Pentagon drops Penn from list of ‘woke’ universities set to lose military tuition aid

Despite appearing on a shortlist of universities at risk of losing tuition aid for active-duty service members, Penn was not among the schools targeted in the Department of Defense’s published memo.

An initial list of schools was leaked after the Pentagon announced it would reevaluate its tuition partnerships for service members interested in pursuing an Ivy League education. The official list of eliminated programs, published on Feb. 27, included all Ivy League institutions except Penn, Dartmouth College, and Cornell University.

A University spokesperson declined to comment on Penn’s exclusion from the final list. A request for comment was left with the Department of Defense.

“For too long, Ivy League and similar institutions have been subjecting our warriors to woke indoctrination—those days are over,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wrote in a Feb. 27 social media statement.

In a corresponding video, Hegseth said that tuition aid would be eliminated at applicable universities starting in the 2026-27 academic year. Changes to funding will not affect any service members currently enrolled in affected Senior Service College Fellowship programs.

Penn’s Student Registration and Financial Services page states that 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.”

According to Hegseth, the United States military has “been poisoned from within by a class of so-called elite universities, who have abused their privilege and access to this department and utterly betrayed their purpose.”

The Pentagon’s memo also included potential universities to replace its previous partnerships — including Liberty University and Hillsdale College, along with public universities like the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Arizona State University.

Hegseth attended Princeton University as an undergraduate student and later received his master’s in public policy from Harvard. His video condemned elite institutions for taking advantage of American tax dollars.

“For decades, the Ivy League and similar institutions have gorged themselves on a trust fund of American taxpayer dollars only to become factories of anti-American resentment and military disdain,” Hegseth said. 

Penn and its peer institutions have remained at the center of consistent federal scrutiny and higher education reform over the last year.

In October 2025, the White House approached Penn and eight other universities with a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” The compact served as an agreement that would offer compliant universities with preferential funding treatments in exchange for drastic institution reform. 

Along with promoting “American and Western values,” the Compact demanded that signatories “make efforts to expand professional opportunities for America’s military service members and veterans.”

Penn rejected the compact, while describing the University’s historical relationship with the federal government as “powerful, amazing, and valuable.”

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