Washington - 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.

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."

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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.

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 amid a systematic attack on expressions of solidarity with Palestine, which the school's administration has rushed to collaborate in.

Students at various colleges around the country have also been targeted for deportation as part of a broader campaign to silence dissent from US support for Israel's brutal destruction of Gaza, as well as opposition to Trump's far-right agenda.