Angela Morabito writes about a Trump administration priority that infuriates the political left.
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.
