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The U.S. Supreme Court last year offered new college admissions information for the first group of admitted students since sharply limiting affirmative action, a decision that has had a negative impact on black enrollment at some universities.
While some colleges have seen large fluctuations in the enrollment of students of color in the class of 2028, including significant declines among black and African American students, the impact has been more muted elsewhere. Many universities have yet to release their data, however, so a clearer picture may emerge throughout the fall.
The most dramatic change was at MIT, which saw an 8 percentage point dropoff in black and African American enrollment, down from 13 percent of enrollment. Average over previous four yearsand a 6 percentage point increase in Asian American enrollment, up from 41 percent. Washington University in St. Louis And Tufts University There were also significant declines in black and African American enrollment, which dropped by 4 and nearly 3 percentage points at each school, respectively.
I saw Yale University There is no change in enrollment among black and African American students, but it reported a 6 percentage point decline among Asian Americans.
And as in school University of Virginia, Demographic changes Enrollment was fairly insignificant across demographic groups, not moving more than a few percentage points in either direction.
All that information should be taken with a grain of salt; With only a few dozen schools reporting their enrollment, many of them select private institutions, “we still can’t say for sure how racially diverse this first post-affirmative action class will be,” said Michael Turnage Young, senior counsel and general manager of NAACP Legal Defense. and Educational Fund’s Equal Protection Initiative, told Vox.
But so far, there isn’t much good news in the data for students of color. And many schools have yet to implement race-neutral policies aimed at increasing diversity in their classes, which would comply with the Supreme Court decision.
“I don’t see many steps ahead. I see more steps backward,” said Will Dale Pilar, senior vice president of the Ed Trust, a think tank focused on racial and economic barriers to American education.
What is driving different outcomes after affirmative action?
Higher education policy experts have predicted since 2023 that the Supreme Court’s decision will hurt diversity on college campuses, starting with freshman year 2024.
The court’s 6-3 decision found that race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibits discrimination based on race and other factors. In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts ruled that the way these university admissions offices consider race was not narrowly framed enough to meet the standard required by the Constitution, but he left open the possibility that race could still be considered in essays describing an applicant’s personal experience.
Experts trace the ruling’s impact in part to what happened in the mid-1990s and 2000s, when states including California, Michigan and Washington banned affirmative action at public universities.
“What we saw at selective public institutions was a significant decline in the number of black students enrolled, and many of those institutions, especially the most selective, never recovered,” Del Pilar said.
Preliminary 2024 enrollment figures indicate that at least some selective schools have seen similar declines in enrollment among students of color. According to Del Pilar, this is because they haven’t fundamentally revised the price they pay for admissions. “What we’ve done is take out one factor without adjusting for other factors that continue to disadvantage students of color,” he said.
But results vary, sometimes widely, by institution. At this point, it’s hard to say exactly what accounts for the differences in results.
Some universities have attempted to mitigate the effects of the end of affirmative action through race-neutral policies aimed at strengthening diversity. Like Duke University Launch a new program To waive tuition for low-income North and South Carolinians in 2023. UVA followed suit in December, waiving tuition for Admittedly low income in the state.
That may be part of the reason schools haven’t seen dramatic fluctuations in the makeup of their incoming classes. Duke even growth The combined share of black and Hispanic enrollment for 2024 compared to 2023 is one percentage point in its incoming class.
Even before the Supreme Court’s decision, many schools offered applicants the option of writing a “diversity statement” explaining how their background, including their race, might affect their life experiences. Schools may rely more heavily on diversity statements as part of the overall admissions process moving forward, though it’s unclear if they’re still doing so.
“I think a lot of schools will definitely use that option and leverage that experience,” Brian J. Cook, director of higher education policy at the Center on Education Data and Policy, told Vox.
The Supreme Court’s decision not only affects the admissions debate but also potentially affects who applies where. After California banned affirmative action at public universities in 1996, Cook said, more students of color with the academic qualifications to apply to Berkeley or UCLA chose to apply to less selective California institutions.
If the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision has a similar effect on where students choose to apply, selective institutions may have to work harder to recruit diverse applicants.
“Based on what we’ve seen so far and the projections after the ruling last summer, we’ll likely see an impact on what the makeup of the party looks like in the fall at the top electoral institutions,” Cook said.
Some colleges — for example, those participating in a Pilot program launched by the state of Minnesota in 2023 — have tried to address recruitment issues by increasing their direct admissions, where students who meet certain academic criteria are automatically admitted. But that’s not happening at the most selective colleges, where admissions rates are often in the single digits.
“They’re continuing to work the way they’ve always worked,” Dale Pilar said. “Unless institutions really start to change where they’re recruiting, how they’re recruiting, who they’re talking to, their availability of need-based support, we’re not going to see a ton of progress in terms of more diverse enrollment. class.”
