The University of Pennsylvania soon may be off-limits to Army officers and other military service members who are seeking tuition aid to further their educations.
The Ivy League university in West Philadelphia is among 34 schools the Army says are at risk of being banned from military funding for service members to pay for their graduate programs and other education, according to a CNN report. The messaging has caused confusion among military officers seeking advanced degrees in law, medicine, and nuclear engineering, the report states.
The G.I. Bill and similar programs to pay for college have long been a major draw for people who join the military. But last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the DOD “will discontinue graduate-level professional military education, fellowships and certificate programs” at Harvard.
“Too many faculty members openly loathe our military,” said Hegseth, who obtained a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard in 2013. “They cast our armed forces in a negative light and squelch anyone who challenges their leftist political leanings, all while charging enormous tuition.”
Hegseth, a former Army National Guard officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, said the department, which he calls the Department of War, is evaluating its relationships with other schools as well.
“[We] will evaluate all existing graduate programs for active-duty service members at all Ivy League universities and other civilian universities,” he said. “The goal is to determine whether or not they actually deliver cost-effective strategic education for future senior leaders when compared to, say, public universities and our military graduate programs.”
CNN obtained a “preliminary list of at-risk schools compiled by the Army,” which includes the University of Pennsylvania, as well as nearby Princeton University and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Officials at the three schools did not immediately respond to requests for comment Sunday.
Numerous schools on the list are the alma maters of Trump administration officials. In addition to attending Harvard, Hegseth obtained a bachelor’s degree in politics from Princeton. President Donald Trump holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Vice President J.D. Vance holds a law degree from Yale University.
Here is the full list of “at risk” schools:
American University
Boston College
Boston University
Brown University
Carnegie Mellon
Case Western University
Columbia University
College of William and Mary
Cornell University
Duke
Emory
Florida Institute of Technology
Fordham
Georgetown
George Washington University
Harvard
Hawaii Pacific University
Johns Hopkins University
London School of Economics and Political Science
MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology]
Northeastern University
Northwestern University
New York University
Pepperdine
Princeton
Stanford
Tufts
University of Miami
University of Pennsylvania
University of Southern California
Vanderbilt
Wake Forest
Washington University in St Louis
Yale