Trump Wants Every School’s Admissions Data. Imagine What Comes Next.

After successfully forcing Columbia and Brown to hand over granular admissions data to the administration, President Donald Trump seems to be taking aim at a bigger target: every university in the United States.

Trump is expected to sign an order Thursday mandating that universities turn over applicant data in order to prove they’re not carrying out affirmative action policies, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on X.

Leavitt’s post gave no further details on how the government would make these determinations, or what consequences the universities would face if they refused to cooperate.

Trump’s battle against the Ivy League appears to have been a slippery slope leading to a grab for total control over higher education. The president has threatened universities with enormous funding cuts if they don’t follow his orders: dismantling anything purportedly related to diversity, equity, and inclusion; harshly punishing pro-Palestinian protesters; and giving the federal government sway over curriculums and entire academic departments in the name of combating antisemitism.

Since the 2023 Supreme Court decision banning affirmative action, universities have already significantly reworked their admissions processes and criteria. This would go even further, ceding enormous control to the state over not only who gets accepted to these schools but what goes on there. There’s nothing stopping the federal government from using and misusing this data as leverage to further sue, threaten, and claw back funds from universities.