More than a year after the Supreme Court restricted race-conscious admissions in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, a clearer picture is emerging of how incoming classes have changed. MIT announced a significant drop in Black, Hispanic, Native American, and Pacific Islander students, with other elite schools experiencing similar trends.
MIT admissions officials acknowledged they did not collect race or ethnicity data for applicants this year, despite the Supreme Court ruling not prohibiting this practice. Collecting this data is crucial for understanding the impact on students from historically underrepresented groups and guiding outreach strategies.
Without this demographic data, MIT faces challenges in addressing key questions: Are students not applying, not getting in, or choosing not to attend? Institutions that value diversity should not shy away from these challenges.
Supreme Court Justice John Roberts noted that campuses can still consider race-related experiences and their impact on students. Some colleges hoped essays discussing race-related experiences would prevent drops in diversity, but the decrease at MIT and other selective schools suggests otherwise.
MIT claims its drop in diversity isn’t due to reinstated standardized testing, pointing to its diverse 2023 class admitted under required testing. However, requiring tests without race-conscious admissions is different from previous policies.
Colleges like Dartmouth, Harvard, and Brown have yet to see the effects of returning to required testing without test-optional policies. The SAT might help identify talented low-income students, but it doesn’t necessarily aid enrollment for Black, Latinx, and Indigenous students in the absence of race-conscious admissions.
States where race-conscious admissions were already banned show mixed results. The University of California system admitted its most diverse class ever under test-free admissions, while the University of Michigan saw slight increases in Black student enrollment with test-optional policies.
Test-optional policies alone didn’t prevent a stark drop in Black and Hispanic students at Amherst College post-ruling, but it might have been worse under required testing. Research suggests test-optional or test-free admissions can be part of broader reforms.
The Congressional Research Service suggests that institutions can take race-conscious actions to remedy past discrimination as a compelling government interest. MIT’s dean of admissions, Stuart Schmill, stated that MIT will tackle these challenges within legal bounds. Other institutions facing similar issues should consider all legal options to defend diversity.
Julie J. Park is a professor of education at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is working on a book on admissions post-SFFA and served as a consulting expert in SFFA v. Harvard. She co-directs the College Admissions Futures Co-Laborative.
Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.
This story about college student diversity was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.
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