LOS ANGELES, United States, March 28, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - President Donald Trump's administration said Thursday it will investigate admissions practices at some of California's top universities, broadening a campaign against elite educational institutions.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi said she had ordered probes into how students are admitted to the private Stanford University, as well as to three of the most prestigious campuses of the University of California system -- Berkeley, UCLA and UC Irvine.

"President Trump and I are dedicated to ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity across the country," Bondi said in a statement.

"Every student in America deserves to be judged solely based on their hard work, intellect, and character, not the color of their skin."

A spokesperson for the University of California said the institutions have not considered race in admissions since it was outlawed in the state by a 1996 ballot measure, but clarified school applications gather race and ethnicity data "for statistical purposes only."

"This information is not shared with application reviewers and is not used for admissions," the spokesperson added.

A Stanford spokesperson said in a statement that the private university "immediately took steps to ensure compliance in our admissions processes" after the US Supreme Court eliminated race-based affirmative action in 2023.

Conservatives have long griped that America's foremost universities make it easier for ethnic minority students to attend.

They say the insistence on the notion of "diversity, equity and inclusion," or DEI, is damaging and unfair to otherwise well-qualified candidates.

Bondi's announcement comes with elite institutions across the country on the back foot.

This month Trump's administration revoked $400 million of funding from New York's Columbia University, claiming school officials had not sufficiently protected Jewish students during last year's campus protests against Israel's war in Gaza.

On Friday Columbia announced a package of concessions around defining anti-Semitism, policing protests and oversight for specific academic departments in a bid to head off the funding squeeze.

A number of students at various colleges around the country have also been targeted for deportation, in what the government's critics say is part of a broader campaign to silence dissent at America's fractious universities and bring the left-leaning sector to heel.