President Donald Trump has signed an executive order compelling America’s colleges and universities to hand over detailed admissions data, a move aimed at exposing what he believes is the continued use of race-based preferences despite a 2023 Supreme Court ruling banning affirmative action. The order represents one of Trump’s most forceful attempts to, as Education Secretary Linda McMahon put it, “ensure that meritocracy and excellence once again characterize American higher education.”
The New Requirements
Under the order, any college or university receiving federal funding must submit a comprehensive breakdown of applicants and admitted students, including race, gender, standardized test scores, GPAs, and other academic indicators. The requirement applies not just to those who enroll but to everyone who applies.
McMahon explained the reasoning bluntly: “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.” The new rules direct the National Center for Education Statistics to begin gathering this information immediately and to ensure it is reported in a way that can be used to detect violations of federal law.
The data will be scrutinized to see whether schools are using overt or hidden racial criteria, such as “diversity statements” or personal essays that indirectly reintroduce race as a deciding factor. The White House says the order is a necessary safeguard because “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.”
Trump’s Suspicions and Past Actions
Trump and his advisors believe many universities have been quietly undermining the Supreme Court’s ruling by shifting from explicit racial quotas to less obvious methods of achieving the same outcome. The administration cites recent lawsuits as proof. For example, the Los Angeles Times reported earlier this year that the medical school at UCLA was accused in federal court of “engaging in intentional discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity in the admissions process,” a direct violation of both state law and the Supreme Court decision.
The administration has already taken aggressive steps to punish schools it believes are violating the law. Columbia University and Brown University have both entered into settlement agreements requiring them to provide detailed reports on race, test scores, and grades for all applicants. The settlements also prohibit these universities from using “personal statements, diversity narratives, or any applicant reference to racial identity as a means to introduce or justify discrimination.”
McMahon hailed those settlements as evidence of progress, saying the administration is “successfully reversing the decades-long woke-capture of our nation’s higher education institutions” and ensuring that “aspiring students will be judged solely on their merits, not their race or sex.”
The Supreme Court’s Role
This fight traces back to the Supreme Court’s landmark 2023 decision striking down race-conscious admissions at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, delivered a sharp rebuke to the universities: “Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice,” he wrote, referring to the practice of treating “the color of their skin” as the touchstone of a student’s identity rather than “challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned.”
While the ruling prohibits using race as a deciding factor, it allows applicants to discuss how race has affected their lives in essays. Trump’s team believes this exception is being abused to smuggle race back into the process, making his new order a direct attempt to close what they see as a loophole.
Universities Push Back
Higher education leaders have been quick to criticize the order. Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, called the effort “a fishing expedition” and argued that the huge volume of new data would be difficult to interpret. “All the Supreme Court said was, you can’t use race as a determining factor, even though they also said diversity is really important,” Mitchell said. He noted that admissions have always been about more than grades and test scores, with factors like extracurricular activities, recommendation letters, and unique life experiences playing an important role.
Justin Driver, a Yale Law School professor and author of The Fall of Affirmative Action: Race, the Supreme Court and the Future of Higher Education, went further, calling the move “another catastrophic blow in the Trump administration’s ongoing assault on American higher education.” He accused the administration of trying to “depress Black and brown enrollment” and intimidate universities into reducing diversity.
The order applies to roughly 4,000 colleges and universities across the country, although it remains unclear whether all will be required to submit the expanded data or if the focus will be on the most selective schools. The Department of Education faces a significant challenge in enforcing the order, especially after a wave of staff reductions. Jason Cottrell, a former data coordinator for the Office of Postsecondary Education, warned that “it’s going to be time intensive, and they don’t have the resources to do it anymore. We’re all gone.”
Despite the resistance, Trump and his supporters insist the order is about ending all forms of discrimination in higher education. “We will not back down,” McMahon said, promising to hold schools accountable.
The stage is now set for a high-stakes battle between the federal government and the academic establishment, one that will test how far universities can go in shaping their student bodies while still claiming to follow the law.
NP Editor: The interesting part is that it anecdotal data suggests that Asian kids applying have better test scores, and it may be the white kids who end up disadvantaged…
