The Trump administration’s executive order demanding that universities disclose the race, test scores and grade point averages of all applicants raises the stakes in a bitter battle that has already upended college admissions in recent years.
Colleges will face even more intense scrutiny over their admissions practices as the administration pushes them to rely more heavily on quantitative measures, which experts say could result in wealthier, less diverse student populations at elite universities.
For a century, higher education has been embroiled in a debate over who should be admitted into the country’s most selective colleges. It is a fight that cuts to the core of the nation’s most difficult ideological divides, over merit, equal opportunity and the legacy of racism.
On one side, colleges have argued that considering students’ life experiences — including their races — creates diverse student bodies that are beneficial to everyone and corrects for decades of discrimination. But a conservative movement has questioned the use of such subjective criteria in admissions, arguing that the practice has led to discrimination against white and Asian students.
The leftists who run universities really don't want to be exposed for their racist attitudes towards certain groups. This is a very, very important higher eduation story.