Trump Is Right to Insist on More Transparency in College Admissions
Frederick M. Hess
August 11, 2025
Last week, the Trump administration announced the US Department of Education would start requiring colleges to annually submit disaggregated admissions data (meaning that colleges will have to report the race, gender, standardized test scores, GPA, and other characteristics of each admitted student). The point is to ensure that colleges are honoring the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling that race-based preferences in admissions are unconstitutional. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon declared, “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 administration’s decision was necessary, appropriate, and overdue, given serious questions about the fairness of the application process at institutions where so many students attend with federal grants, aid, or loans. Heck, this is a move I’ve been urging for some time, given questions about whether colleges are abiding by the Court’s ruling. The opacity of admissions has only fueled the concerns.
As readers might expect, the higher education community (however hypocritically) is not pleased to see the administration beefing up its civil rights enforcement. The New York Times newsroom produced a long story warning of the dangerous consequences of an emphasis on test scores and GPAs rather than race. Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors, said the “real goal is to roll back 60 years of advancements in equal opportunity and civil rights.” American Council on Education VP Jonathan Fansmith thundered, “They’re going to keep hammering this idea that schools are somehow violating the law, despite a lack of evidence.”
