The Logical End Point of Trump’s Higher-Education Agenda
Article/Op-Ed in The Atlantic
Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic
Oct. 15, 2025
For The Atlantic, Kevin Carey explores how the Trump administration’s proposed admissions “compact” would standardize college admissions around GPAs and test scores—reversing decades of policy aimed at increasing access and representation in higher education.
Since taking office, President Donald Trump has attacked colleges and universities using such a bewildering range of tools—civil-rights investigations, research-funding recissions, student-loan cuts, visa bans—that it’s hard to keep track of what the White House is trying to reform or destroy. But the new higher-education compact offered to universities by the administration strongly suggests that Trump’s higher-education agenda, if successful, will result in a far less diverse academy, with fewer Black and Latino students. It will do this by demanding that colleges adopt an admissions system based purely on test scores and GPA—and accusing any institution that resists of illegal racial preferences.
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