Compact for Excellence - Your Comments Wanted!

Lest you missed it (have you been hiding in a cave?), on Oct. 2, 2025, the Trump administration submitted a "Compact for Excellence in Higher Education" to 9 major American universities, including Brown. Brown is expected to formally reply by Oct. 20, 2025.

Brown would like your comments, and I know not everyone gets the university's e-mails about this. You are more than welcome to comment through this portal, which Brown has set up:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc-VvLutezw4e3YPKxGIbeHJfmTlJnRDS_ZbNseUlTNNDyHwQ/viewform?pli=1

Hopefully that link will work for you.

You can read more about the "Compact" here (a pretty neutral source):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_for_Academic_Excellence_in_Higher_Education

Also, in the interest of neutrality in this report, the compact was proposed to only 9 universities, viz.:

Dartmouth, Penn, and Brown;

Univ. of Texas (Austin), Univ. of Arizona, and Univ. of Virginia;

MIT, Vanderbilt, and Univ. of Southern California.

No idea how they came up with this list.

MIT responded last week. You can read Pres. Sally Kornbluth's response here:

https://orgchart.mit.edu/letters/regarding-compact

Also, head of Texas's board of regents, Kevin Elte, preliminarily responded, “Today we welcome the new opportunity presented to us and we look forward to working with the Trump Administration on it.” (Oct. 2, 2025, quoted in the Washington Post)

Whatever you think, I urge you to:

a) THINK (the little blue sign at IBM ...), and

b) Let Chris Paxson and Brown know what you think, even if it's just one word.

Finally - the compact suggests a 5-year tuition freeze. Anyone who would like to hear the story of the Boston College tuition freeze of the late 1960's may get it from me personally (I was there), for the price of a good beer or glass of wine.