How the racial makeup of colleges changed after the affirmative action ruling

Universities are disclosing the racial makeup of the first class of students admitted after the Supreme Court overturned affirmative action. The numbers give a detailed look at the impact of the ruling. While there’s variation, analyses show Black enrollment is down at several colleges. Geoff Bennett discussed more with David Leonhardt of The New York Times for our series, Rethinking College.
Geoff Bennett:
Colleges and universities are disclosing the racial makeup of the first class of students admitted after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned affirmative action.
The numbers give a more detailed look at the potential impact of the court’s ruling. While there’s quite a bit of variation, several analyses show Black enrollment is down at a number of colleges.
As part of our series on Rethinking College, we’re going to look at this with David Leonhardt of The New York Times.
Thanks so much for coming in. We appreciate it.
David Leonhardt, The New York Times:
Good to be here.
Geoff Bennett:
So this first class to be admitted post-affirmative action, when you look at the data, what stands out?
David Leonhardt:
I think the first thing that stands out is that colleges are different from one another.
There’s just a lot of variation. At some schools, you see a really big decline in the share of Black students, at Columbia in New York, at MIT, at Amherst College in Massachusetts. And then, at other schools, it’s relatively flat or even slightly up. And so places where it’s fairly flat are Georgetown, Dartmouth, Northwestern.
And I think after the decision, people thought we might see similar trends at all schools. There’s just a lot of variation.
Geoff Bennett:
And the admissions at HBCUs have seen an increase as well.
David Leonhardt:
Yes, which makes sense.
Geoff Bennett:
Let’s talk about Asian American enrollment at the most prestigious schools, because that paints a mixed picture as well.
And I raise it because the people who supported the Supreme Court case said that race-based admissions were a barrier for Asian American students.
David Leonhardt:
Yes. And I think some of the evidence suggests that they really were a barrier for Asian American students.
And so what we have seen is, the changes at a typical college are not huge. So what we have seen at a typical college is, the share of Black students is indeed down. New York Times analysis suggests from about 12 percent to maybe 10.3 percent at a typical college, and the Asian share is up, maybe by a percentage point or so.
The official numbers may understate how much the Asian share has risen, however, because the percentage of students not reporting a race has also risen. And people think that that’s disproportionately an Asian group.
And you might say, well, wait, why would that be after affirmative action is gone? But there was so much discussion of how this process might be biased against Asian American students that people think that, even with the Supreme Court decision, more Asian students may have chosen to leave their ethnicity off the application.
Geoff Bennett:
You recently wrote about using a different lens to look at all of this, the lens of economic diversity. Tell me more about that.
David Leonhardt:
I think it’s really important, because obviously there are enormous racial inequities in our society. There are also enormous economic inequities.
And while they overlap, they’re not the same thing. And what has happened over the last 30 years or so is that colleges actually had made more progress diversifying racially than they had economically. And a bunch of these very selective colleges had a diverse group of students by race, but those students were overwhelmingly upper middle class or affluent.
And there’s been more pressure on the colleges to diversify recently. And now that the Supreme Court has banned race-based affirmative action, some colleges are trying to continue to recruit a diverse class by leaning on economic affirmative action, which is still legal.
We don’t yet know how much more economically diverse these colleges are going to get, if at all. The early evidence suggests some of them, like UVA, like Duke, two schools that traditionally have been very affluent in terms of their students, may be getting more diverse economic.
Geoff Bennett:
What are you watching for as you try to piece together a fuller picture of where students are going?
David Leonhardt:
So, I think one thing that’s important to remember is that this isn’t just a single change. It’s not like the Supreme Court spoke and then everything’s different and it’s going to remain this way.
California had got rid of race-based affirmative action 30 years ago. And one of the things that we saw was that at some schools initially there was a huge decline in the Black student population. But over time, they figured out ways to build up more diversity. UCLA is an example of that.
At other schools, like Berkeley, the initial decline has persisted more. And so one thing I’m going to be looking for is, what happens not just this year but in the years ahead? Will schools like Columbia and New York that had a big decline in Black students figure out ways to overcome that in ways that are legal? Or will that end up being the new normal at those schools?
And I can tell you, the schools that did have big declines, they don’t want it to be the new normal.
Geoff Bennett:
David Leonhardt of The New York Times, thanks so much for speaking with me. Appreciate it.
David Leonhardt:
Thanks for having me.