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Impact of SCOTUS ruling on Affirmative Action: A year later
Ethnic Media panelists discuss the past and future of diversity as a goal in college admissions.
Representative image / Pexels
The historic ruling by the Supreme Court last summer reversed decades of precedent, ending the ability of colleges and universities—public and private—to consider race as one of the many factors in deciding which qualified applicants are admitted. Have the chickens come to roost this admission season? Does the makeup of the class of 2024 reflect any change?
The simple answer is ‘not likely’.
In the fall, universities will report the racial makeup of their freshman class. Some schools may do so this summer after students have been admitted and committed to attend. Early research, however, suggests the ruling’s impact could be relatively minor: Only a fifth of all U.S. colleges put substantial weight on race in admissions decisions, according to a November 2023 Brookings Institution study.
At an Ethnic Media Services briefing, the panelists felt an equitable school system has many hurdles stacked against it.
Vikash Reddy, vice president of research, The Campaign for College Opportunity, said, “When we look at the admissions requirements, we have to think: what are the resources required to navigate them and who are the students and families that have the resources to navigate them?”
According to him, many students from well-off families took advantage of the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) form, which allowed them to apply for financial aid well in advance of the deadline. "You've got just on the front end, an access issue that is going to impact minority students more than other students, white students in particular,” he said.
There's a delay on the financial aid decision, and students of color are, on average, more likely to need the aid to enroll. FAFSA experienced delays in 2024 due to a late rollout and implementation issues. This made it difficult for colleges to provide financial aid offers to students in a timely manner, which can make it difficult for students to make informed decisions by the typical May 1 college selection deadline.
“It's not just about access to a few colleges and universities,” said the director of strategic initiatives at the Legal Defense Fund (LDF), Jin Hee Lee. “It's about having an overall equitable system, kindergarten through 12 grade. Those twelve years affect people's opportunities for higher education.”
“ We can't talk about admissions policies for a particular college and university without talking about the overall inequalities throughout our entire educational system that have tremendous and cumulative effects on many students of color for marginalized background,” she added.
In order to achieve equality, it is necessary to treat people differently.
“Everyone is treated the same, or equality demands that people be treated differently in order to produce equality,” Jeannie Suk Gersen, a Harvard law professor, says in the documentary film Admissions Granted.
“No one, including the legal defense fund, ever considered affirmative action to be the only tool to ensure equal opportunity to college admissions. So even with affirmative action it was not equal, now without affirmative action it will continue to not be equal,” said Lee.
“An important tool was taken away, and other tools that should be used or could’ve been used to advance racial equality also collapsed,” she felt.
Many universities, including Yale university, have decided not to track race data or look at that data during the course of the admissions process, “This was never required by the Supreme Court decision,” said Lee.
A number of universities have chosen not to collect racial data, which is a fundamental oversight that has led to additional disadvantages, as she pointed out. Without this data, organizations cannot be sure they are not discriminating or that their policies and procedures do not unfairly disadvantage one group over another.
“This does not relieve us of our responsibility to continue to try to ensure more equality, regardless of whether we have affirmative action or not,” said Lee.
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