College Board ends demographic tool used by colleges to skirt affirmative action ban
The College Board announced it will discontinue its Landscape tool, which provided demographic data that could be used as a proxy for race in college admissions.
The move follows federal efforts, including the Trump administration’s memo, to enforce transparency and restrict DEI programs that allow schools to circumvent the Supreme Court’s ruling on race-based admissions.
The College Board has announced it will discontinue its Landscape tool, which provided demographic information about schools and neighborhoods to colleges and universities.
The tool offered data on income levels and other factors that could be used as proxies for race in admissions decisions, allowing schools to make assumptions about students based on where they lived.
The College Board’s Landscape tool supplies admissions officers with data on applicants’ high school and neighborhood environments, along with contextual scores for each. Indicators include the share of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch, local median family income, and area crime rates.
The College Board said the decision comes as federal and state policies around the use of demographic information in admissions evolve.
[RELATED: University of Oklahoma memo restricts classroom DEI practices under state mandate]
“Since 2016, Landscape has provided consistent information about high schools and neighborhoods to help colleges understand more about where students live and learn,” the organization announced on Sept. 2.
“As federal and state policy continues to evolve around how institutions use demographic and geographic information in admissions, we are making a change to ensure our work continues to effectively serve students and institutions,” the College Board added. “Landscape will be discontinued.”
The College Board’s change comes in the wake of the Trump administration’s latest memo on higher education, titled “Ensuring Transparency in Higher Education Admissions,” which builds on the administration’s efforts to end race-based admissions practices.
While the Supreme Court prohibited universities from explicitly using race in the 2023 case of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, many institutions have skirted the ruling through diversity statements and other subtle proxies.
The new Trump administration memorandum directs the Secretary of Education to revamp the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), making admissions data more accessible and accurate, and to expand reporting requirements for all federally funded universities.
Schools that fail to provide timely or complete data could face consequences under federal law. The policy aims to bring transparency to college admissions, exposing hidden forms of race-conscious decision-making and enforcing compliance with the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Previously, in February, the Department of Education sent a notice to federally funded universities warning that continuing DEI programs could put their funding at risk.
In its notice, the Education Department condemned racial discrimination, including against white and Asian students, and criticized schools for promoting systemic racism through DEI initiatives.
The notice emphasized that race cannot be used in admissions, hiring, scholarships, or other campus decisions, and all students are entitled to a discrimination-free environment. Schools were given two weeks to comply, with enforcement beginning Feb. 28.
Campus Reform has contacted the College Board for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
