The news set off alarms. Last summer, the U.S. Department of Education announced that it would add a new component to its Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), a system of surveys all colleges must complete each year. The new survey, called the Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement, or ACTS, would require selective four-year institutions to hand over a ton of data — on race, gender, high-school grades, standardized-test scores, and family income — for all applicants, admitted students, and enrolled students over the previous seven completed admissions cycles.
The unprecedented demand was born of suspicion. An executive memorandumPresident Trump signed last August describes “concerns” that institutions were still considering applicants’ race in violation of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which effectively outlawed race-conscious admissions. “Greater transparency,” the memorandum said, “is essential to exposing unlawful practices and ultimately ridding society of shameful, dangerous racial hierarchies.” The department described the ACTS as a means of ensuring that colleges weren’t using race-based preferences.
Several higher-education associations and policy wonks criticized the ACTS mandate. Though the data the administration requested “can offer insights into inequities in college admissions,” the Institute for Higher Education Policy wrote, “they cannot prove whether race was a determining factor in an admissions decision.” Which is true; ask anyone who’s ever worked in admissions. But in the end, would that caveat prevent an administration hostile to higher education from claiming that a given institution had broken the law?
Our members are doing their absolute best, but the human toll of this is high. People are exhausted.
A more immediate question has loomed over colleges all winter: How would they submit all the requested data on time?