Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reoriented Pentagon ties with higher education, expelling more than a dozen elite colleges from a military fellowship and signaling further realignments in training pipelines. University leaders say the moves break longstanding pathways that funneled service members into graduate programs at prestigious institutions and have prompted campus officials to reassess curriculum and fellowship offerings. Hegseth’s actions have focused on graduate degrees and certificates while preserving some tuition assistance for roughly 200,000 service members. Colleges face uncertainty about future enrollments of military students, potential loss of institutional partners, and the political framing driving the changes. Administrators warn further cuts could remove service members from classrooms and strain relationships that once undergirded officer education.