The Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard made clear that the consideration of race in higher education admissions violates students’ civil rights. Yet many colleges and universities appear to be moving their race discrimination underground to circumvent the ruling. Indeed, Defending Education’s own report indicates that more than 245 colleges and universities are still actively operating DEI offices.

In August, President Trump directed the Department of Education to “ensure institutions of higher education receiving Federal financial assistance are transparent in their admissions practices.” To do this, the Department of Education is updating the information collected from colleges and universities in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) to include racial data on admissions and scholarships. IPEDS is a system of interrelated surveys conducted annually by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). IPEDS collects data on enrollments, graduation rates, faculty and staff, finances, tuition prices, and more. Policymakers, educators, media, state and federal agencies, and parents rely on IPEDS data for basic information on postsecondary institutions. The Department of Education is introducing a new component to IPEDS called the “Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement” (ACTS) survey component to ensure discrimination in postsecondary admissions and scholarship administration is rooted out. 

In response to the Department of Education’s request for public input on this component, Defending Education has submitted a formal comment urging the requirement of the ACTS survey component for highly selective colleges that receive federal funding to track their admissions practices. These institutions have shown that they are incapable of following the law on their own and that more guardrails are needed. Additionally, Defending Education has recommended that all colleges that receive federal funding ought to be required to complete this new survey component to track their scholarship administration to ensure that the civil rights of their students are respected. 

---