Trump’s admissions knowledge assortment strains school directors

by Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report
January 19, 2026

Lynette Duncan didn’t count on to spend 20 hours over the previous two weeks digging via a mothballed pc system, making an attempt to retrieve admissions knowledge from 2019.

Duncan is the director of institutional analysis at John Brown College, a small Christian college in northwest Arkansas, an hour’s drive from Walmart’s headquarters. She runs a one-person workplace that handles college knowledge collections and analyses, each for inner use and to satisfy authorities mandates. Simply final yr, she spent months gathering and crunching new knowledge to adjust to a brand new federal rule requiring that faculties present that their graduates are ready for good jobs.

Then, in mid-December, one other mandate abruptly arrived — this one on the request of President Donald Trump. Faculties had been ordered to compile seven years of admissions knowledge, damaged down by race, intercourse, grades, SAT or ACT scores, and household earnings.

“It’s like another weight on our backs,” Duncan mentioned. “The workload – it’s not enjoyable.”

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John Brown College is one among virtually 2,200 faculties and universities nationwide now scrambling to conform by March 18 with the brand new federal reporting requirement, formally often called the Admissions and Shopper Transparency Complement, or ACTS. By all accounts, it’s a ton of labor, and at small establishments, the duty falls largely on a single administrator and even the registrar. Failure to submit the info can carry steep fines and, in the end, the lack of entry to federal assist for college students.

After the Supreme Courtroom’s 2023 resolution banning affirmative motion in school admissions, the Trump administration suspected that faculties would possibly covertly proceed to offer racial preferences. To police compliance, the White Home directed the Division of Training to gather detailed admissions knowledge from faculties nationwide.

The information assortment was uncommon not solely in its scope, but additionally in its velocity. Federal training knowledge collections usually take years to design, with a number of rounds of research, technical evaluation panels, and revisions. This one moved from announcement to launch in a matter of months.

A rush job

One tiny indication that this was a rush job is within the Federal Register discover. Each implement and admissions are misspelled in a proposal that’s all about admissions enforcement. These phrases are spelled “admssions” and “enforece.” 

A December submitting with the Workplace of Administration and Finances incorrectly lists the variety of establishments which can be topic to the brand new knowledge assortment. It’s practically 2,200, not 1,660, in keeping with the Affiliation for Institutional Analysis, which is advising faculties on the best way to correctly report the info. Neighborhood faculties are exempt, however four-year establishments with selective admissions or people who give out their very own monetary assist should comply. Graduate packages are included as nicely. That provides as much as about 2,200 establishments. 

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In one other submitting with the Workplace of Administration and Finances, the administration disclosed that not one of the 5 remaining profession Training Division officers with statistical expertise had reviewed the proposal, together with Matt Soldner, the performing commissioner of the Nationwide Heart for Training Statistics. Many of the division’s statistical workers had been fired earlier this yr as a primary step to eliminating the Training Division, one among Trump’s marketing campaign guarantees. RTI Worldwide, the federal contractor in North Carolina that already manages different increased training knowledge collections for the Training Division, can also be dealing with the day-to-day work of this new school admissions assortment. 

Throughout two public remark durations, faculties and higher-education commerce teams raised considerations about knowledge high quality and lacking data, however there may be little proof these considerations considerably altered the ultimate design. One change expanded the retrospective knowledge requirement from 5 to 6 years in order that no less than one cohort of scholars would have a measurable six-year commencement charge. A second relieved faculties of the burden of constructing a whole bunch of advanced statistical calculations themselves, as an alternative instructing them to add uncooked scholar knowledge to an “aggregator instrument” that may do all the mathematics for them. 

The Trump administration’s aim is to generate comparisons throughout race and intercourse classes, with massive gaps doubtlessly triggering additional scrutiny.

Lacking knowledge

The outcomes are unlikely to be dependable, consultants informed me, given how a lot of the underlying knowledge is lacking or incomplete. In a public remark letter, Melanie Gottlieb, government director of the American Affiliation of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, warned that total years of applicant knowledge might not exist at many establishments. Some states advise faculties to delete data for candidates who by no means enrolled after a yr. “If establishments are remaining compliant with their state insurance policies, they won’t have 5 years of knowledge,” Gottlieb wrote.

The group’s personal steerage recommends that four-year faculties retain admissions data for only one yr after an utility cycle. One cause is privateness. Applicant recordsdata comprise delicate private info, and purging unneeded data reduces the chance of exposing this knowledge in breaches.

In different circumstances, particularly at smaller establishments, admissions places of work might offload applicant knowledge merely to make room for brand new scholar data. Duncan mentioned John Brown College has all seven years of required knowledge, however a swap to a brand new pc system in 2019 has made it tough to retrieve the primary yr.

Even when historic data can be found, key particulars could also be lacking or incompatible with federal necessities, mentioned Christine Keller, government director of the Affiliation for Institutional Analysis, which beforehand obtained a federal contract to coach school directors on correct knowledge assortment till DOGE eradicated it. (The group now receives some personal funds for a diminished quantity of coaching.) 

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Standardized check scores are unavailable for a lot of college students admitted beneath test-optional insurance policies. The division is asking faculties to report an unweighted grade-point common on a four-point scale, despite the fact that many candidates submit solely weighted GPAs on a five-point scale. In these circumstances, and there could also be lots of them, faculties are instructed to report the GPA as “unknown.”

Some college students decline to report their race. Many holes are anticipated for household earnings. Faculties typically have earnings knowledge just for college students who accomplished federal financial-aid kinds, which many candidates by no means file. 

Ellen Keast, a spokeswoman for the Training Division, mentioned in an electronic mail, “Faculties usually are not anticipated to supply knowledge they don’t have.” She added, “We all know that some faculties might have lacking knowledge for some knowledge parts. We’ll evaluation the extent of lacking knowledge earlier than doing additional calculations or analyses.”

Male or feminine

Even the class of intercourse poses issues. The Training Division’s spreadsheet permits solely two choices: male or feminine. Faculties, nonetheless, might acquire intercourse or gender info utilizing further classes, equivalent to nonbinary. 

“That knowledge goes to be, in my estimation, fairly nugatory relating to actually exhibiting the totally different experiences of women and men,” Keller mentioned. She is urging the division so as to add a “lacking” choice to keep away from deceptive outcomes. “I believe some individuals within the division could also be misunderstanding that what’s wanted is a missing-data possibility, not one other intercourse class.”

The brand new “aggregator instrument” itself is one other supply of tension. Designed to spare faculties from calculating quintile buckets for grades and check scores by race and intercourse, it might really feel like a black field. Faculties are purported to fill rows and rows of detailed scholar knowledge into spreadsheets after which add the spreadsheets into the instrument. The instrument generates pooled abstract statistics, such because the variety of Black feminine candidates and admitted college students who rating within the prime 20 % on the school. Solely the aggregated knowledge will likely be reported to the federal authorities.

At John Brown College, Duncan worries about what these summaries would possibly indicate. Her establishment is predominantly white and has by no means practiced affirmative motion. But when highschool grades or check scores differ by race — as they typically do nationwide — the aggregated outcomes may counsel bias the place none was supposed.

“That’s a priority,” Duncan mentioned. “I’m hopeful that trying throughout a number of years of knowledge, it gained’t present that. You possibly can have an anomaly in a single yr.”

The issue is that disparities usually are not anomalies. Standardized check scores and educational data routinely fluctuate by race and intercourse, making it tough for nearly any establishment to keep away from exhibiting gaps.

A catch-22 for faculties

The stakes are excessive. In an emailed response to my questions, the Training Division pointed to Trump’s Aug. 7 memorandum, which directs the company to take “remedial motion” if faculties fail to submit the info on time or submit incomplete or inaccurate info.

Underneath federal regulation, every violation of those training data-reporting necessities can carry a high quality of as much as $71,545. Repeated noncompliance can in the end result in the lack of entry to federal scholar assist, that means college students may not use Pell Grants or federal loans to pay tuition.

That leaves faculties in a bind. Failing to conform is dear. Complying, in the meantime, may produce flawed knowledge that implies bias and invitations additional scrutiny.

The order itself contradicts one other administration aim. President Trump campaigned on decreasing federal purple tape and bureaucratic burden. But ACTS represents a major enlargement of paperwork for faculties. The Workplace of Administration and Finances estimates that every establishment will spend roughly 200 hours finishing the survey this yr — a determine that higher-education officers say could also be an understatement.

Duncan is hoping she will end the reporting in lower than 200 hours, if there are not any setbacks when she uploads the info. “If I get errors, it may take double the time,” she mentioned.

For now, she remains to be gathering and cleansing previous scholar data and ready to see the outcomes… all earlier than the March 18 deadline.

Contact workers author Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Sign, or barshay@hechingerreport.org.

This story about school admissions knowledge was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, impartial information group centered on inequality and innovation in training. Join Proof Factors and different Hechinger newsletters.

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