Passed in July 2025, the legislation establishes a three-tiered endowment tax system for the nation’s wealthiest private universities. Penn will fall in the middle bracket at 4%.

Two days after the Oct. 20 deadline to provide feedback, seven of the nine universities initially asked to sign the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” have rejected the proposal.

The initial cuts in February drew widespread criticism from Penn students and faculty, who expressed concern for the University’s research projects and academic mission.

The Philadelphia protest was part of a series of over 2,700 demonstrations that took place across the country. 

According to an Oct. 16 email from Penn President Larry Jameson, the University rejected the compact after considering input from Penn faculty, alumni, trustees, students, and staff.

With the decision, Penn became the third university to decline the offer.

At the Oct. 15 conference, lawmakers criticized Penn for not immediately rejecting the White House agreement, and asserted that it threatens campus diversity and academic freedom.

With less than a week remaining before the Oct. 20 deadline for universities to provide feedback on the draft document, The Daily Pennsylvanian examined the potential University-wide implications of signing it.

The document was drafted in partnership with student representatives from six of the eight other universities initially approached with the federal government’s proposed higher education compact.

Mann attributed the departure from his vice provost role to tension between his science policy advocacy work and Penn’s institutional neutrality policy. He remains a professor at Penn, and is the director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media.

Topics focused on Chapin’s personal experiences as a journalist and her thoughts on the recent funding cuts made to public broadcasting by the second Trump administration.

He described his new role as an effort to maintain the University’s momentum — a mission that requires institutional flexibility amid an evolving landscape of federal policies and financial stress.

The compact was broadly described as a threat to the practice of shared governance — where faculty, staff, administrators, boards, and sometimes students share responsibility for decision-making and policy development. 

The compact, which was send to nine universities including Penn on Oct. 1, outlined sweeping set of principles addressing academic freedom, testing, and international undergraduate enrollment.

The Oct. 3 memo condemned the compact as “another attempt” by the Trump administration to pressure universities “to comply with its political agenda.” 

According to The New York Times, Rowan was a chief architect of the compact — which builds directly on the ideas he first outlined in a 2023 message to Penn’s Board of Trustees.

In an Oct. 5 message, Penn President Larry Jameson said that administrators will “seek the input” of stakeholders across campus to develop the University’s response to the federal government.