President Trump sent shockwaves through college admissions offices when he announced they must report admissions data that could reveal discrimination on the basis of race or sex. Beginning in this upcoming admissions cycle, the new policy will require colleges and universities to report to the federal government the SAT and ACT scores of admitted students, plus their GPAs, along with demographic information.
Trump’s brief memo directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to revamp how colleges report their admissions data to the federal government, and in turn, how the Department of Education reports data to the public.
This new requirement creates a problem for selective admission colleges if they set a lower academic bar for some races than others. The public is going to see, and the Department of Education is likely to investigate. Any institution found to be engaged in unlawful discrimination could face the loss of all federal funding, including access to federal student aid dollars.
This action enforces the 2023 Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. In that case, the Supreme Court held that racial preferences in college admissions violate the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
In admissions offices across the country, students have had the trajectory of their lives shaped by decisions that were not based on merit. This is especially true at Harvard, where court filings show that an Asian applicant in the top 10 percent of the academic pool had a 12.7 percent chance of receiving an acceptance letter. A black applicant in that same tier had odds of admission that were four times better — a 56.1 percent chance at a spot at Harvard.
President Trump and Secretary McMahon have good reason to believe that elite colleges may still be discriminating on the basis of race: Many of them said outright that they wanted to. Before the Supreme Court decided against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, Harvard’s seven fellow members of the Ivy League, plus Carnegie Mellon, Duke, Emory, Johns Hopkins, and more signed an amicus curiae brief urging the Supreme Court to continue allowing race-based discrimination in college admissions.
Secretary McMahon will now put these schools to the test: President Trump’s memo directs her to ramp up “accuracy checks of submitted data” to ensure admissions offices are telling the truth.
Inside every criticism of the SFFA decision is the implied fear that ending affirmative action will make colleges less diverse. Those critics might be right. Thanks to the government-run school system, many black and Hispanic students are trapped in failing government schools that do not prepare them for college. This is painfully apparent on standardized tests: The average Asian SAT-taker scores more than 300 points higher than the average black SAT test-taker, with white and Hispanic student averages falling between those average scores.
Concealing the ongoing K-12 disaster is of paramount importance to the nation’s largest teachers unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Many black and Hispanic families are stuck in union-controlled school districts, and the NEA’s business model relies on ensuring they have no other option than their government-assigned schools. The NEA and AFT each filed an amicus brief in SFFA v. Harvard, imploring the Supreme Court to preserve affirmative action.
Affirmative action allowed admissions offices to paper over the failures of the K-12 system by putting their thumbs on the scale of who did — and did not — get into elite schools. If a diverse group of students got into top colleges, the leftist movement was very willing to ignore how they got there. The same people normally obsessed with data on race and gender had no desire to see how these factors may have influenced college admissions.
McMahon has dedicated herself to solving the inequities of the education system from the ground up, by making a great education available to all. Beginning in 2027, a new federal scholarship tax credit will make school choice a reality for countless more parents and students.
Of course, not everything about a college applicant can be captured by test scores or GPA. Many students have extraordinary talents or have overcome challenges that cannot be quantified. This is true regardless of race: A black teenager from the South Side of Chicago deserves a chance to have his upbringing considered by an admissions team, and so does a white teenager from Appalachia. So does any teenager who has faced chronic illness or family upheaval or any personal experience that has molded them into who they are today.
This is a case for preserving essays and letters of recommendation in college admissions, to help illustrate what numbers cannot. That said, such written works can only be judged subjectively, and the idea of admissions officers abusing their power to implement their race-based preferences does give cause for concern. Achieving a college admissions environment free from discrimination on the basis of race and sex will require cultural changes to follow in the wake of policy changes.
Nothing justifies judging students on the basis of race — the Constitution and Title VI forbid it — or on the basis of anything other than their individual merits.
Ignoring the failures of government schools will do nothing to solve the education crisis. Nor will blocking deserving kids from opportunities they have rightfully earned. Kudos to President Trump and Secretary McMahon for telling colleges something we’ve all heard in class before: “Remember to show your work.”
Angela Morabito is the spokeswoman at the Defense of Freedom Institute, a former U.S. Department of Education press secretary, and a visiting fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum.
