(RNS) — In October, President Donald Trump’s education department asked nine universities to sign a compact to save higher education in the United States.
Oakwood University, a historically Black Christian university in Alabama, wasn’t on the list, but its president volunteered anyway.
“We share the Compact’s vision of student success and institutional accountability, and we embrace its call to ensure that all graduates are equipped to make meaningful contributions to our nation, wrote Gina Brown, president of the Huntsville school, in a Nov. 18 letter to the Department of Education.
Like several of the major universities that have rejected the proposed Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, Oakwood, affiliated with the Seventh Day Adventist Church, doesn’t share many of the compact’s goals, but it does want to share in the compact’s promise to give cooperating schools ready access to funding.
Schools that sign the compact would agree to a five-year freeze on tuition, ban trans students from participating in women’s sports and agree to reform or abolish “institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”
The compact’s rules also require schools to cap the number of international students at 15% of enrollment, end diversity as a consideration in admissions and limit protests, such as the ones that roiled campuses after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. Faith-based schools would be able to consider religion as part of admissions and hiring.
Of the nine schools asked to sign the compact, which included MIT, Vanderbilt, the University of Southern California and Brown, none has formally accepted, according to The Wall Street Journal. Some are in the process of finding out more from the administration.
Oakwood’s objections to the compact, according to the letter, relate to its mission as a faith-based school. “While …