An Early Look at Diversity Post–Affirmative Action

It’s been 14 months since the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill cases, and until now college leaders and observers have only been able to guess at the ruling’s impact on their campuses’ racial diversity.

That impact is finally becoming clearer. Over the past few weeks, a trickle of highly selective colleges have begun releasing demographic data for the Class of 2028, starting with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Aug. 21.

Some colleges experienced much steeper drops in underrepresented minorities than others. At MIT, the proportion of Black and Hispanic students fell by 15 percentage points from last year, according to institutional data. The STEM-focused school also saw a one-percentage-point decrease in white student enrollment, but a seven-percentage-point increase for Asian Americans, who now make up nearly half of the incoming class—which opponents of affirmative action say validates their theory that highly qualified Asian applicants were being denied spots at top schools in favor of less qualified Black and Hispanic students.

At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one of the two losing plaintiffs in the affirmative action case, the population of Black, Indigenous and people of color students was five percentage points smaller than last year’s; Washington University in St. Louis saw a similar decline. Small liberal arts colleges also saw significant drop-offs in racial diversity: Amherst College enrolled eight points fewer Black students this year and the drop in Hispanic students was four percentage points, and Tufts University saw a drop in Black student enrollment of three percentage points.

But in a revealing comparison, a number of highly selective colleges saw little to no impact on the diversity of their incoming class this fall. The University of Virginia’s enrollment remained relatively stable, with a 1.4-percentage-point decrease in Black and Asian American students and an equivalent increase in Hispanic students. At Yale the proportion of Black students in the Class of 2028 remained exactly the same as the Class of 2027—14 percent—while the number of Hispanic students increased by one percentage point; at the same time, in a stark inverse of MIT’s trend lines, the number of Asian American students fell by six percentage points.

A few colleges even increased their numbers of historically underrepresented populations: Duke University’s combined share of Black and Hispanic students rose by one percentage point from last year’s incoming class, while its white and Asian American enrollment fell by one and six points, respectively.

Mitigating Factors

Bryan Cook, director of higher education policy at the Urban Institute, has been tracking the enrollment effects of the affirmative action ruling closely. He cautioned against drawing broad conclusions from the small set of schools that have reported their data so far, noting that a national picture will emerge later this fall.

But he acknowledged that the difference in outcomes among the early group of colleges was revealing and seemed to confirm the importance of race-neutral policies aimed at increasing diversity. In June 2023, a few weeks before the ruling was handed down, Duke announced an ambitious new financial aid program and recruitment initiative for low-income students from the Carolinas; the University of Virginia did the same for state residents in December.

Christoph Guttentag, Duke’s dean of admissions, told Inside Higher Ed that the initiative was unrelated to the then-looming court decision but that it clearly helped the university adapt to the new landscape. He credited the policy and its early implementation with Duke’s relative success among its peers in maintaining racial diversity and said he wouldn’t be surprised if other colleges that saw declines began to adopt similar programs.

“The actions we took were more focused on generating economic diversity in our applicant pool… but it was clearly helpful for us this year in terms of racial diversity in enrollment,” he said. “I think there will be considerable interest this coming year from colleges in thinking about what was successful and how to recreate that.”

Richard Kahlenberg, director of the American Identity Project at the Progressive Policy Institute, said Duke and UVA’s race-neutral policies appear to have headed off the most extreme possible effects of the affirmative action ban on diversity. He added that the difference between the nosedive at MIT and the relative stability at Yale and Duke shows that affirmative action isn’t the only path to racial diversity.

“It’s troubling to see the large drop in Black and Hispanic representation at MIT and [have] the university putting the blame entirely on the Supreme Court,” he said. “That strikes me as too convenient, and a bit self-serving … There are things colleges can do to prevent that.”

An Incomplete Picture

Cook said that colleges’ enrollment data “gives only a partial picture” without the data on applicants and admitted students—information that colleges are more reluctant to release. That’s because it would show whether the admissions process itself, deprived of the tools of affirmative action, is to blame for the decline in diversity, or if it’s also linked to applicant choices.

“Just putting out enrollment numbers creates a conversation that lacks some context,” he said. “I don’t know whether to be extremely concerned or to say, ‘This makes sense given some of these other factors.’”

The initial demographic data also shows a nearly across-the-board bump in the number of students who declined to report their race—at many institutions, the number nearly doubled—which Cook said adds to the challenge of tracing the affirmative action ban’s impact.

Shaun Harper, director of the University of Southern California’s Race and Equity Center, said the effects of the ruling are likely to become more pronounced with time. He pointed to California’s public colleges, where, after a 1996 referendum banned affirmative action in the state, Black student enrollment began a protracted decline that continued for nearly a decade. It only reversed when institutions began to change their recruitment and admissions strategies in the early 2000s, adopting more holistic rubrics for applicants and introducing a guaranteed admissions plan—both recommendations that the Biden administration made last August, after the Supreme Court’s ruling.

“This is just the first year,” Harper said. “If both public and private colleges don’t step up and take the legally permissible actions they can to boost diversity, it will get worse.”

Kahlenberg is optimistic that more colleges will adapt to the new landscape and reverse some of the early precipitous declines in minority representation, namely by investing in expanded financial aid programs—which some selective institutions have already begun to do—and retooling their recruitment strategies, which will likely be a longer-term undertaking.

“Even the statements from leaders at MIT and Tufts, while blaming the decline on the court ruling, acknowledge something along the lines of ‘We need to do more,’” he said. “These are more expensive undertakings than just giving racial preferences … but the evidence suggests that colleges will invest in them.”