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EDUCATION
Why Black Student Enrollment is Dropping After Supreme Court Decision
Without policies designed to foster equity, some Black students are feeling the sting of rejection
Colleges and universities once used race-based affirmative action policies to alleviate the racism Black applicants faced in the admissions process. It wasn’t a perfect tool nor universally embraced, but it did make a difference. Nothing illustrates that point more than the drop in Black student enrollment following the Supreme Court’s decision to ban their use. While conservative Supreme Court justices argued a colorblind process was the only fair path forward, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in her dissenting opinion that “race still matters to the lived experiences of all Americans in innumerable ways, and today’s ruling makes things worse, not better,” arguing “if the colleges of this country are required to ignore a thing that matters, it will not just go away. It will take longer for racism to leave us. And, ultimately, ignoring race makes it matter more.” The results following the ban have proven her point.
While Harvard University has not yet reported its demographic profile, several schools have reported a drop in the share of Black and other racially marginalized students following Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard University and Students for Fair Admissions v. the University of North Carolina. For example, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Amherst College, and Tufts University each reported the proportion of Black students admitted dropped significantly following the ban. Perhaps the most shocking report came from Brown University, revealing Black student enrollment dropped by 40% for the first freshman class admitted after their decision. Most elite colleges and universities since the ban have admitted fewer Black students, and this is precisely what Jackson warned would occur.
By banning race-based affirmative action policies, conservative justices stripped admissions officers of a powerful tool they could use to mitigate racial discrimination. We’re witnessing in real time the outcome of colorblind racial ideology implemented into law. Sure, federal courts can prohibit…
