By Amanda Shaffer
On August 7, President Trump issued a memorandum, “Ensuring Transparency in Higher Education Admissions,” ordering the Department of Education to significantly expand its collection and reporting of college admissions data. Many education experts have raised serious questions about both the order’s practicality and how the administration intends to use the data.
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon issued a directive the same day instructing the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to begin gathering admissions-related data not previously included in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). As President Trump noted in his memorandum, the purpose of the expanded data collection is to ensure that universities are not engaging in race-conscious admissions practices, which were utilized by a small subset of universities before being struck down by the Supreme Court in 2023.
IPEDS is a federal data system that collects information annually from all postsecondary institutions participating in student aid programs. This is not the first time IPEDS reporting requirements have been revised in response to federal priorities. Under the Biden administration, the department broadened data-collection efforts (at the recommendation of IPEDS Technical Review Panel #64) to include demographic characteristics of college applicants and admitted students to better understand equity in admissions.
The new presidential memorandum and accompanying directive, however, represent an unprecedented escalation of federal interest in college admissions data.
In his memo, President Trump stated that it is the policy of his administration “to ensure institutions of higher education receiving Federal financial assistance are transparent in their admissions practices.” This increased scrutiny, combined with recent funding restrictions targeting specific universities, signals an intent to use federal reporting systems as a foundation for future regulatory or legal measures.
The administration has tasked the NCES with collecting data on college applicants’ GPA, standardized test scores, family income, and admissions outcomes, all broken down by race and sex. The administration is seeking to capture data not only from the 2025-26 academic year, but also from the five previous academic years, raising serious doubts about the feasibility of collecting data of this scale.
One of the most immediate challenges posed by the new directives is the increased burden on the staff responsible for managing federal data systems. The New York Times recently reported that teams at both NCES and IPEDS are struggling to meet existing reporting demands because of significant reductions in staff. The additional demands outlined in Secretary McMahon’s memo represent a steep increase in workload for federal staff that are already overburdened. That strain is likely to deepen under the administration’s FY26 budget proposal, which calls for a 67% cut to the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the parent agency of NCES and IPEDS.
Institutional research offices, which serve as the point of contact for federal reporting at universities, will also feel the effects of the increased requirements. The Department of Education estimates that the increased data collection will add a combined total of more than 740,000 hours of burden each year on colleges across the country.
Another challenge posed by the reporting mandate is that many of the metrics being requested are not consistently defined or collected across institutions. For instance, The Hechinger Report points out that GPA scales vary widely, with some high schools using weighted systems that exceed 4.0, while others rely on unweighted scales. This variation makes comparisons across applicants impossible without the creation of a nationally standardized GPA scale, which would be misaligned with Secretary McMahon’s stated objective of “returning education to the states.”
Additionally, recent research from the Urban Institute shows that a growing number of students are choosing not to disclose their race or ethnicity on college applications, thus complicating efforts to analyze demographic patterns in admissions.
Collecting and making public applicant-level data of the kind the administration is requesting also raises important questions about privacy and data security. At smaller institutions – and especially within racial and ethnic groups that represent only a small portion of the study body – individuals may be easily identifiable based on their demographic characteristics. (When the number of applicants in a given category is very low, even anonymized data can inadvertently reveal personal information when combined with other variables like GPA or test scores.)
Perhaps the most critical concern is the potential for the collected data to be misused or misinterpreted. As Boston University economist Joshua Goodman explains, the aggregate data requested cannot reliably be used to draw conclusions about whether race played a role in a university’s decision to admit any particular individual.
College admissions decisions are based on many different factors beyond test scores, including involvement in extracurricular activities or the community, athletics and performing arts, and more. Without careful statistical analysis and transparency, the data could be used to draw misleading or politically motivated conclusions indicating bias in college admissions even if none exists.
Efforts to increase transparency in college admissions have gained traction in recent years, but the administration’s current approach raises more questions than it answers. As the NCES begins to implement these new directives, it will be critical for policymakers and the public to understand the limitations of the data being collected.
Amanda Shaffer is junior research analyst at AAU.