Asian American Admissions after the end of Racial Affirmative Action

After the end of racial Affirmative Action last year, a key question of interest emerged:  how would admissions to elite colleges be affected? Would Asian American admissions skyrocket?  Would be Black and Hispanic numbers decline? Looking at some summaries of admissions at different elite colleges says it is clear that the results are not clear.

Why isn’t it clear?  Asian American admissions at Princeton, Duke, and Yale declined slightly, with minor differences in Black and Hispanic enrollment.  At MIT, Asian American admissions increased from 40% to 47% while Black student admissions dropped from 15% to 5% and Hispanic students declined from 16% to 11%. Columbia University saw a rise in At Harvard, the center of the Supreme Court case, the percentage of Asian Americans remained at 37% while Hispanic students increase to 16% from 14% and Black Students fell from 18% to 14%.  Overall, not much different from the previous year for Harvard.

If admissions officers could no longer look at race as a factor, why would there be such mixed results?  Princeton tried to diversity by increasing its percentage of students on financial aid (71%).  Also, with many more students deciding not to check the box for race (7.7% from 1.8% at Princeton last year), the numbers could be skewed.

Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), the organization that sued Harvard to end Affirmative Action, was disappointed by some of these results.   They have sent a letter to Princeton, Duke, and Yale asking about their practices and threatening to see if they don’t get an answer. A key excerpt from the letter to Duke:

SFFA is deeply concerned that you are not complying with Harvard. You told the Supreme Court that, without explicit racial preferences, it would be impossible to “obtain the diverse student body” that you obtained in the past. Amici Br. of Brown Univ. et al. at 25, perma.cc/7QW6-NBSH. Notable peer institutions are also reporting much higher percentages of Asian Americans, like Harvard (37%), Columbia (39%), and MIT (47%). And based on SFFA’s extensive experience, your racial numbers are not possible under true race neutrality. You refused to eliminate legacy preferences. And socioeconomic preferences would not cause a decrease in Asian-American enrollment.

I find this letter interesting.  It does make the accurate point that universities said in an amicus brief that without affirmative action, they couldn’t not have diverse student bodies.  With their recent results, they proved that their own amicus was incorrect.  Then again, some people celebrate that fact.  Richard Kahlenberg, a long time opponent of race-based affirmative action and an advocate of class-based affirmative action and an expert witness for SFFA in the Harvard case, thinks the results from these universities and from Harvard are a positive thing:

“There were predictions that the Black population could fall to 2 percent at some universities and 6 percent at Harvard, and that did not happen. I want there to be racial diversity on campus. I think it showed it was possible to achieve that without racial preferences.”

Some commenters on the situation said that it may take a few years to shake out.  OiYan Poon, a researcher of college admissions, points out the admissions numbers fluctuate and one year is too soon to draw conclusions. After Michigan and California banned affirmative action in there was a big drop in admissions for Blacks and Hispanics students, but those numbers went back up again.  And what almost all of these discussions leave out is the fact there are many less selective colleges and universities where you can get a good education for less.