Trump expands Academic Excellence Compact to more colleges

The Trump administration has expanded a proposed Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, offering it to more colleges after initially sending draft agreements to nine research universities earlier this month, a White House official said Tuesday. The compact would direct participating institutions to forgo consideration of race and ethnicity in admissions, require standardized testing for undergraduate applicants, and adopt measures the administration describes as protecting viewpoint diversity, among other provisions. The White House official said the government has not proactively reached out to every college but would accept interested institutions.

The compact was circulated in early October to nine schools, including the University of Southern California, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown University, Vanderbilt University, University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College, University of Texas at Austin, University of Arizona and University of Virginia. Several universities, including USC, MIT and Brown, have publicly declined to sign. USC interim president BeongSoo Kim said in a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon that the university would not...