Trump orders colleges to prove they ended race-based admissions

The Trump administration has issued a pair of orders requiring colleges to prove they’re not unlawfully considering race in student admissions.

In a Thursday memorandum, President Trump mandated that higher education officials submit data verifying institutional compliance and directed the Education Department to “increase accuracy checks” into those records.

“Race-based admissions practices are not only unfair, but also threaten our national security and well-being,” Mr. Trump wrote. “It is therefore the policy of my Administration to ensure institutions of higher education receiving Federal financial assistance are transparent in their admissions practices.”

Shortly after the memorandum was issued, the Education Department directed its National Center for Education Statistics to go beyond “the racial breakdown of enrolled students” collected in past surveys.

“As part of their regular data reporting process, institutions of higher education will now have to report data disaggregated by race and sex relating to their applicant pool, admitted cohort, and enrolled cohort at the undergraduate level and for specific graduate and professional programs,” the Education Department said. “This data will include quantitative measures of applicants’ and admitted students’ academic achievements such as standardized test scores, GPAs and other applicant characteristics.”

Education Secretary Linda McMahon also pledged to develop a standardized auditing process to ensure that colleges couldn’t find new ways around the Supreme Court’s June 2023 ruling striking down affirmative action in college admissions.

She pointed to a high-profile lawsuit that accused Harvard University of rebranding rather than dismantling race-conscious admissions after the ruling.

“It should not take years of legal proceedings, and millions of dollars in litigation fees, to elicit data from taxpayer-funded institutions that identifies whether they are discriminating against hard-working American applicants,” Ms. McMahon said in a statement.

“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,” she added. “The Trump Administration will ensure that meritocracy and excellence once again characterize American higher education.”

The directives drew praise on Friday from affirmative action critics and howls of protest from racial justice advocates.

The latter have long insisted that race-conscious admissions are necessary to boost Black and Hispanic students who traditionally score lower on standardized entrance exams than their peers.

“These faux defenders of merit don’t want a meritocratic government,” said Omekongo Dibinga, a professor of intercultural communications affiliated with American University’s Antiracist Research and Policy Center. “They want to maintain universities for White people, specifically White men, qualifications be damned.”

William Jacobson, a Cornell University law professor and founder of the Equal Protection Project, which supports color-blind civil rights policies, praised the administration’s directives.

“Higher ed has been playing games, reformulating admissions essays and finding other ways of doing what the Supreme Court ruled was illegal,” Mr. Jacobson said. “The administration requiring more robust disclosure of admissions data is a good first step to verifying compliance or noncompliance.”

Under the Biden administration, dozens of private and public universities sought ways around the high court’s decision to end the decades-old practice of favoring Black and Hispanic applicants.

Common methods included scanning application essays for mentions of racial discrimination and accepting the top percentage of public high school classes in racially distressed ZIP codes.

“I think that many schools are playing fast and loose with race in admissions,” said Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston. “This requirement to release the data will make the situation more transparent. And if schools are cheating, they can face litigation.”

Conservatives have long insisted that race-based admissions promote reverse discrimination against more qualified White and Asian applicants.

Nevertheless, some scholars insisted Friday that universities have a right to seek legal ways of promoting racial diversity in their student bodies.

“The request for admissions data from colleges and universities raises concerns about how and to what ends it will be used,” said Timothy Cain, a University of Georgia higher education professor. “Without context, the data could be used to paint perfectly legal and equitable admissions practices as unjust.”

Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of the history of education at the University of Pennsylvania, challenged the Trump administration’s criticism of colleges for privileging “inherited characteristics over merit” in admissions.

“There’s something ironic about hearing that claim from the Trump administration,” Mr. Zimmerman said. “Does anyone truly believe that Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. earned their current posts based on their merit? In the United States, merit is always a moving target.”