On June 29, 2023, the United States Supreme Court ruled in 6-3 decision that colleges and universities can no longer use race as a specific basis for granting admission. Doing so would, according to the Court, be a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The ruling was in cases brought against the University of North Carolina and Harvard University. The Court stated that the admissions programs at the universities discriminated against White and Asian American applicants by using race-conscious admissions policies.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said “eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it. The student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race. Many universities have for too long done just the opposite.”
This class entering college this fall is the first since the Supreme Court’s ruling. As expected the percentage of Black students at many of the nation’s highest-rated colleges and universities declined. Some of these declines were large.
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Black are 5 percent of the first year class, down from nearly 15 percent the year before.
At Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, 9 percent of the incoming class is Black, compared to 15 percent a year ago.
At Harvard University the percentage of Blacks in the first-year class dropped from 18 percent to 14 percent.
At Princeton University, Blacks make up 8.9 percent of the first-year class, down less than two percentage points from 2023.
At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one of the universities that was part of the Supreme Court case, 7.8 percent of the entering class is Black, compared to 10.5 percent a year ago.
At Washington University in St. Louis, 8 percent of entering students are Black, compared to 11.9 percent a year ago.
Many other leading universities have failed to disclose data on first-year Black enrollments. Some issue data on students from underrepresented groups or students of color, without breaking down the data for particular racial or ethnic groups.
But all the news is not bad. At the University of California undergraduate campuses, 5.9 percent of all admitted students were Black. In 2023, Blacks were 5.6 percent of all admitted students. Since 1996, state universities in California have been prohibited by state law from considering race in college admissions.
At Duke University, the University of Virginia, and Yale University, the percentage of Black students held steady or slightly increased. At Yale, 14 percent of the incoming class is Black.
Thus, it seems that maintaining diversity in higher education can be accomplished under the new rules. Undoubtedly, it will take a few years for many elite college and universities to navigate the new admission environment while they seek to pursue the advantages of a diverse student body.
