President Donald Trump’s latest executive order, Ensuring Transparency in Higher Education Admissions, will require higher education institutions to provide data proving they do not use race in the admission process.
The data must “verify that their admissions do not involve unlawful discrimination.”
From the Education Department:
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. This data will include quantitative measures of applicants’ and admitted students’ academic achievements such as standardized test scores, GPAs and other applicant characteristics.
“Although the Supreme Court of the United States has definitively held that consideration of race in higher education admissions violates students’ civil rights, the persistent lack of available data — 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 practice,” Trump stated in the EO. “Greater transparency is essential to exposing unlawful practices and ultimately ridding society of shameful, dangerous racial hierarchies.”
In 2023, the Supreme Court struck down race-based admissions, finding the practice violated the Equal Protection Clause under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Does your institution receive federal funding? Then report the data.
Trump ordered Education Secretary Linda McMahon to revamp the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) with the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to “provide adequate transparency into admissions.”
The Education Department must share all this data with the public.
“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,” said McMahon. “The Trump Administration will ensure that meritocracy and excellence once again characterize American higher education.”
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