Most clicked story of the week:
California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed into law a direct admissions program that will automatically admit qualifying high school seniors to a California State University campus. Students will receive letters notifying them of their acceptance based on their academic records, starting with admission for the fall 2027 term.
Number of the week: 91%
The share of surveyed college leaders that expressed concern about the U.S. Department of Education’s proposed timeline to begin collecting new applicant and student data broken down by race and sex. The American Council on Education led a coalition of over three dozen higher education groups urging the department to reconsider its plan, which seeks to begin collecting data on Dec. 3.
Colleges reject Trump’s higher education compact:
- On Wednesday, Brown University, in Rhode Island, became the second college to reject the Trump administration’s higher education compact that would offer priority for federal research funding in exchange for adopting policies favored by federal officials. Brown President Christina Paxson expressed concern that some of the compact’s terms would undermine the university’s academic freedom and independence. The action came five days after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology rejected the compact over free expression and independence concerns.
- Just one day after Brown's response, the University of Pennsylvania took the same step by notifying the Education Department that it would pass on signing the agreement. Penn’s president, J. Larry Jameson, said the university had “substantive concerns” with the compact but did not detail what those were.
- The University of Southern California likewise rejected the compact on Thursday. Interim USC President Beong-Soo Kim explained that tying research benefits to signing the compact would “undermine the same values of free inquiry and academic excellence that the Compact seeks to promote.”
- The University of Virginia rejected the compact Friday over concerns that it would harm the “merit-based assessment of research and scholarship,” Interim President Paul Mahoney wrote in a letter to the Education Department. “A contractual arrangement predicating assessment on anything other than merit will undermine the integrity of vital, sometimes lifesaving, research and further erode confidence in American higher education,” Mahoney said.
- Dartmouth College President Sian Beilock announced Saturday the institution would reject the compact as well. “I do not believe that a compact — with any administration — is the right approach to achieve academic excellence, as it would compromise our academic freedom, our ability to govern ourselves, and the principle that federal research funds should be awarded to the best, most promising ideas,” Beilock said in an Oct. 18 message to the Dartmouth community.
The latest in higher education’s court battles:
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A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily halted enforcement of an overnight ban on free expression at the University of Texas System. In his ruling, U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra found “significant First Amendment issues” with a state law blocking free expression on public campuses between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m.
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On Wednesday, another federal judge blocked the Trump administration's efforts to fire Education Department employees and other federal workers en masse during the current government shutdown caused by Congress' impasse over the fiscal year 2026 federal budget.
- Nineteen states and the District of Columbia filed a court brief Wednesday in support of a lawsuit alleging the Trump administration has violated the constitutional rights of student visa holders by attempting to deport them over their speech. “When students and faculty fear deportation for expressing certain viewpoints, the entire academic experience suffers,” the attorneys general wrote.
