Penn, USC Reject Trump’s Rowan-Backed College Funding Deal (2)

The University of Pennsylvania and University of Southern California each declined Thursday to join the Trump administration’s proposal that links federal funding to restrictions on hiring, admissions and tuition.

USC Interim President Beong-Soo Kim said in a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon that the Los Angeles-based university shared many of the Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education’s goals. But he worried that its conditions could “undermine the same values of free inquiry and academic excellence that the compact seeks to promote.”

“Although USC respectfully declines to participate in the proposed compact, the issues and aspirations raised by it ...