A Drop in Campus Diversity
Terry H. Schwadron
Sept. 5, 2024
As if it were a surprise result, recent headlines have touted a drop in Black and Brown college admissions in the first year following the U.S. Supreme Court decision to outlaw affirmative action as had been practiced at universities.
The information is coming in spurts, but the trend shows that colleges barred from looking at race as a factor for admission, Black enrollment is trending down by substantial numbers at some of the better-known campuses, like MIT, Tufts and Amherst College. Not surprisingly, the percentage of admitted Asian-American students — groups represented in the lawsuits challenging caps in Asian enrollment — were reported to be up; White enrollment remains about the same.
At the same time, more Black students applied to and were admitted to HBCUs, the historically Black colleges and universities, including at Howard. So too have enrollments changed at two-year community colleges and campuses with less alumni renown.
The reports also suggest that there was less of a dip in Black admissions at the University of Virginia and other state systems, which may have experienced a change in racial make-up earlier because of state court rulings involving affirmative action policies.
Apparently, there also has been a national cutback in the availability of some financial aid programs that were generally based on helping support minority candidates. The Washington Post noted a specific program at Missouri, which like many other universities, dropped scholarships that until this year had been reserved for students from underrepresented racial groups, even though the court’s ruling didn’t mention financial aid programs in its 2023 ruling. Clearly if it is more difficult to pay the costs of attending the most elite schools, the effect will be to dampen applications from these communities.
What to Conclude?
What we have not seen is a substantial discussion about what all this means for students, for colleges, for business, or for our society at large.
It would be interesting to know whether the same conservative majority on the Supreme Court who said they were focused solely on the legal underpinnings for affirmative action are satisfied to see the results. They say they see only the legal issue, not the substantive effects.
Clearly, there is no move in Congress to address any dampening of educational opportunity, and obviously there will be no such discussion between our presidential candidates at their debate. It is interesting that one is an HBSU grad and the other was a legacy wealthy applicant to UPenn. Outside college admission offices, it is not clear whether anyone is seeing the trend as anything other than a positive pat on the back for what is assumed to be merit-based advancement.
There is a dangerous assumption sneaking into the abbreviated reports about percentages of admitted groups that by dropping race as an admission factor, somehow, we have stopped advancing unqualified college applicants — an argument one hears in the workplace, in politics, in business generally. The more obvious truth is that there undoubtedly are tons of “qualified” candidates vying for college admission spots, and it is a societal failure to create the kind of diverse campuses that will benefit all of us — from the executive suite to society at large — by encouraging diverse settings.
It is far more likely that we have advanced a “merit-based” admission scheme that rewards suburban households who can afford SAT test prep classes that may help with test scores but do not guarantee hard work or college success.
Where’s the Creativity?
We also are not talking about the need for colleges to become more creative about dealing with the natural effects of these anti-diversity court decisions.
The University of Virginia’s case is interesting because the campus did something in response to the rulings, starting partnerships with public schools in low-income communities to ensure that they could recruit a more diverse pool of student. As a result, this year’s enrollment showed a much smaller dip in Black enrollment.
Surely there can be outreach programs that offer preparatory courses and socialization that create a better pipeline to these institutions. Surely, creating a diverse campus means more than counting numbers from each ethnic group: How much campuses surprise over recent political protest arises because of misunderstandings unaddressed through non-exposure to alternative points of view?
While the picture from school enrollment data is still developing, supporters of affirmative action have been warning that the resulting changes will have a negative and immediate impact on diversity beyond universities.
Diversity can change the college experience for those students who may be meeting people of different backgrounds for the first time. But universities also feed our workplaces with innovators and leaders, they form the networks that can create career opportunity, and they provide a wider view of participation. The admission process is akin to dropping a stone in a still pond, where the widening ripples are noticeable some distance away.
If affirmative action policies were seen as legally unsustainable, its opposite effects may be societally unsustainable in a country whose demographics are changing markedly. In our competitive world, one seems to advance only if another is squashed. We don’t stop to think through the means of creating opportunity for more learning,
Interestingly, somehow college sports recruiting remains outside this new rule-based admission and scholarship process, presumably because “merit” is given another meaning beyond academic test scores. You’d think that thinking would extend to all kinds of experiences that make up our complex societal genome.
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