtaking cynicism of the compact. It uses the threat of legal harassment to force universities to adopt an admissions process that overwhelmingly advantages the wealthy — the very students who can afford tutors, test prep and the stable home environments that produce high GPAs — all while claiming to promote “fairness.” The result won’t be a level playing field; it will be a sharp decline in enrollment of students from marginalized backgrounds, effectively re-segregating our most selective institutions under the banner of colorblindness. 

This death by a thousand bureaucratic cuts doesn’t stop at admissions. The compact’s support of the “marketplace of ideas” is a smokescreen for an ideological purge. The demand for a “broad spectrum of ideological viewpoints” sounds reasonable until you realize it’s a demand to teach Holocaust denial as a legitimate counterpart to Holocaust history, or to present slavery as a debate with two valid sides. This isn’t intellectual diversity; it’s an attack on evidence-based scholarship itself, conflating political balance with academic rigor. And wielding the compact’s financial provisions, critics can now demand the defunding of history departments that “fail” to teach the “other side” of the Holocaust, or ethnic studies programs that are deemed ideologically non-compliant.  

Meanwhile, the call for bolstered “institutional neutrality” is an attempt to gag universities from acknowledging simple facts. How do you teach public health without taking a position on vaccines? How do you teach history without taking a position on the wrongs of slavery? How is sending in riot police to violently disperse and arrest 21 UTD students, faculty and alumni neutral because of their political expression? The answer, of course, is that you can’t. This “neutrality” is just forced silence on matters where powerful interests would prefer universities not comment — a silence that then disappears the moment the university needs to quash any dissent the state deems inappropriate. It’s a policy designed to create a university that stands for nothing, challenges no power and comforts the already comfortable. 

The compact’s oppression isn’t limited to domestic students; it also takes aim at the global community on campus. And the limits on international students, capping undergraduate international enrollment at 15% with a max of 5% on each country, is a clear attack on Indian and Chinese students enrolled in U.S. colleges. This wouldn’t be the first time the federal government has come after international students, as seen with the mass revocation of visas, changes to the visa process and deportation of students for expressing their opinions this year. In 2025, it was reported that 23% of UTD’s student body were international students, of which Indian international students have accounted for as much as 7.5% of the entire student body and 52.1% of the international student body at UTD. For a school that has already been hemorrhaging international students, accepting the compact would be absolutely ruinous for UTD irrespective of whatever undefined federal benefits it could possibly receive.  

The UT System, however, does not seem to share my concern. Instead. Kevin Eltife, the chairman of the UT System Board of Regents, is “honored that our flagship has been named as one of only nine institutions in the U.S. selected by the Trump administration for a potential funding advantage … We enthusiastically look forward to engaging with university officials and reviewing the compact immediately.” All eyes are on UT Austin now as the other eight schools continue to formalize their rejection of the compact.  

The Trump administration has extended its offer to every university in the U.S, and if UT submits, then the whole line of dominoes will fall as desperate universities bend the knee to an administration actively hostile to the academic success of universities. Surrendering the university’s autonomy to a political litmus test isn’t prudence, it’s capitulation. It sets a precedent that will haunt higher education long after this administration is gone, transforming institutions of learning into organs of state-approved thought.. 

If the administration of UTD or the UT System has any spine, then it will reject the compact just like Dartmouth, the University of Pennsylvania, Brown and MIT did, to name a few. The compact is a comprehensive blueprint for repressing dissent and entrenching privilege. Despite its presentation as a transformative contract for universities, it is nothing more than an attempted assault on our education. 

If you are passionate about protecting your education, then tell your administrators. Call and email UTD President Prabhas Moghe and UT System Chancellor John Zerwas. Tell them to reject the compact and to stand up for their students — for once.