The Trump administration is asking the nation’s colleges and universities to commit to making several reforms in its latest attempt to persuade institutional leaders to embrace the president’s agenda for higher education.

In an open letter sent today to university presidents and governing boards, Education Secretary Linda McMahon called upon them to “reaffirm their commitment to serving the American people” so that they could regain the public trust McMahon claims they have lost. McMahon cites a recent report by Yale University on trust in higher education and one requested by the chancellors of Vanderbilt and Washington University that’s critical of some humanities scholarship as indications that higher education knows it needs to chart a new course.

The letter strikes a noticeably different tone that the administration’s previous attempt last year to strong arm universities into signing its “Compact For Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” which outlined requirements for how it wanted admissions, tuition, hiring, governance, grading, athletics, foreign students, and campus speech to be handled at the nation’s institutions.

In exchange for signing on to the compact, institutions were promised they would receive “multiple positive benefits," including preferential treatment for federal funding. No major university agreed to do so, rejecting the implicit threats to research independence and academic freedom contained in the compact.

One reason the new letter, first reported by Bloomberg, takes a less confrontational approach is that four presidents of major universities — Andrew Martin of Washington University in St. Louis, Michael Crow of Arizona State University, Douglas Girod at the University of Kansas, and Ronald Daniels of Johns Hopkins University, were reportedly involved in helping draft it. Martin has subsequently denied being involved in assisting with the letter’s drafting, but he acknowledged discussing the initiative with administration officials.

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The letter does not contain new mandates or threats, nor does it make explicit mention of such hot-button topics as transgender students or DEI policies. No diatribes, no racial dog whistles, no overt jingoism; but some of the wording in the letter’s softer tenor can still be read as code for more hard-line positions.

The letter asks postsecondary institutions to commit to “rigorous teaching, pathbreaking research, and national service” and publicly state their answers and policies regarding the following seven questions on their official websites before the end of 2026.

  1. How will your institution ensure that admissions criteria are transparent and wholly described to prospective applicants? And how will your institution ensure admissions decisions are based on merit, achievement, and your university’s educational purpose?
  2. How will your institution protect the free exchange of ideas, wide-ranging debate, and open- minded campus discourse? And how will you guarantee that unruly and violent protestors do not harass students or disrupt classes, research, public lectures, and campus operations?
  3. How will your institution encourage intellectual pluralism in all its academic units? How will your faculty hiring and evaluation practices support academic vitality and ensure that all relevant perspectives are taken seriously? And how will your school ensure the research enterprise is dedicated to advancing knowledge, deepening understanding, and serving the American people who fund it?
  4. How will your institution ensure that families can access affordable, high-return, degrees? What can your school do to contain costs, improve pricing transparency, and ensure that every academic program equips students to repay their loans?
  5. How will your institution incentivize rigor in the age of AI, combat grade inflation, and prioritize excellence in teaching and learning?
  6. How will your school protect academic programs from foreign influence and safeguard the integrity of the research enterprise?
  7. American universities must put Americans, and American interests, first. That means prioritizing American students and faculty, orienting the research enterprise to support the country’s economic and security needs, and putting American societal success ahead of global commitments. How will your institution answer this national call to action? How can your campus and faculty advance American security interests, deliver academic programs that meet urgent workforce needs, and contribute materially to the Nation’s prosperity?

Those are all reasonable questions, ones which most institutions take seriously and are attempting to address, whether the Education Department or its letter-writing assistants want to admit it.

But here’s another reasonable question, one which many university leaders would like the Trump administration to answer. Does this letter represent a genuine attempt by the administration to form an honest, productive partnership with the nation’s universities, or is it just another more congenially worded strategy to bring political pressure on institutions so that they will ultimately carry out the President’s wishes? Maybe we will know by the end of 2026.