Trump Orders Colleges to Report Admissions Data on Race
Credit: Anna Moneymaker / Staff / Getty Images News - Colleges and universities will soon have to provide college application data broken down by race and sex.
- The Trump administration says this transparency will ensure colleges don’t have discriminatory admissions practices.
- It’s unclear, however, how schools will be expected to collect and report the requested information.
The Trump administration will soon begin collecting college admissions data broken down by race and sex.
Department of Education (ED) Secretary Linda McMahon directed the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to begin collecting this data within the 120-day timeline set forth by President Donald Trump in a recent memorandum. McMahon said this change will “promote transparency in higher education.”
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She added that this information will help the department determine whether institutions are engaging in discriminatory admissions practices.
McMahon cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2023 overturning of race-conscious admissions — also known as affirmative action — in her statement.
“Students and their parents deserve to know whether the institutions to which they are applying are admitting students based on an objective assessment of merit and achievement,” she wrote in her directive.
“President Trump’s memorandum is a welcome requirement for this department that furthers our goal of restoring public confidence in higher education.”
Currently, colleges and universities that participate in the federal financial aid system provide data broken down by race, ethnicity, and sex for enrolled students. They do not, however, routinely collect this information for all applicants.
McMahon’s directive would require institutions to submit data disaggregated by race and sex regarding the school’s:
- Applicant pool
- Admitted students
- Enrolled students
All undergraduate programs would be required to collect this data, but only “specific” graduate and professional programs would have to provide it. McMahon’s directive does not clarify which programs would be exempt.
Institutions will also be required to report other information about college applicants, including:
- Standardized test scores
- GPAs
- Status as a first-generation college student
- “Other applicant characteristics”
This isn’t the first time the department has proposed collecting this data.
In June 2021, the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System’s (IPEDS) Technical Review Panel discussed collecting disaggregated data in its admissions survey, including by race and ethnicity. Ultimately, the panel agreed that the burden to collect this data “likely outweighs its benefit,” and that if NCES were to begin disaggregating data, it should prioritize race and ethnicity.
McMahon’s latest directive comes at a tumultuous time for NCES and the Institute for Education Sciences (IES) overall.
BestColleges previously reported that staffing at IES shrunk from 186 employees to approximately 20 in just two months. Many experts, including those who previously worked at ED, expect these staffing cuts to place more strain on ED’s data collection processes in the coming months and years.
It’s also unclear how institutions will be expected to collect applicant data.
For example, many prospective college students use the Common App to submit applications to various colleges and universities at once. Currently, Common App questions about race and ethnicity are optional, meaning students can choose not to answer.
What will happen to institutions that don’t have a complete picture of their applicant pool? Time will tell.
The American Council on Education (ACE) said these new demands come after institutions have already changed policies to accommodate the Supreme Court’s decision.
“Institutions no longer request racial information as part of the application process,” ACE said in a statement, “and demographic data is now typically collected only after enrollment, through voluntary surveys that are often incomplete or unrepresentative.