President Donald Trump announced yet another executive order on Thursday, targeting how colleges admit students — This time, requiring schools to publish detailed admissions data to “prove” they don’t take race into consideration. On paper, it sounds simple — even fair. But in practice, it’s a move that unravels the very process that made fairness possible in the first place.

Trump is selling the order as a way to create a level playing field — a purely merit-based system. But merit in America’s education system has never been a neutral measure. It’s shaped by access to resources, which are overwhelmingly concentrated among white and wealthy families. Stripping race from the conversation doesn’t erase inequality — it cements it.

When the Supreme Court rejected affirmative action in college admissions in 2023, it ruled that race cannot be a deciding factor, but it can be considered if tied to a personal story/character.

In fact, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the following in 2023 for the court’s conservative majority: “Nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university.

Trump, however, is accusing the country’s most prestigious institutions of using “diversity statements and other overt and hidden racial proxies” to add weight to college applications.” Ordering colleges to provide detailed reports of race, GPA and test scores of prospective, admitted and enrolled students, Trump aims to ensure that white students aren’t being discriminated against.

This new policy mirrors demands detailed in recent settlements the government negotiated with  Brown University and Columbia University, restoring their federal research money.

The reality is that race and income become incredibly relevant when considering merit. For instance, prospective students who are able to pay hundreds of dollars per hour for SAT tutoring receive higher test scores. And the families across the country with access to such resources happen to be White and Asian.

This isn’t anecdotal — research shows that students from most affluent families were much likelier to have high SAT scores. Only 2.3 percent of bottom 20 percent income students score 1300+ on SAT as opposed to 38 percent in the top 0.1 percent. Even with the same scores, top 0.1 percent are 2.2 times likelier to be admitted to elite colleges.

Despite repeated claims from conservative critics about qualified white applicants being discriminated against to make room for under-qualified applicants of different ethnic backgrounds, a variety of research has found that admissions practices often result in benefiting white students. And before you scoff — other drivers result in preferring white students: athlete recruitment, legacy preference and private high school advantage.

“I’f you’re just trying to admit the students who were the most academically prepared, you would in fact end up tilting a lot toward white students and toward richer students, because those are the ones who have had access to the schools that would get them prepared,” John N. Friedman, who’s an economist at Brown and author of the Opportunity Insights study, told The New York Times.

On a macro level, the public release of data on test scores and race could allow elite colleges to justify wealthy admits under a “merit-based” banner and reduce incentive to use holistic measures that capture non-academic strengths tied to adversity.

Adam Nguyen, the founder of Ivy Link, a company that provides college admissions advice to families told The New York Times that his services can cost up to $750,000 and that this kind of push from the White House could politically pressure institutions to only admit applicants with the highest test scores and grades. Given the nuance of America’s education system, this would undoubtedly create a wider cultural gap across industries and within the job market.

The wealth advantage already embedded in the system and transparency requirements — accompanied by Trump’s particular expectations — may normalize and entrench it.

“Ultimately, will it mean anything? Probably not,” Jon Fansmith, a senior vice president of government relations at the American Council on Education told the Associated Press. “But it does continue this rhetoric from the administration that some students are being preferred in the admission process at the express of other students.”

One result of the 2023 ruling was the prohibition of college applications asking about race. Schools were able to ask a student about their background once they’ve enrolled, but beforehand, students must be given the option to opt out of such questions.

According to Fansmith, in the current political climate, many students “prefer not to answer” such questions, so when it comes time for institutions to release this data, the numbers will only give a partial picture of the demographics.

Still, Trump-appointed Education Secretary Linda McMahon has been granted the ability to restrict federal financial aid for students whose colleges fail to submit timely, complete and accurate data — and for this reason, critics are accusing the Trump administration of weaponizing transparency to undermine diversity, and ultimately protect wealthy advantage and white privilege.

Yet again, the Trump administration ignited a controversial debate: Does his policy ensure fairness, or does it just cloak existing inequality in data?

“The pursuit of racial diversity will go on,” Justice Sotomayer wrote in her 2023 dissent. “Despite the court’s unjustified exercise of power, the opinion today will serve only to highlight the court’s own importance in the face of an America whose cries for equality resound.”

Fairness isn’t about ignoring inequality; it’s about accounting for it. This executive order does the opposite.