Trump administration asks MIT to sign politically-inflected compact to receive federal funding preferences
Demands include removing race and gender as factors in admissions, limiting international enrollment, and freezing tuition
Vivian Hir–The Tech
On Wednesday, Oct. 1, the White House asked nine universities, including MIT, to sign a compact pledging compliance with certain political and administrative frameworks in return for privileged access to future research funding.
Titled the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” the letter called for these schools to cease the consideration of “sex, ethnicity, race, nationality, political views, sexual orientation, gender identity, [and] religious associations.” Universities would be prevented from incorporating these factors in undergraduate or graduate admissions, financial aid processes, disciplinary procedures, and faculty and administrative hiring.
The letter’s demands reflect a broader conservative movement against affirmative action. In 2023, these efforts culminated in the landmark Supreme Court case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, in which the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that race-based affirmative action violated the Fourteenth Amendment for non-military educational institutions receiving federal funding. MIT complied with the ruling and no longer includes race as a factor in admissions. For the Class of 2028, underrepresented minority enrollment dropped to 16%, while previous class years (2024 to 2027) averaged 31% minority enrollment. Black students were particularly affected by this change.
In 2024, MIT stopped requiring diversity statements in its faculty hiring process. More recently, the new OACES (Office of Academic Community, Empowerment, and Success) replaced the Office of Minority Education, continuing an Institute-wide pattern of rebranding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
The Oct. 1 letter’s interpretation of “equality” extends to a restrictive notion of gender based solely on sex assigned at birth. The Trump administration has increasingly threatened transgender rights, including access to gender-affirming care and identity documents. The letter’s language mirrors a Jan. 20 executive order that decreed sex to be an “immutable biological reality,” mandating that federal institutions segregate intimate spaces by “biological” sex and arguing that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 only applies to “binary” expressions of sex.
These policies have also affected campus speech, with a Texas A&M professor fired in September 2025 for recognizing more than two genders in her class. In February 2025, the NCAA announced changes to the transgender athlete participation policy, stating that women’s teams are restricted to “student-athletes assigned as female at birth only.” MIT is a member of the NCAA, though the MIT Athletics website does not reference this updated policy.
Furthermore, the letter requested that the universities eliminate “institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.” These demands reflect the national debate over free speech on college campuses following almost two years of protests over the ongoing war in Gaza. The letter accuses international students of “saturating the campus with noxious values such as anti-Semitism and other anti-American values,” an apparent reference to pro-Palestine demonstrations. The extent to which its demands would affect MIT policy is uncertain.
MIT has repeatedly cracked down on pro-Palestine student organizations and protesters in the past, following allegations of anti-Semitism and anti-conservatism. In May 2024, MIT and Cambridge Police evicted an encampment that had been erected on Kresge Oval, arresting several protesters and referring others to the Committee on Discipline (CoD). The CoD also suspended the Coalition Against Apartheid (CAA) and sanctioned some of its members after alleged violations of MIT’s protest policies, while arrests of protesters continued during the 2024-25 school year.
The authors of the White House letter demanded that employees at universities, “in their capacity as university representatives,” abstain from political speech except when events directly affect their institution. Although the White House letter does not cite the assassination of Charlie Kirk in September 2025, the event has brought speech issues into question. Kirk, a conservative firebrand, left a complicated legacy regarding free expression. While he gained popularity for encouraging debate, many have criticized his site Professor Watchlist for targeting individuals for alleged opposition to right-wing ideas.
The compact also demands that universities with “endowments exceeding $2 million per undergraduate student” waive tuition for students pursuing degrees in “hard sciences,” with “exceptions” only for “families of substantial means.” The Tech estimates that MIT’s Oct. 2024 endowment of $24.6 billion and 4,535 undergraduate students in the 2024-25 school year yield a per capita figure of $5.4 million — far above the threshold set in the Oct. 1 letter.
According to the Registrar, in the 2024-25 school year, over 3,000 MIT undergraduates — more than 90% — had majors in the Schools of Engineering or Science. If none of them paid tuition, this would amount to over $200 million in waived fees. Of the schools sent the letter, only the University of Pennsylvania and MIT appear to fall into this endowment category.
According to the latest data available from the MIT Student Financial Services website, 58% of MIT undergraduate students received some form of financial assistance during the 2023-2024 academic year, and 39.5% received aid greater than or equal to the cost of tuition.
On top of the compact’s other provisions, universities would be compelled to freeze “effective tuition rates charged to American students for the next five years”; limit international undergraduate enrollment to “no more than 15%” of the student body; and require standardized testing in admissions. Currently, MIT already requires undergraduate applicants to submit either SAT or ACT scores, and in the 2024-2025 academic year, around 12% of undergraduates were international students, a percentage that has not seen significant change in recent years.
The letter was sent to perceived “top” colleges, including both private and state universities, such as Dartmouth College and the University of Texas at Austin. Other than the University of Arizona, all colleges targeted are ranked in the top 50 national universities by U.S. News. According to May Mailman, senior adviser for special projects at the White House, the colleges were chosen because the administration believed they might be “good actors.” It is unclear if other factors decided whether or not schools were chosen.
This action comes during a sustained federal crackdown on higher education. Continued funding cuts to agencies including the Department of Education, National Institute of Health, and National Science Foundation have stymied university research. Moreover, the “One Big Beautiful Bill” increased the endowment tax on wealthy colleges, including MIT. International students and staff have found themselves particularly threatened by federal ire. This spring, thousands found their SEVIS records revoked; in September, steep changes to the H-1B visa process have made it prohibitively expensive for many researchers and professors to immigrate to the United States.
MIT has acknowledged receipt of the compact but has not yet issued a response. The invited universities were asked to provide feedback by Oct. 20 and to finalize their decisions by Nov. 21.
The MIT Media Relations team did not respond to The Tech’s request for comment by the time of publication.