Washington: More than 50 universities are being investigated for alleged racial discrimination as part of President Donald Trump's campaign to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs that his officials say exclude white and Asian American students.

The Education Department announced the new investigations on Friday, one month after issuing a memo warning America's schools and colleges that they could lose federal money over “race-based preferences” in admissions, scholarships or any aspect of student life.

“Students must be assessed according to merit and accomplishment, not prejudged by the colour of their skin,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “We will not yield on this commitment.”

Most of the new inquiries are focused on colleges' partnerships with the PhD Project, a nonprofit that helps students from under-represented groups get degrees in business with the goal of diversifying the business world.

Department officials said that the group limits eligibility based on race and that colleges that partner with it are “engaging in race-exclusionary practices in their graduate programmes”.

The group of 45 colleges facing scrutiny over ties to the PhD Project include major public universities such as Arizona State, Ohio State and Rutgers, along with prestigious private schools like Yale, Cornell, Duke and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A message sent to the PhD Project was not immediately returned.

Six other colleges are being investigated for awarding “impermissible race-based scholarships”, the department said, and another is accused of running a programme that segregates students on the basis of race.

Those seven are: Grand Valley State University, Ithaca College, the New England College of Optometry, the University of Alabama, the University of Minnesota, the University of South Florida and the University of Tulsa School of Medicine.

The department did not say which of the seven was being investigated for allegations of segregation.

The February 14 memo from Trump's Republican administration was a sweeping expansion of a 2023 Supreme Court decision that barred colleges from using race as a factor in admissions.