University of Virginia Won’t Join White House’s Compact for Colleges

The University of Virginia became the fifth school to rebuff a White House proposal to give universities preferential treatment if they uphold a set of White House demands.

The White House offered the proposal to nine universities last week, asking them to sign on to a list of requirements laid out in a 10-page document in exchange for funds. In declining to sign on to the agreement, Paul G. Mahoney, Virginia’s interim president, said that while the university agreed with many principles outlined in the proposal, it wanted “no special treatment” in funding.

“A contractual arrangement predicating assessment on anything other than merit will undermine the integrity of the vital, sometimes lifesaving, research and further erode confidence in American higher education,” Mr. Mahoney wrote in a note to Linda McMahon, the education secretary, and two other administration officials.

Mr. Mahoney’s announcement, which also went out to the campus community late Friday afternoon, followed similar decisions in the past week by other schools that received the government’s offer, including M.I.T., Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California.

Several university leaders who said they agreed with some provisions in the document seemed to be more put off by the “carrot” in the agreement — the special funding considerations.

They voiced concerns that it set up an illegal two-tiered system for doling out federal funding, allowing schools that signed on to the deal to escape merit-based consideration in federal grants.