President Donald Trump has issued a presidential memorandum on college admissions, which was followed by a directive from Education Secretary Linda McMahon to the National Center for Education Statistics that provides more detail on how the memorandum will be implemented.
The August 7 memorandum includes commentary similar to previous administration statements concerning college admissions and related issues.
“American students and taxpayers deserve confidence in the fairness and integrity of our Nation’s institutions of higher education, including confidence that they are recruiting and training capable future doctors, engineers, scientists, and other critical workers…Race-based admissions practices are not only unfair, but also threaten our national security and well-being,” the document says.
This rhetoric is echoed in McMahon’s directive.
Given that community colleges, as a rule, have “open door” admissions policies, the direct effect of the memorandum on campuses’ admissions practices may be limited. However, the action will significantly affect the data that institutions report to the Education Department (ED), as well as how those data are displayed.
Providing transparency
The memorandum states that, to ensure campuses don’t use race-based admission practices, the administration wants to require Title IV-eligible institutions to be more “transparent” in their admissions policies. Trump has indicated that the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) should be the vehicle to provide this transparency.
Under the new approach, the National Center of Education Statistics (NCES) is to expand institutional reporting to provide “adequate” transparency into admissions. Accordingly, McMahon directed NCES to start collecting additional data, disaggregated by race and sex, on institutions’ applicants and admitted and enrolled cohorts.
Institutions will also have to report, through IPEDS, “quantitative measures of applicants and admitted students’ academic achievement such as standardized test scores, GPAs, first-generation-college student status, and other applicant characteristics, for each race-and-sex pair.” This is the same data that Columbia, Brown and other universities agreed to provide as part of their settlements with the federal government.
Expanding data collection
In addition, NCES is to “expand the scope of the collection for enrolled cohorts to include data for each race-and-sex pair’s graduation rates, final GPAs, financial aid offered, financial aid provided, and other relevant measures,” according to the directive.
Finally, NCES also will develop a “rigorous quality assurance process for reported data.” The additional data collections are intended to start within 120 days and include the coming school year.
The memorandum states that IPEDS “requires long-overdue technological upgrades” to perform more effectively. This goal conflicts with the evisceration of the IPEDS staff earlier this year, in which the administration cancelled $900 million in contracts for the agency that maintains IPEDS, the Institute of Education Sciences. However, these cuts do not preclude a future change in policy and significantly greater support.
