President Donald Trump is pressuring elite universities to open their classrooms to more Americans by sharply reducing their enrollment of job-seeking foreign students and their enforcement of diversity ideology.
The curb on foreign students is one part of the reform plan delivered to top universities on Wednesday evening. Currently, many top colleges grant roughly 25 percent of their slots to foreign students, most of whom are seeking work permits via the federal “Optional Practical Training” program.
In 2024, up to 400,000 foreign graduates and students were given work permits by President Joe Biden’s pro-migration deputies. That flood of migrants, many of whom get jobs via kickback-fuelled ethnic hiring networks, pushes many Americans out of internships, jobs, and careers. “If you’re a family … where I grew up [Wisconsin], and you’ve got a smart kid, and you think you’re going to get them into a top university in this country … there is no chance,” Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen told a California audience in July.
The offer, titled “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” Promises government cooperation with the elite universities if they agree to a set of reform proposals.
The goals, according to the releases by the White House, include:
Abandoning pro-rules diversity in hiring, student admission and aid policies.
Requiring prospective students to perform well on the SAT or ACT tests.
Recognizing the clear distinction between single-sex spaces for males and females.
Cheaper tuition for students pursuing hard sciences
Disclosure of all foreign funding
Ending the promotion of identity politics in the classrooms or in academics’ official activities.
Capping the recruitment of foreign students at 15 percent, and ensuring that no foreign countries get more than 5 percent of college slots.
Letters on Wednesday were sent to the University of Arizona, Brown University, Dartmouth College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas, Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia. The nine schools declined to comment or did not immediately respond to messages late on Wednesday.
[White House official May] Mailman, who has orchestrated much of the administration’s higher education strategy, said the compact could ultimately be extended to all colleges and universities. She said the administration was open to hearing feedback about the compact from college leaders.
“We hope all universities ultimately are able to have a conversation with us,” she said.
So I think there’s a fairness issue that the president has talked about with the numbers. These are universities that have huge amounts of federal funding and are supposed to serve American students. And instead, they’ve taken on I think Columbia’s numbers were close to percent. Harvard’s are around 30 percent of foreign students. And that’s not to say anything bad about foreign students. It’s about what are the opportunities remaining for American students. So Yes, I think there will be some focus on what’s the right sizing there.
Many academics push diversity ideology to break up American citizens’ evolved civic norms, Christian viewpoints, and social expectations, mostly by promoting foreign cultures and religions. This policy of promoting civic chaos helps elite progressives to push for political and cultural power.
The University of Pennsylvania agreed to alter policies related to transgender athletes while Columbia University agreed to pay more than $200 million to settle complaints around discriminatory hiring and antisemitism. Brown University said it would use $50 million over the next decade to fund local workforce development programs.
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