Black Enrollment Drops at 2 Elite Colleges Post-Affirmative Action

A drop in the share of Black first-year students at two elite colleges this school year has provided an early sign that the Supreme Court’s decision to end affirmative action could have an impact on racial diversity, at least at some of the nation’s more selective schools.

At Amherst College, a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts, the share of Black students decreased sharply — by eight percentage points — for this year’s entering class, according to data released on Thursday. It decreased more moderately at Tufts University, a larger private college near Boston, according to that school’s data. At the University of Virginia, which released its data on Friday, the percentage of Black students also dipped, but only slightly.

The new evidence comes after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced a sharp drop in Black enrollment, by 10 percentage points, last week.

Amherst’s data showed that the percentage of white students enrolling rose sharply, while the percentage of Asian American students rose slightly.

The data contributed to an emerging, if still murky, picture about how last year’s Supreme Court decision barring race-conscious admissions at colleges and universities across the country could change higher education. Many of the highly selective universities that used affirmative action have yet to release numbers for the incoming class.

But the ruling has upended more than four decades of admissions practices, and supporters of affirmative action have warned it would have an immediate negative impact on diversity, with ripple effects throughout society. (The new numbers reflect enrollment rather than admissions because the Supreme Court prohibited admissions officers from looking at the race of applicants unless it came up organically, as part of a college essay, for instance.)