WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration’s campaign to end “wokeness” in the military is reshaping its relationship with U.S. higher education, breaking off longstanding ties with prestigious universities that have trained generals and admirals while building new bonds with Christian schools and public universities.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth forged ahead last week with his realignment, expelling more than a dozen elite colleges from a military fellowship that serves as a pipeline to the upper ranks of leadership. It’s a small but symbolic fracture that has left college leaders bracing for additional cuts that could pull service members from their classrooms.
Hegseth made sweeping statements about canceling all military attendance at schools he denounces as anti-American, yet his cuts have been more targeted. So far he has homed in on graduate degrees and certificates while preserving a much broader program that helps cover tuition for roughly 200,000 active-duty or reserve service members.
That program, known as Tuition Assistance, allows service members to get financial help pursuing studies at nearly any U.S. college. The funding flows to hundreds of campuses, including the highly selective ones Hegseth says have “gorged themselves” on taxpayer money. Yet an Associated Press analysis finds that schools beyond the Ivy League are far more likely to benefit from the Pentagon aid, including big online universities and some for-profit colleges that have been dogged by fraud accusations.
About 350 members of the military used Tuition Assistance to attend Harvard, Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University and the other schools targeted by Hegseth’s cuts, according to the AP analysis of 2024 data. By contrast, more than 50,000 studied at the American Public University System, a for-profit education company that offers online degrees and has a graduation rate of just 22%.
More than a third of students using the benefit attended for-profit colleges, surpassing the number who attended any type of private, nonprofit college. Public universities take in the most military students under the program, with about 4 in 10 choosing those campuses. The benefit pays out a maximum of $4,500 a year.
Hegseth takes aim at a prestigious military fellowship
That the Pentagon is taking any stance on where service members should enroll is a radical shift from the past and an “incredible overreach,” said Lindsey Tepe, who advises on military learning at the American Council on Education, a group that represents college presidents.
“This is clearly the start of a broader effort to reshape military education, and I do think that this is a bad precedent to set,” Tepe said.
The shake-up has aroused concern about further cuts, with some wondering whether it poses a risk to Tuition Assistance, the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps or other military programs that pay for schooling in fields like law, medicine and engineering.
Hegseth made no mention of those programs in a memo detailing his cuts last week. Instead, he targeted the Senior Service College Fellowship, a prestigious program that lets military members pursue advanced studies at universities, think tanks and federal agencies. It’s often granted to mid-career personnel on their way to leadership or highly specialized roles in the military.
The program is small, with fewer than 80 students across the 15 universities being carved out this fall, according to the Pentagon memo. Along with several Ivy League campuses, the Pentagon said it will ban schools including Georgetown University, Carnegie Mellon University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The ranks of graduates from those campuses includes a host of current and retired commanders. James McConville, a retired Army general who led the army from 2019 to 2023, did a fellowship at Harvard, according to his military biography. Lt. Gen. William Graham Jr., current chief of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, did one at MIT.
Military will lose out on Ivy League expertise, some say
By carving out those campuses, some believe the Trump administration is sacrificing technical expertise in the name of ideology. Those campuses tend to employ top experts in areas like artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and quantum computing, said William Hubbard, a vice president at Veterans Education Success, a bipartisan nonprofit.
“I’m not sure our enemies would be too upset about this,” said Hubbard, a Marine Corps veteran. “If I were waking up in Beijing and heard this news, I would be pleased.”
Harvard, a favorite target of President Donald Trump, is being hit with deeper sanctions. The Pentagon said it’s barring all graduate-level professional military education at Harvard, along with fellowships and certificates.
In response, Harvard’s school of government this week said it’s allowing active-duty service members to defer their admission for up to four years. It also arranged to get them “expedited consideration” at other colleges, including the University of Chicago and Tufts University.
Hegseth himself earned a master’s degree from Harvard but symbolically returned his diploma in a 2022 Fox News segment.
Hegseth wants to reroute leaders to Liberty, Hillsdale and others
In his memo last week, Hegseth blasted elite colleges that he says have become “factories of anti-American resentment” and undermine military values. He suggested 15 colleges to replace those being cut from the fellowship. They were chosen for promoting intellectual freedom and having “minimal public expressions in opposition of the Department,” the memo said.
At the top of the list is Liberty University, a Christian school that enrolls 16,000 students at its Virginia campus and another 120,000 in online programs. It already has a strong military presence, enrolling more than 7,000 students using Tuition Assistance, according to the AP analysis. A series of scandals have shaken the campus in recent years, leading to the 2020 departure of its longtime president, Jerry Falwell Jr.
A statement from Liberty said it has not yet coordinated with the Pentagon regarding a potential partnership, but it’s grateful for Hegseth’s leadership. “We love this country and fully support the men and women in uniform who devote their lives in service to our nation,” the statement said.
Also on the list is Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian school that’s separately partnering with the White House on a campaign celebrating the nation’s 250th anniversary. In a statement, Hillsdale President Larry Arnn said too many other colleges have abandoned the nation’s founding principles.
“If officers want serious education in the principles they swear to defend, Hillsdale is exactly where they should be,” Arnn said.
The list of replacements includes several flagship state universities, including top-tier research institutions like the University of Michigan, which last year rolled back diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, and the University of North Carolina. Hegseth said routing the fellowship elsewhere will ensure “a more rigorous and relevant education to better prepare them for the complexities of modern warfare.”
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Forster reported from New York.
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