What has been the effect of the Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action?

In June 2023 the Supreme Court banned race-conscious admissions at American universities. Many supporters of the practice feared that black and Hispanic enrolment at the nation’s most selective colleges would plunge, too, when members of the class of 2028 arrived on campus.

So when some colleges released data this month showing a decrease in black and Hispanic enrolment, many were quick to blame the Supreme Court. Harvard University, Amherst College and the University of Virginia reported decreases in black enrolment from last year. Brown University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) showed declines in enrolment of both black and Hispanic students. But assuming that these dips can be blamed solely on the ban would be a mistake.

Public universities in America are obliged to disclose demographic data but many have yet to do so for the new academic year. Private universities do not have to publish numbers, but many do so anyway. The picture so far is mixed. Yale, Tufts and the University of Virginia reported slightly higher enrolment among Hispanic students compared with last year. Dartmouth College, Princeton University, and Yale University reported decreases in Asian-American student enrolment—the group that the Supreme Court decision was supposed to help (see chart).

College presidents continue to value diversity, but must operate within the constraints of the court’s ruling. Yet so many other factors have affected college applications that isolating the court’s impact is hard. “I’m a neuroscientist by training, and when you are doing an experiment, you never tinker with two or three factors at the same time, right?” says Joanne Berger-Sweeney, the president of Trinity College, a liberal-arts university in Connecticut.

Those factors include the botched roll-out of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, says Angel Pérez, who heads the National Association for College Admission Counselling. (FAFSA is a form that families must complete to qualify for financial aid.) They include laws passed by some Republican state legislatures, which took things a step further than the Supreme Court did by passing laws banning diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives altogether. Meanwhile, some colleges made admissions tests, such as the SAT, mandatory after a brief hiatus during the pandemic. Black and Hispanic students tend to perform worse on these tests, and so could have been put off by them.

Finally, with race no longer mattering in admissions, some students chose not to report theirs. It is possible that some of the reported losses among black and Hispanic students may actually be hidden in the “unknown” racial category. Some private colleges have stopped collecting race data altogether, says Bryan Cook of the Urban Institute, a think-tank. “If you don’t collect the racial data of your applicant pool, you can’t be accused of using race in your admissions process.” ■

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