Black enrollment drops at top colleges after Supreme Court ruling on positive discrimination

Since the Supreme Court invalidated affirmative action, drastically limiting the ability of public colleges and universities to consider race in admissions, black enrollment in some of the nation’s top universities has plummeted.

Amherst College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Washington University in St. Louis are among at least a half-dozen colleges that saw declines in black student enrollment for the 2024 academic year.

Mount Holyoke President Danielle Holley said the court’s ban on asking about race in demographic data for college admissions means the school must rely on informational programs, personal statements and other application materials to achieve its diversity goals.

“It was a pretty devastating feeling,” Holley said of the Supreme Court’s decision. “It fundamentally changed” the application process, she added. “These demographics that were once readily available on a student’s record are now masked.”

The Supreme Court ruling invalidated affirmative action programs at the University of North Carolina and Harvard, with far-reaching consequences for other universities. The court ruled that the schools’ affirmative action programs violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution and were therefore unlawful.

In data released last month, MIT showed that about 5% of its incoming class of 2028 is black, down from an average of 13% in recent years. Amherst College in Massachusetts saw a significant drop: black students made up 11% of the class of 2027 and just 3% of the class of 2028. At Smith College in the same state, 4% of its incoming freshman class is black, down from 4.6% last year.

Some colleges, such as Yale in Connecticut, have seen steady increases in black student enrollment; others, such as Sarah Lawrence College, have seen only modest increases.

Flematu Fofana, a freshman at Yale, said she cried when she learned of the court’s decision. Although Fofana, who is black, excels academically, she worried that she wasn’t getting the same extracurricular activities and awards as other top college hopefuls.

“Without affirmative action, I felt uncertain about how my college decision would play out. That made me decide to change my strategy a little bit when I was applying to college,” she said, noting that she began thinking about ways to highlight her race in the application process.

“I initially based my list of schools on how academically aligned I was, extracurriculars,” said Fofana, who hails from a predominantly white county in Maryland. “But after I made my decision and started visiting schools, I started to realize how much I valued diversity.”

Washington University in St. Louis and Tufts University saw declines of 4 and 2.6 percentage points, respectively, in their black freshmen enrollment. JT Duck, Tufts’ dean of admissions, was among school leaders across the country who wondered about the impact of the Supreme Court ruling.

“We now have the first entering class selected under the Supreme Court’s guidelines. When you look at the first-year undergraduate class, the percentage of American students of color has dropped from about 50% last year to 44% this year. While that’s still higher than our 38% in 2019, it’s still a disappointing decline,” he said, according to the university’s website TuftsNow.

Asian American enrollment in 2028 declined at Smith College, Yale and Tufts.

The Supreme Court ruling is a victory for those who opposed racial criteria in college admissions and a blow to leading universities that say they want to ensure a diverse student body composed mostly of white students.

Edward Blum, a conservative activist, has led efforts to eliminate positive discrimination in college admissions. A group led by Blum, Students for Fair Admissions Inc., has accused Harvard and the University of North Carolina of discriminating against Asian Americans and favoring black and Latino students. Some Asian Americans have criticized those claims, saying Blum used them in a thinly veiled attempt to overthrow the principle of equality and sow racial discord.

Blum told NBC News that students enrolled at MIT, which was among the first to release demographic data for the class of 2028, “will know they were selected based on their outstanding academic and extracurricular achievements, not the color of their skin.”

He praised schools that use race-neutral methods to support diversity.

“If colleges and universities start casting a wide net into areas where they haven’t been looking for students before, I think that will benefit the entire student body and a strong part of our social fabric here in this country,” he said.