Trump Administration Orders Colleges to Submit New Admissions Data

The expanded reporting will also require information on sex, test scores, grade point averages, and other academic details.

The memorandum issued August 7 is based on the administration's unfounded claim that colleges and universities are not fully complying with the Supreme Court's 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. In reality, institutions across the country have already overhauled admissions policies, retrained staff, and ensured their practices align with the Court's prohibition on race-conscious admissions.

Under the new requirements, institutions participating in federal student aid programs must provide disaggregated data for applicants, admitted students, and enrolled students at both the undergraduate level and for certain graduate and professional programs. The information will be reported through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), which the administration says will be overhauled to make it more accessible and user-friendly. Colleges that fail to submit the required data could face "remedial action" under Title IV of the Higher Education Act.

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon issued a directive shortly after the president's order, instructing the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to collect the expanded admissions data. She also called for new accuracy checks and audit processes. However, the capacity to enforce these new requirements is unclear: NCES, which operates IPEDS, has seen significant staff reductions in recent months, leaving only a fraction of its prior workforce.

ACE President Ted Mitchell underscored the limits of what the data can reveal, noting that the administration's expectations don't match how student demographic information is actually collected. "This is a fishing expedition," he told The New York Times, noting that students are not required to provide racial information, making it difficult for the administration's collection to demonstrate whether institutions are following the Supreme Court's ruling.

Beyond feasibility, Mitchell stressed that admissions decisions have always taken into account more than just academic metrics. "This is why we have recommendation letters. This is why we care if someone's been on an athletic team [or] if they're a cellist," he told NPR. "Because we want to get a better picture of what those numbers mean. All [the Supreme Court] said was, you can't use race as a determining factor, even though they also said diversity is really important."

These new demands come despite the fact that colleges and universities nationwide have already adjusted their policies and procedures since Students for Fair Admissions. Institutions no longer request racial information as part of the application process, and demographic data is now typically collected only after enrollment, through voluntary surveys that are often incomplete or unrepresentative.

Mitchell pointed out the limitations of the government's approach. About 15 percent of U.S. colleges are considered selective, meaning they admit fewer than half of their applicants, yet the order applies to all institutions receiving federal student aid.

"There's a huge net," he told The Washington Post, "and it's got a bunch of big holes."