The Trump Administration Demands Education Department to Reveal Information on Students
On Thursday, President Trump announced that the Education Department was now required to begin compiling data on the race and gender of college applicants, among other things. The collected information would then be expected to be given to the Trump Administration, for the sake of analysis. The Trump Administration states that this will be an attempt to look at whether colleges are giving minorities an advantage in admissions or not.
The movement has been speculated to be based on a theory among conservative activists. This theory states that many colleges are dodging a 2023 Supreme Court decision that barred the consideration of race in college admissions. Despite the 2023 decision, legal experts have said that universities are still allowed to consider race as part of their entry process as part of a push for a more holistic review of applicants.
“[The change] signals the Trump administration’s efforts to depress Black and brown enrollment, and intimidate universities into decreasing Black and brown enrollment,” said Justin Driver, a Yale law professor and author. Mr. Driver also referred to the changes as a “catastrophic blow in the Trump administration’s ongoing assault on American higher education.”
Before, many of Mr. Trump’s attempts to change colleges have been rebuked or countered. Such examples include Harvard refusing to comply with Mr. Trump’s orders, which included things like banning DEI programs and limiting foreign student applications. Harvard also tried suing the government later for stripping the school’s research funding.
The new orders, however, are different. The orders are directly to the Education Department, who have much stronger influence in terms of universities. As a condition of joining student aid programs, universities are more or less forced to give over the information of students.
It isn’t completely hopeless for any university looking to oppose the demand, however. The orders are still open to any potential legal challenges on the basis of the federal student privacy law, which protects the data of students and prohibits unauthorized access without proper consent.
Aaron Ament, a former Education Department official who is now the president of the National Student Legal Defense Network, argued that this order shows the current government may have misplaced priorities.
“There is a real need for reporting and transparency on what actual prices are,” Mr. Ament said. “This is a tactic to try to stop institutions from helping disadvantaged students.”
