On August 7, 2025, President Donald Trump signed a sweeping executive order that has sent ripples through the world of higher education. The directive, which mandates that colleges and universities submit detailed admissions data to the federal government, aims to ensure that race is no longer a factor in college admissions—a move that echoes the rhetoric and legal battles that have surrounded affirmative action for decades.
According to the Associated Press, Trump’s memorandum requires all Title IV-eligible institutions—those receiving federal financial aid—to provide new, disaggregated data on applicants, admitted students, and enrolled cohorts. This data must be broken down by race and sex, and include quantitative measures like standardized test scores, grade point averages, first-generation college student status, and other applicant characteristics. The order also demands expanded reporting on graduation rates, final GPAs, and financial aid offered and provided, all separated by race and sex pairs. The intent, as the administration frames it, is to provide “adequate transparency into admissions” and to root out any lingering use of race-based admissions practices.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who followed up with a directive to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), echoed the president’s message. In her words, "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…Race-based admissions practices are not only unfair, but also threaten our national security and well-being." This sentiment is at the heart of the new policy, which takes direct aim at what the administration describes as overt and hidden racial proxies—like diversity statements—that may still be influencing admissions decisions.
The policy closely mirrors recent settlement agreements with Ivy League institutions such as Brown University and Columbia University. As part of those deals, the universities agreed to provide the federal government with extensive admissions data, including the race, GPAs, and test scores of applicants, admitted, and enrolled students, as well as to undergo audits and release admissions statistics. The settlements were a prerequisite for the renewal of federal research funding that had previously been frozen by the Trump administration, according to Fox News and Nexstar Media.
But the new order is not just about data collection; it carries sharp teeth. If colleges fail to submit timely, complete, and accurate data, the Education Department is empowered to act under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965. That means the federal government could withhold critical financial aid—loans, Pell Grants, and work-study funds that total about $115 billion annually—from non-compliant institutions. As Robert Kelchen, a professor of higher education at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, told The New York Times, “They want to be able to offer it, because that is how many students pay the bill for tuition, room and board and they are able to afford to come.”
The context for this executive order is the 2023 Supreme Court decision that struck down race-based affirmative action in college admissions. The ruling, however, left a loophole: colleges could still consider how race has shaped a student’s life if the applicant chose to discuss it in a personal essay. Since then, some colleges have added more essays or personal statements to their admissions process, seeking a fuller picture of applicants’ backgrounds. The Trump administration, though, argues that such personal statements and other proxies are being used to circumvent the spirit of the Supreme Court’s decision, and conservatives have voiced concerns that elite universities continue to discriminate against white and Asian students.
Yet, the administration’s push for transparency faces a paradox. As The New York Times reported, since January 2025, the Trump administration has laid off nearly all staff at the National Center for Education Statistics, the very agency tasked with collecting and analyzing the new admissions data. Of the roughly 100 employees who once worked there, only four remain. All seven federal employees who previously worked full or part time on the college data set were laid off in March as part of broader cuts at the Department of Education. The department now relies heavily on contractors for data collection, but critics worry that without in-house experts, quality control has been severely compromised.
"Who is going to analyze that data?" asked Angel B. Pérez, chief executive of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, in an interview with The New York Times. Sheria Smith, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents the fired employees, was even more blunt: “We don’t have any quality control, because those people have been fired.” She argued that the layoffs are part of a broader Trump administration strategy to sideline scientists and data experts across government agencies, allowing more leeway in interpreting—or misinterpreting—federal data.
The layoffs and contract cancellations, which included $900 million in contracts for the Institute of Education Sciences (the agency that maintains the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, or IPEDS), have left the future of data collection and analysis uncertain. The Trump administration acknowledges that IPEDS “requires long-overdue technological upgrades” to perform more effectively, but the recent staff cuts seem at odds with that goal. Madi Biedermann, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, insisted that “the work is all done through contracts that are still maintained by the Department.” Still, the absence of seasoned federal analysts has raised alarms among advocates and experts alike.
Some critics, like Wil Del Pilar of EdTrust, see a silver lining in the new data requirements. “Are fewer students of color now applying to selective institutions?” he asked. “We have historically not had that data.” The expanded transparency, he suggests, could help advocacy groups monitor the impact of recent legal and policy changes on college access for underrepresented students. But Del Pilar also noted that the Trump administration’s mandate circumvents the usual, lengthy process for changing federal data collection, and that collecting accurate information may be complicated by the fact that students are not required to disclose their race when applying to college. As Dr. Pérez observed, “More and more students are not disclosing. So what happens when students don’t disclose and the administration is asking for that data?”
Meanwhile, the White House insists that the new policy is necessary to restore public trust in higher education. Citing the “persistent lack of available data” and the “rampant use of ‘diversity statements’ and other overt and hidden racial proxies,” the memorandum asserts that transparency is essential for the fairness and integrity of American colleges. The administration’s approach is forceful: comply or risk losing the federal funds that keep the doors of most colleges open.
As the new school year approaches, institutions across the country are scrambling to understand and implement the order’s requirements. Whether the policy will lead to meaningful change—or simply add another layer of bureaucracy to an already complex admissions landscape—remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: the debate over race, fairness, and transparency in college admissions is far from over, and the next chapter is unfolding right now.
