MIT rejects Trump plan tying federal funding to campus policy changes

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Friday formally rejected a proposal from the Trump administration that would have tied preferential access to federal research funding to a set of institutional policy changes, saying the plan would undermine the university's independence and core commitments to free expression and merit-based science. President Sally Kornbluth communicated the decision in a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon and in a message to the MIT community.

The administration sent the nine-page Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education to nine research universities on Oct. 1 and set an Oct. 20 deadline for responses. The compact would require participating institutions to adopt a range of measures including a five-year tuition freeze, a cap of 15 percent on international undergraduate enrollment, reinstatement of standardized testing for admissions, restrictions on considering race or sex in hiring and admissions, limits on grade inflation, and adoption of federal definitions of gender for institutional policy. It would also call for annual certifications of compliance and seasonal audits, and would impose financial penalties, including the...