With concerns that some universities are bypassing the Supreme Court’s ruling to ban affirmative action in admissions, President Donald Trump and his administration are working overtime to ensure institutions of higher learning follow the law moving forward.
In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that using a race-based admissions process for potential students is illegal and in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The immediate aftermath was positive and saw many universities start relying on merit and standardized testing scores once again. However, some universities began looking for alternatives to take their racial discrimination in admissions underground. In other words, they kept illegally discriminating against students while pretending they were not.
One common tactic used by universities is what the Manhattan Institute has described as “percent plans.” These percent plans are now used in numerous prominent colleges, including the State University of New York, University of Texas at Austin, Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University (Texas A&M), and the University of California (UC) system.
Rather than simply pick the best qualified applicants, these “percent plans” allow universities to indirectly implement affirmative action under the table. With these plans, universities simply guarantee that the top percent of students in each high school class within a state receive admission based on GPA. Considering that most states have high schools that are majority-minority, this practice guarantees a certain amount of each incoming class will be a specific race.
The percentage is different depending on the university and state. In Texas, then-Governor George W. Bush signed a bill into law in 1997 mandating a top 10% rule for public universities. California currently has a rule in place granting the top 9% of graduates from high schools direct admission to the UC system.
While all high school students regardless of race deserve equal access to public universities, this is certainly not the way to achieve it. These “percent plans” are nothing more than quotas enacted as an alternative form of affirmative action.
Unfortunately, universities are finding other ways to bypass the Supreme Court as well. Take Duke University, for example.
Duke President Vincent Price released a statement last year promoting the idea of advancing “racial and social equity.
“Price is apparently a man of his word. The university has openly participated in “regional recruiting” within the state, which is a tactic often used to attain students in majority-minority locations.
The university has also taken the additional step of guaranteeing full tuition grants to students from North Carolina and South Carolina with families that have an income of less than $150,000. While this may appear as a move to help struggling families send their students to a prestigious university, the school has made the goal clear to circumvent the affirmative action ban.
Duke University administrators adopted this policy a week before the Supreme Court’s decision to ban affirmative action when the outcome appeared inevitable. Then-dean of admissions Christoph Guttentag explained that “diversity is not one-dimensional” and that it “manifests in various and interconnected ways” when asked about the situation.
He later added in a thinly veiled comment that offering this tuition grant helped Duke in “maintaining racial diversity” the next year.
When other universities saw a decline in minority students after the affirmative action ban, Duke University saw a slight increase with the new tuition policy being introduced.
With serious concerns regarding universities finding new ways such as these to bypass the affirmative action ban, the Trump administration is thankfully working to curb this issue. On Aug. 7, Trump signed an executive order to enforce transparency in the admissions process to universities.
The executive order will require colleges that receive federal funding to provide more of their admissions data to the Department of Education in an effort to ensure that these institutions are not using other tactics to bypass the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ban.
Colleges must now “submit the data necessary to verify that their admissions do not involve unlawful discrimination,” according to the White House. The idea is that the federal government can look at the data and determine if schools are still using racial quotas or other strategies to admit specific students.
This is in addition to the Trump administration aggressively targeting schools this year that heavily relied on affirmative action in the past and zealously promoted diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and programs, such as the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and Brown University.
University administrators have often shown themselves to be bad actors in the past who care more about pushing their political agendas than doing what is best for their schools and their students. Attempting to bypass the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling is just the most recent example.
The Trump administration’s efforts at ensuring universities are transparent with their admissions data going forward is a first great step in holding these administrators responsible. Every child deserves a fair opportunity to go to college. In order to achieve this goal, schools should accept the best applicants they receive, regardless of any student’s race or background.
Casey Ryan is a writer and investigative reporter at Defending Education.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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