New admissions data released by Harvard and MIT show drops in minority enrollment at both schools.
That’s not surprising to former Massachusetts education secretary Paul Reville, who told GBH News that industry experts had expected this following the Supreme Court’s ruling on race-conscious admissions last year.
“This is exactly what people worried about. And now it’s happening,” Reville told Boston Public Radio on Thursday. “It’s a time of deep concern right now in higher education.”
Data from Harvard University showed the percentage of Black students in the incoming class dropped from 18% last year to 14% this year. However, the percentage of Hispanic/Latino students increased by two percentage points, and the percentage of Asian students remained the same.
MIT also reported a decline in the proportions of Black and Hispanic first-year students. Composite data from the four years prior to the Supreme Court’s decision show Hispanic/Latino students made up 15% of the school’s incoming classes, and Black students made up 13%. For this year, those numbers dropped to 11% and 5%, respectively, while the percentage of Asian students increased.
But not all schools are reporting decreases. Outliers include Yale University and Princeton University, where racial diversity remained about the same.
Much of the data that’s been released are from elite colleges, which gives an incomplete picture of the total impacts of the end of affirmative action.
“So we don’t know how this is affecting the vast majority of middle-range colleges in the United States,” Reville said.
He added that it’s also too early to tell how schools’ admissions strategies correlated with these admissions results. Reville said it will be important to learn the procedures behind these admissions department decisions — for example, how they weighted characteristics like socioeconomic background. That kind of information could help colleges maintain diverse populations while conforming to the new race-blind rules, Reville said. Boosting secondary schools’ pipelines could also help.
“Admissions departments have got to do a better, deeper job of reaching out to students with high potential who might have a shot at enrolling in some of our elite institutions,” he said.