Trump orders colleges to share admissions data, with an eye on affirmative action

President Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum Thursday requiring colleges and universities to submit expanded admissions data to the U.S. Department of Education.

The move is the latest salvo in the administration's fight against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies and is intended to reveal if schools are still preferencing race in admissions even after the Supreme Court banned affirmative action in 2023.

Thursday's memo claims "the lack of available admissions data from universities – paired with the rampant use of "diversity statements" and other overt and hidden racial proxies – continues to raise concerns about whether race is actually used in admissions decisions in practice."

Any college or university that participates in the federal student loan program is already required to submit certain data to the department about enrollment, graduation rates and financial aid. Thursday's move would compel them to report more detail about not just the students they enroll but also about those who apply. With this information, the administration believes it can clamp down on schools that may still be preferencing applicants' race over academics.

Soon after the memo's release, Education Secretary Linda McMahon directed the National Center for Education Statistics to begin collecting additional data from schools about their applicants. "Institutions of higher education will now have to report data disaggregated by race and sex," according to a department release, and "will include quantitative measures of applicants' and admitted students' academic achievements such as standardized test scores, GPAs and other applicant characteristics."

"We will not allow institutions to blight the dreams of students by presuming that their skin color matters more than their hard work and accomplishments," McMahon said in a statement. "The Trump Administration will ensure that meritocracy and excellence once again characterize American higher education."

"This is a fishing expedition," says Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education (ACE) and former undersecretary of education in the Obama administration. Mitchell says the department is casting "a really big net" and that the surfeit of new data will be difficult to decode because admissions offices have always considered variables beyond academics.

"This is why we have recommendation letters. This is why we care if someone's been on an athletic team [or] if they're a cellist. Because we want to get a better picture of what those numbers mean," Mitchell says. "All [the Supreme Court] said was, you can't use race as a determining factor, even though they also said diversity is really important."

In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court scuttled race-conscious admissions in higher education, sending the nation's highly-selective schools scrambling for some new, legal pathway to continue to enroll a diverse student body. Chief Justice John Roberts made clear that applicants can still discuss race in their admissions essays though, writing that "nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant's discussion of how race affected his or her life."

Recent settlement agreements with both Columbia University and Brown University require both schools to report the race, color, test scores and grades of all applicants. "Columbia may not, by any means, unlawfully preference applicants based on race, color, or national origin in admissions," Columbia's settlement says. It also bans "personal statements, diversity narratives, or any applicant reference to racial identity as a means to introduce or justify discrimination."

After the Brown agreement, which closely resembles Columbia's, McMahon said in a statement, "The Trump Administration is successfully reversing the decades-long woke-capture of our nation's higher education institutions" and that "aspiring students will be judged solely on their merits, not their race or sex."

Of the roughly 4,000 colleges and universities in the U.S., a relatively small fraction – around 200 schools – are considered highly-selective. It's unclear if the Trump administration would nevertheless require all schools – community colleges for example – to collect and submit this additional data.

Two years ago, Georgetown University researchers ran simulations to see what would happen if race was removed from college admissions. They found that a national ban would decrease the ethnic diversity of students at selective colleges, unless there was "a fundamental redesign of the college admissions system," which would include eliminating legacy and athletic recruitment.

In the fall of 2024, when schools welcomed their first freshman class following the Supreme Court's ruling, enrollment changes varied widely among the nation's selective schools. Some, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Amherst College, saw considerable drops in their share of Black students, while others, including Yale University and Princeton University, saw little change.

It's not clear how ably the Education Department can collect, manage and analyze what will be a flood of new data – or crack down on schools the department believes run afoul of its merit-based admissions criteria. After a raft of layoffs and departures, the department now has roughly half the staff it had six months ago.

"This isn't flipping a switch or typing something up and saying, 'Just do it,'" says Jason Cottrell, the former data coordinator for the Education Department's Office of Postsecondary Education and a member of AFGE Local 252, a union of department employees. "It's going to be time intensive, and they don't have the resources to do it anymore. We're all gone."

Elissa Nadworny contributed to this report.
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