Trump’s Radical New Rule for Colleges to submit Data on Applicants‘ Race

On August 7, 2025, President Trump made a new rule that colleges must send the government information about students who apply. This includes their race, gender, test scores, and grades. The goal is to check if schools are giving special treatment to certain groups, especially minorities, even though a 2023 Supreme Court decision mostly banned using race in admissions.

The article says, “President Trump on Thursday ordered his Education Department to begin collecting detailed data on the race and gender of college applicants, as well as test scores and grade point averages.” This means the government wants to make sure colleges are following the law and not secretly using race to decide who gets in.

Some people think this rule is unfair. Justin Driver, a professor at Yale Law School, said, “It signals the Trump administration’s efforts to depress Black and brown enrollment, and intimidate universities into decreasing Black and brown enrollment.” He also said the government doesn’t understand the Supreme Court’s decision. Colleges can still help students from different backgrounds apply, as long as they don’t use race as the only reason.

Linda McMahon, the Education Secretary, supports the rule. She said, “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.” She believes the rule will help make colleges fairer.

But other experts say the government should also ask for information about how much money students’ families make. Richard Kahlenberg said, “By failing to request the socioeconomic data, it looks like the administration is going to take us down this very extreme path where a university that achieves racial diversity is suspect, even if it uses a race-neutral means like socioeconomic status.”

Some people, like Edward Blum, agree with the rule. He said colleges should not use things like neighborhoods or family income as secret ways to consider race.

This new rule could change how colleges choose students, and many people are watching to see what happens next.