The government should also demand data showing how students admitted through large preferences have fared academically compared with classmates.

The government’s power to order disclosure, and to take away federal money from any school that refuses, derives from its interest in monitoring compliance with the legal limits on racial preferences.

Publication by the government of such data – showing the actual workings of what is euphemistically called “affirmative action,” while protecting individual privacy – would help high-achieving Asian-Americans prove (as I suspect they could) that they have been subjected to racial quotas, as were Jews in decades past.

Data disclosure would also (I suspect) clinch the case that many high-achieving, working-class white students are routinely passed over by colleges to admit more blacks and Hispanics, including many who are both less qualified and more affluent than many passed-over whites (and Asians).

But the greatest beneficiaries of such data would, ironically, be black and Hispanic students. In a 2012 book, “Mismatch,” Richard Sander and I detailed how many preferentially admitted black and Hispanic recipients are set up for academic struggle or failure — and how much better they could do at schools for which they are well-prepared.

For decades, many (not all) racially preferred students have been surprised and demoralized to learn only after enrolling that they could not keep up with far-better-prepared classmates, a risk that college recruiters conceal or play down.

Multiple studies suggest that more than half of preferred black students rank in the bottom fifth of their classes — a bad place to be — and show that disproportionate numbers are forced by bad grades to drop challenging science courses and related career aspirations.

Detailed data on the size and academic impact of the preferences would give black and Hispanic students the information they need to make well-informed decisions. Many might choose good colleges where they could thrive instead of risking mismatch and academic struggle at the most selective schools that preferentially admit them.

Data disclosure about racial preferences would also help policymakers and judges assess whether individual schools have complied with the law. The Supreme Court has long prohibited “outright racial quotas” and “racial balancing” and implicitly banned unduly large preferences.

What might federally required data disclosure show? Consider the best (if little-publicized) currently available numbers on racial preferences at a group of highly selective schools.

On average, for an Asian-American to have an equal chance against a non-Asian applicant with otherwise comparable academic qualifications, the Asian needs about 450 SAT points (out of 1600) more than a black student; 270 points more than a Hispanic; and 140 points more than a white. And a white student needs 310 points more than a black.

These numbers, from a 2009 book by Princeton’s pro-preference Thomas Espenshade and his colleague Alexandria Walton Radford, show that “affirmative action” is much more than just giving a slight preference for nearly equally competitive students from certain backgrounds.

It has become a euphemism for extremely large racial preferences, which lead to large racial gaps in academic performance among students at the vast majority of selective universities. And it has long lived on lies.

At some point, the undoubted benefits of increasing racial diversity begin to be outweighed by the harms done by large racial preferences. Data disclosure would, I think, convince most people that we have passed that point.

The Supreme Court’s 2016 decision upholding racial admissions preferences at the University of Texas dooms any near-term effort to get the Court to ban them entirely. But the administration might well score a major win if it supports two already-pending 2014 lawsuits by Asian-American groups, against Harvard and the University of North Carolina. (They are separate from the 2015 complaint.)

Lawsuits aside, how might a push for transparency play in the preference-friendly media?

Would commentators argue that the inconvenient truths must be suppressed indefinitely, so as to perpetuate Asian quotas, and maintain preferences for affluent blacks and Hispanics over blue-collar whites, and keep black and Hispanic students in the dark about how racial preferences might harm them? Is that really a sustainable position?