As widely predicted, Black and Latino student enrollment is falling at elite institutions nationwide in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling restricting race-conscious admissions. Demographic changes are most obvious at top-ranked private universities, but key shifts are also taking place throughout the system, with serious repercussions for Black and Latino students.
Researchers call the shifts a “cascade” effect. It works like this: First, underrepresented minority students who are not admitted to highly selective institutions instead attend state flagships or less selective institutions. Next, Black and Latino students who would otherwise have attended state flagships are displaced to regional, community, or for-profit colleges. These institutions tend to have fewer resources to support students, leading to outcomes like lower graduation rates and high student debt.
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The first wave of the cascade effect is already apparent. Underrepresented minority enrollment is up at 4 out of 5 state flagship universities. One op-ed writer claimed that the trend shows that the ruling is “no disaster” for Black and Latino students. After all, students can still get a good education at a state flagship.
However, the disastrous secondary wave of the cascade effect is still there; it’s just easy to miss. Within public universities, this wave is showing up in two ways.
First, many public universities are experiencing both waves of the cascade effect simultaneously, which makes it hard to see that Black and Latino students are being turned away. These universities are gaining minority students from the elite sector, but they are also losing other Black and Latino students because race-conscious admissions is now restricted at state flagships. In these contexts, minority student percentages are relatively stable only because the gains are balanced by the losses: addition with subtraction.
While 83 percent of state flagships gained underrepresented racially minoritized students overall, increases in Black enrollment are not dramatic at many public institutions. Over half of state flagships saw gains of fewer than 10 Black students, or even losses. For example, the University of Maryland, College Park lost 52 Black students when comparing 2022-2023 average enrollment with 2024 data.
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In a different group of public institutions, the secondary wave is especially hard to see because it already happened before 2023. These state flagships lost minority students to regional, community or for-profit colleges when they stopped using race-conscious admissions due to state bans, litigation or choice. Some students likely left higher education altogether.
After 2023, the initial wave of the cascade effect kicked in nationwide, with some minority students being turned away from elite schools and rerouted toward state flagships. Certain schools that already lost race-conscious admissions before 2023 are now seeing bigger gains in Black and Latino enrollment. They already lost Black and Latino students whenever they stopped using race-conscious admissions, so now they are mainly just gaining students from the elite sector: addition without subtraction. Reflecting this dynamic, 11 of the 14 public schools with the biggest minority student gains in fall 2024 already abandoned race-conscious admissions before 2023.
Without looking deeper, these enrollment gains seem like a “win.” However, the gains are bigger only because these institutions already lost minority students well before the Supreme Court ruling.
We must challenge the narrative that state universities are “winning” with the curtailing of race-conscious admissions. Even gains like greater diversity at public institutions are somewhat illusory.
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Is there a big difference between attending the University of Maryland versus Johns Hopkins? Graduates of either will still get a good education. The main loss is prestige and access to alumni networks, which are still consequential.
However, another significant harm of the cascade effect is where students in the secondary wave end up when they cannot attend the state flagship or another selective institution. For-profit institutions have low graduation rates, often leaving students debt-ridden with no degree. Troublingly, in 2024, Black student enrollment at for-profit institutions nationwide was up by 15,000 students. Similar trends occurred in states that banned affirmative action before 2023.
Regional and community colleges provide pivotal student support, but transfer rates are low, and selective institutions tend to have more resources for students.
Princeton economist Zachary Bleemer compared students who barely made the cut to attend a selective University of California institution with peers of similar backgrounds who attended less selective colleges. The UC students had stronger grades, better graduation rates, and higher postgraduate incomes. Attending the more selective institution made a difference.
So yes, the Supreme Court ruling is a disaster for higher education across the board, as I discuss in my new book on admissions. More Black and Latino students will end up at schools where they are more likely to experience adverse outcomes, and that’s a real problem.
The news should be a wakeup call to highly selective institutions, which control the upper wave of the cascade effect. Institutions must double down on widening access and opportunity for Black and Latino applicants, or else all institutions and students will suffer.
Julie J. Park is Professor of Education at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is author of the new book Race, Class, and Affirmative Action: College Admissions in a New Era (Harvard Education Press).
Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.
This story about race-conscious admissions was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.
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