The Pentagon could eliminate tuition aid for active-duty service members planning to attend elite universities, including Penn.
A Feb. 6 press release from the United States Department of Defense stated that military services will reevaluate graduate programs at most Ivy League schools and many peer institutions. A preliminary list compiled by the U.S. Army and reviewed by CNN included Penn.
The release also highlighted that the Pentagon will “sever its academic ties” with Harvard University, beginning in the 2026-27 academic year.
Requests for comment were left with the White House and the Army.
The Pentagon provides tuition benefits — such as funded graduate programs for career development in life after service — for active-duty service members. These programs often exchange mandatory years of service for tuition assistance to the many universities across the country.
According to Penn’s Student Registration & Financial Services, the University is “committed to supporting our veteran and military-affiliated students.” Active duty members, veterans, and military-affiliated dependents are “eligible for education benefits offered through the Department of Veterans Affairs.”
The release announced that the Pentagon would be end its relationship with Harvard because “attendance at the school no longer meets the needs of the War Department or the military services.” The decision includes ending graduate-level professional military education, fellowships, and certificate programs for active-duty service members.
“For too long, this department has sent our best and brightest officers to Harvard, hoping the university would better understand and appreciate our warrior class,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wrote in the release. “Instead, too many of our officers came back looking too much like Harvard — heads full of globalist and radical ideologies that do not improve our fighting ranks.”
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The release calls for the evaluation of all existing programs at peer universities that “similarly diminish critical thinking and have significant adversary involvement” in comparison to public universities and military masters programs. The preliminary list includes all Ivy League institutions except for Dartmouth College.
According to the release, the Pentagon will reconsider relationships with universities that “actively undercut our mission and undercut our country” in the upcoming weeks.
In the last year, Penn has been a recurring subject of federal scrutiny amid the White House’s attempts to enact reform across institutions of higher education.
In October 2025, the White House approached nine universities, including Penn, with a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” — an agreement that would have provided the University with preferential funding treatment in exchange for sweeping institutional reform. Penn later rejected the compact, while describing the University’s historical relationship with the federal government as “powerful, amazing, and valuable.”
In the release, Hegseth also wrote that the Harvard research programs had “partnered with the Chinese Communist Party,” as well as “encouraged a campus environment that celebrated Hamas, allowed attacks on Jews, and still promotes discrimination based on race in violation of Supreme Court decisions.”
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Staff reporter Ishani Modi covers state and local politics and can be reached at modi@thedp.com. At Penn, she studies biochemistry.
