Latest news with #AngelPérez
Boston Globe
09-08-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Trump wants admissions data on grades and race, but who will collect it?
Of about 100 employees who worked at the National Center for Education Statistics, just four remain. 'Who is going to analyze that data?' said Angel Pérez, CEO of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. Advertisement In his second term, Trump has often taken a paradoxical approach to education, pushing to diminish the federal government's role, even as he tries to wield its power. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up He has ordered sweeping layoffs at the Department of Education, which he hopes to eventually shut down. And he has proposed slashing spending on education, arguing that the federal government adds bureaucratic bloat and has not improved student outcomes. Still, he has often used federal funding as a powerful tool to get schools and universities on board with his agenda, something he invoked again Thursday with his executive order. In the order, Trump turned to Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, threatening the federal financial aid colleges receive for students if they refused to comply. He used a similar strategy this spring, when he threatened to withhold federal money for low-income students from public school districts that did not comply with his rules on diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Advertisement The federal government provides about $115 billion a year in financial aid for college students, money that goes to colleges — and then to students — in the form of loans, Pell Grants and work-study arrangements. The money is crucial for the vast majority of colleges. 'They want to be able to offer it, because that is how many students pay the bill for tuition, room and board and they are able to afford to come,' said Robert Kelchen, a professor of higher education at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. As a condition of receiving the federal money, colleges must respond to surveys from the federal government. The data provides a variety of detailed information on every college, including faculty-to-student ratios, the cost of tuition and the average amount of financial aid. 'The goal is to help potential students make better decisions,' Kelchen said. Trump wants to add admissions data to the list, including the race, gender, SAT scores and grade-point averages of students — both those who were accepted and those who were rejected. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said the move would provide 'full transparency' to ensure that universities are not using race as a preference in admissions. In 2023, the Supreme Court struck down race-based affirmative action after a conservative group, Students for Fair Admissions, brought lawsuits against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. 'It should not take years of legal proceedings, and millions of dollars in litigation fees, to elicit data from taxpayer-funded institutions that identifies whether they are discriminating against hardworking American applicants,' McMahon said. Advertisement Even critics who fear how the Trump administration may use the data say it could be helpful, particularly as they track the shifting landscape after the Supreme Court decision. 'Are fewer students of color now applying to selective institutions?' said Wil Del Pilar, senior vice president at EdTrust, an advocacy group for low-income students and students of color. 'We have historically not had that data.' Still, Del Pilar said that the mandate from Trump was circumventing the usual process for changing data collection, which typically involves a lengthy process. He said he had for years pushed the government to survey colleges about how many of its students are parents, for example, without success. The directive from Trump puts new pressure on the National Center for Education Statistics, which under federal law provides nonpartisan information about education with 'the highest methodological standards.' Previously, there were at least seven federal employees at NCES who worked full time or part time on the college dataset, helping to ensure accuracy and comparability across colleges. All seven of those employees were laid off in March as part of broader layoffs at the Department of Education. The department had historically relied on contractors to do much of the data collection, something Madi Biedermann, a spokesperson for the Department of Education, said would continue. 'That work is all done through contracts that are still maintained by the department,' she said in a statement. Sheria Smith, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents fired employees from the Department of Education, said that former federal workers had been responsible for ensuring that the data collected by contractors was 'good data.' Advertisement 'We don't have any quality control, because those people have been fired,' she said. She saw it as part of a larger strategy by the Trump administration, which has fired scientists and data experts in agencies across government. 'When you fire the professionals, the statisticians, the scientists that can analyze the data, that allows you to make up whatever facts you want,' Smith said. This article originally appeared in .
Forbes
23-03-2025
- General
- Forbes
COVID-19 And College Admission: A Progress Report
Five years ago today, we were in the throes of COVID-19. Barely a month into the global pandemic, everything we knew had changed. Not only were we wiping down groceries and banging pots and pans to celebrate front-line workers, but we were also locked down from work and school. High school seniors were receiving their admission decisions and had to choose a college often without ever visiting. Meanwhile, 11th graders were conducting their college search remotely. On March 22, 2020, I published a piece, 'Redesigning College Admission: COVID-19, Access and Equity,' exploring what we could learn from the moment. Angel Pérez was at that time the vice president for enrollment and student success at Trinity College. Three months later he was named the CEO of the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC). For that piece, I asked Pérez what the impact the pandemic would have on admission. He said, 'COVID-19 is going to force us to think differently about our work. Every aspect of higher education will be disrupted.' He added, 'I believe we should never let a crisis go to waste. While we are taking care of immediate needs, we should also be asking ourselves--what are the opportunities for the long term?' As we reflect on the last five years, it begs the question, 'How did we do?' Was the opportunity wasted? Have we made meaningful changes? Have we moved the ball on access and equity in admission? How is the redesign going? To check on our progress, I reached out to the individuals whom I interviewed for that original article. Here is what they shared: Pérez says, 'Higher education did not let a crisis go to waste. In fact, we should celebrate the extraordinary efforts of admission officers and counselors who guided hundreds of thousands of students through one of the most challenging times in our history.' He adds, 'Colleges and universities adapted in remarkable ways, making higher education more accessible. Direct admission programs emerged, and test-optional policies expanded, opening doors for countless more students.' Pérez emphasizes that 'while DEI initiatives are now under threat, we must not overlook the significant progress made during the pandemic—progress that transformed admission policies, support services, and opportunities for millions of young people.' He says, 'Organizations rose to the occasion: The Common App set a bold, moonshot goal, and NACAC redefined its mission, vision, and educational offerings to meet the moment. The work we did wasn't just about survival—it was about progress.' NACAC's Center for Reimagining College Access will take this progress forward. He concludes 'Let's honor the dedication and innovation that emerged from that crisis. Our profession stepped up, and students are better for it. That is something to be proud of.' Jenny Rickard, president and CEO of Common App says, 'Five years ago this month, our lives were turned upside down, and as a society, we quickly had to make changes to our everyday lives. In higher education particularly, we had to make changes fairly quickly. At the time, colleges and universities changed their deadlines, moved to test-optional, and turned the admissions experience completely virtual.' She adds, 'We also used our wealth of data to inform our colleges and universities, and our partners of alarming trends during Covid, like the sudden drop in first-generation applicants applying to college in the fall of 2020. Tapping into Common App's rich data allowed us to identify the most at-risk students and sound the alarm on troubling trends we saw early on.' Rickard explains, 'We learned a lot and we innovated a lot over five years. At Common App, we had to understand how to reach students who may not feel like college was the right path for them anymore, and give them space on the application to think more broadly about their experiences and how they might have changed during the pandemic.' She highlights two initiatives that Common App implemented to accomplish those goals: Reflecting on the original article, Rick Clark, executive director of enrollment management at Georgia Tech, says 'I'm pretty impressed that a mere two weeks into the pandemic my colleagues pinpointed some critical issues and opportunities.' He adds, 'We absolutely did not let a crisis go to waste. The innovation and access surrounding campus visits in particular stands out as a place where higher education made important and significant strides. The ability now for a student or family to get high-quality content from colleges about admission, financial aid, and other campus departments is phenomenal. Before COVID-19, we checked the box for providing some information, but five years later the depth and breadth of information students can access remotely is amazing.' Heath Einstein, vice provost for enrollment management at Texas Christian University agrees. He says, 'In the years since the pandemic's peak, colleges have responded to both the needs and preferences of prospective students. Forced to spend seemingly endless time at home, joining classes from their bedrooms or living rooms, many students boomeranged back to preferring in-person activities. And yet, a catalog of resources are stored on websites and a tailored set of virtual programs are still offered to students who either prefer that method or lack the time and resources needed to engage on campus.' Clark explains that 'colleges were generally accommodating when it came to testing policies during the pandemic. In recent years, some schools have gone back to requiring tests, while others have gone test free or permanently test optional.' He adds, 'Ultimately, colleges should create testing policies that help them select students who will do well on their campus based on data. The truth is that's not why most have reinstated testing. Instead, sadly, it has been more about competition for students, net tuition revenue, yield, and the unwillingness to make independent decisions.' He highlights that 'while there is still tremendous inequity when it comes to counselor: student ratios, I am encouraged by recent innovations from College Guidance Network (CGN), Sal Khan, among others. The emergence and proliferation of AI, while not caused by the pandemic, is proving to be a step in the right direction since states have not taken action to remedy these gaps.' Clark concludes, 'In truth, however, five years might as well have been 50. Between the Supreme Court ruling on race-based admission, the fragility of the Department of Education, and the shrinking of the top of the admission funnel both domestically and internationally for a variety of reasons, there has never been a more challenging time to work in higher education or enrollment management. The pandemic was tough and showed us how to adapt, endure, and innovate. I don't have all the answers–in fact very few–but I do know this- we'll need to call on all of those learnings in the years ahead.' Richard Weissbourd is a senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and the faculty director of Making Caring Common. He says, "The pandemic was damaging, and sometimes traumatic, for huge numbers of college students. But it also generated new ways of thinking about higher education and new pathways to careers at a speed that I would have never dreamed possible.' He adds, 'Perhaps most importantly, I think it has made at least some colleges think far more imaginatively and boldly about how they can organize around students, via online experiences or various combinations of in-person and online experiences, rather than expecting students, especially low-income students who have many demands on their lives, to organize around them.' Weissbourd points out, 'we still have a long way to go,' saying, 'I had also hoped that selective colleges in particular might create innovative pathways that enabled them to educate far more students, rather than touting their selectivity. There's little evidence of that yet." 'Miles To Go Before We Sleep' While the college admission profession responded with thoughtfulness and flexibility to the pandemic, as Weissbourd acknowledges, there is certainly room for improvement and missed opportunities to advance a more equitable process. Five years ago, Jerry Lucido was the executive director of the USC Center for Enrollment Research, Policy, and Practice. He asked at that time, 'What if we found new ways of evaluating talent? What if we leveled the playing field, as does the virus, by eliminating the natural advantages that wealth and privilege have in the admission system?' He suggested that we could 'eliminate Early Decision, Early Action, and other forms of demonstrated interest in the process, as only the privileged really understand how to play these games.' Sadly, the use of Early Decision and Early Action plans has only increased in the subsequent year with some colleges enrolling more than 50% of their class this way. We must also continue to explore innovative ways of evaluating applicants. AI might help this in some ways, but it is not the full answer. We have also failed to increase access to school counselors in many communities. I have talked both with counseling colleagues who report caseloads of well over 500 students and with students who don't have a counselor at their school. In the years since the pandemic, with absenteeism, mental health challenges, and other demands requiring increased attention from counselors, their time and energy for post-secondary planning has been further diminished. We need to invest in human resources to support young people as they plan for the future. Clearly, there are dedicated educators who are resolute in making progress and adapting to the challenges we face in college admission. To Clark's point, no one individual or institution has the answers. We must continue, however, to ask how we can do better and confront the landscape in innovative ways that acknowledge the reality of higher education as a business and also a common good. The redesign of this process requires constant iteration and ideation, as well as a repudiation of the status quo. Hopefully, it will not take another crisis to spark action.
