August 8, 2025 - On Thursday, the U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon released the following:

Today, to fulfill President Trump’s memorandum directing the U.S. Department of Education (the Department) to promote transparency in higher education, U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon directed the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to collect admissions data for institutions of higher education that will allow Americans to ensure race-based preferences are not used in university admissions processes. 

As part of their regular data reporting process, institutions of higher education will now have to report data disaggregated by race and sex relating to their applicant pool, admitted cohort, and enrolled cohort at the undergraduate level and for specific graduate and professional programs. This data will include quantitative measures of applicants’ and admitted students’ academic achievements such as standardized test scores, GPAs and other applicant characteristics. 

Finally, Secretary McMahon has directed NCES to develop a rigorous audit process to ensure the data being collected is accurate and reported consistently across institutions. 

“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. 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. Going forward, universities will be required to provide this data directly to us through an existing data system,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “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. The Trump Administration will ensure that meritocracy and excellence once again characterize American higher education.” 

Background

In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023), the Supreme Court ruled that racial preferencing in college and university admissions is illegal under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI) and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The case revealed extreme racial preferencing in Harvard University’s admissions. 

NCES is responsible for collecting and publishing a wide range of data from American educational institutions. It oversees the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), which collects admissions, enrollment, and financial information from colleges and universities that participate in financial assistance programs. Institutions of higher education that receive funding through Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 sign an agreement with the Department that requires timely and accurate completion of all IPEDS surveys as a condition of participating in federal student aid programs. 

In the past, IPEDS surveys asked only for the racial breakdown of enrolled students, not applicants or admittees. These new requirements will enable the American public to assess whether schools are passing over the most qualified students in favor of others based on their race. 
Source: US Dept, of ED.