OPINION:
When it was announced last fall, the White House’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” — which ties federal funding to much-needed reforms — disturbed the right universities in the right ways.
Now, as another school year gets underway, it’s time to discuss how the compact can be applied at the state level.
Activist colleges have lost their way and squandered the trust of many Americans. While critics characterized the entire plan as federal overreach, most of the compact’s reforms are sound and desperately needed.
The states should now pick up the ball to assure taxpayers and students that higher education will serve its core purposes.
We disagree with those who would burn down most of academia tomorrow and salt the earth. Building new models for America’s 20 million to 25 million students in post-secondary education takes time and money. But reformers should be bold.
The Heritage Foundation and other organizations have urged policymakers to tackle the big issues and reduce the federal government’s role as much as possible. That means lowering caps on or privatizing student lending to combat tuition inflation, holding institutions accountable for student outcomes by cutting off federal dollars from poorly performing programs and winding down costly loan-forgiveness schemes that transfer private obligations to taxpayers.
The Working Families Tax Cut Act, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill (H.R. 1), was signed into law on July 4, 2025, and included several substantive higher-education reforms. Many legislators have offered other reforms in areas such as academic freedom, constitutional and civil rights and accreditation.
But most proposals have been lost in negotiations or stalled because of a lack of political will or a simple lack of votes.
For these reasons, along with the unwillingness of many university administrators to reform their own institutions, the White House chose to lead the way from the executive branch. Reforms such as protecting a diversity of viewpoints in teaching and research, ending the use of racial preferences in hiring, admissions and scholarships, strengthening the general education curriculum and guarding against foreign entanglements all contribute to institutional excellence.
These are also vital state issues. Many states have been stepping up — Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Ohio, Utah, Indiana and others with new civics programs top the list. They have addressed college costs, admissions and hiring standards, general education reform, campus speech, diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracies and other issues central to institutional accountability.
Florida’s performance-based funding model, for example, evaluates universities on metrics such as graduation and retention rates, post-graduation outcomes and research expenditures, showing how states can tie public support to measurable results.
These states can do even more, but all states should at least get in the game by protecting the fundamental purposes of their colleges and universities. Because of their proximity to the institutions they fund and oversee, they are also better positioned than federal officials to tailor accountability systems to local economic needs, workforce priorities and student populations.
States have long provided substantial funding for their public universities. Contrary to myth, that funding has not decreased. In 2021, state and local governments spent more than $300 billion on higher education, making it the fourth-largest budget area that year, according to the Urban Institute.
State and local appropriations are typically the largest source of education revenue for two-year institutions and remain a substantial share of revenue for four-year institutions.
Are all states getting the full return on that investment that they deserve? Or are their colleges persuading students to dislike America and denigrate the American dream despite all the evidence of increasing prosperity?
To help states revitalize American institutions of higher education and restore trust, we have released model state legislation that restores merit, free inquiry, institutional neutrality, financial responsibility, protection from foreign entanglements and renewed academic excellence — without expanding Washington’s role.
This model legislation implements the federal compact at the state level. But it’s just a floor. For American universities to deserve and reclaim their place as the world’s most renowned academic institutions, much more is required. Reforms of tenure, majors, professional programs and peer review remain unrealized in most states.
The administration’s new call to action is a welcome invitation to change from within.
Students and taxpayers deserve institutions that examine a genuine diversity of viewpoints and offer credentials representative of the achievement and skills that matter in the world.
As America celebrates its 250th birthday, state lawmakers have a timely opportunity to honor the nation’s legacy of ordered liberty and exceptional achievement: by restoring universities’ core purposes as intellectual and economic engines of American greatness.
• Madison Doan is a policy analyst in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy and Adam Kissel is a visiting fellow for higher education reform at Heritage.
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