The details of Columbia's extraordinary $220 million deal with Trump
From academics to admissions, here's what the Ivy League school agreed to.
WASHINGTON – Columbia University just inked a deal with President Donald Trump that's unlike any other in the history of American higher education.
The 22-page agreement, meant to address accusations by Trump that Columbia has violated federal laws, is sweeping. Changes to admissions, academic departments, campus security and hiring are all hammered out in it.
In return, the deal eases the extraordinary pressure the school has faced since March. Hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding will begin flowing again. Other federal probes, including ones that jeopardized the school's access to financial aid, will cease.
For the first time, the accord sets a definitive price tag for a U.S. college to assuage the Trump administration, which has made no secret of its disdain for many universities, especially the richest and most selective ones.
For Columbia, the cost of mollifying Trump was steep. Claire Shipman, the university's president, agreed the school would pay a $200 million fine to resolve funding disputes, plus an additional $21 million designated for university employees who said they'd faced discrimination or harm amid campus protests related to the Israel-Hamas war.
Here are some of the details of the deal:
"This was a really, really complex problem," Shipman told CNN the morning after she made the announcement. "I will argue over and over again that choosing to listen, choosing to try to solve the problem with everything that we had at stake is not capitulation."
President Trump and Linda McMahon, his education secretary, have touted the agreement, saying it addresses years of conservative grievances with higher education – and offers a blueprint for future deals with campuses facing similar scrutiny.
"Columbia’s reforms are a roadmap for elite universities that wish to regain the confidence of the American public by renewing their commitment to truth-seeking, merit, and civil debate," McMahon said in a statement following the resolution. "I believe they will ripple across the higher education sector and change the course of campus culture for years to come."
Zachary Schermele is an education reporter for Paste BN. You can reach him by email at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele and Bluesky at @zachschermele.bsky.social.
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