It is about to become much more difficult for American universities to hide their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and race-based admissions schemes.
That is because the Department of Education will now start requiring universities that receive federal funding to submit race and sex data from applicants, admissions, and enrollments for undergraduates, as well as certain graduate and other programs.
“Following the revelations of rampant racial preferencing in college admissions exposed by SFFA v. Harvard, the Trump Administration is now standardizing reporting from colleges and universities to provide full transparency into their admissions practices,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “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.”
“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.”
In addition to race and sex data, other indicators like academic achievements, standardized test scores, and grade point averages (GPA) will accompany the profiles in order to keep track of potential systematic discrimination against students who would otherwise likely be admitted, were it not for them being white, Asian, or male, for example.
Ever since the backlash against DEI and racial admissions schemes, sometimes known as affirmative action, universities (which in large part invented these ideologies) have been looking for ways to find loopholes or bypass federal civil rights law.
As The Federalist reported, within hours of the Supreme Court deciding affirmative action to be unconstitutional, Harvard University sought loopholes to allow students to identify their race without checking a box (e.g. by encouraging they mention it in application essays).
Earlier this week, a federal complaint was filed against Harvard Medical School for doing this, but the move from the Trump administration to collect the data will put sunlight on the tangible data suggesting these schools have certain racial preferences.
Kurt Miceli, MD, medical director of Do No Harm, an organization that has been fighting racial preferences in medical school admissions, told The Federalist that the Trump administration’s move was “much needed oversight and is an important step towards ensuring colleges and universities follow the law,” adding that the data collection will “put an end to higher education skirting the Supreme Courts’ decision.”
President Donald Trump signed a memorandum Thursday directing McMahon to initiate reforms to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), which is run by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) — a subagency within the Education Department.
“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,” the memorandum stats. “Greater transparency is essential to exposing unlawful practices and ultimately ridding society of shameful, dangerous racial hierarchies.”
McMahon then sent a directive to NCES Acting Commissioner Matthew Soldner noting that “the current survey neglects to collect important information that could reveal whether universities are discriminating against applicants based on race,” adding that the “collection and reporting of data on race/ethnicity and sex for students is mandatory for all institutions that receive, are applicants for, or expect to be applicants for Federal financial assistance as defined in the Department’s regulations implementing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, or defined in any Department regulation implementing Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.”
NCES will also need to “develop a rigorous audit process to ensure the data being collected is accurate and reported consistently across institutions.”
The Trump administration has been taking the American education establishment to task since Inauguration Day.
It has sought to end the “transgender” obsession both within sports and in school districts grooming children into thinking they are a different gender. It has likewise gone after schools instituting racial preferences, and ended taxpayer subsidies to illegals. One of the major focuses of the Department of Education has been to pare down its own bureaucracy and return most education decision making to the states.
“Race-based admissions practices are not only unfair, but also threaten our national security and well-being,” Trump’s memorandum states. “American students and taxpayers deserve confidence in the fairness and integrity of our Nation’s institutions of higher education, including confidence that they are recruiting and training capable future doctors, engineers, scientists, and other critical workers vital to the next generations of American prosperity.”
The reforms required by the memorandum will need to be ready in 120 days and will be initiated for the 2025-2026 school year.
Breccan F. Thies is a correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
