Freshman class after Supreme Court decision disproves theory of ‘race-based’ admissions: Expert

New numbers from two major Illinois universities show little change in enrollment demographics since the Supreme Court effectively banned the consideration of race in college admissions last year.

Nationally, many had worried the decision in the case, brought by conservative legal activist Ed Blum and his group Students for Fair Admissions, could cause a precipitous drop in the representation of Black and Latino students at highly selective colleges.

But now that the first freshmen to be admitted under the new legal precedent have started class, enrollment data from their universities, including local schools like Northwestern University and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, are showing mixed results.

At Northwestern, 15% of this year’s freshman class identifies as Black, up from 14% last year. The percentage identifying as Hispanic or Latino is 18%, up from 17% in the previous year. The Evanston campus counts multiracial students in each racial category with which they identify, which is different from how the federal government and many other institutions report these numbers.

Northwestern officials said in a statement that the Supreme Court ruling did not change the university’s commitment to diversity and inclusion.

“We are intensifying strategic efforts that have helped us enroll historically diverse classes in recent years,” said Stacey Kostell, Northwestern’s vice president and dean of enrollment. “That includes financial aid packages that meet 100% of every student’s demonstrated need without loans, as well as initiatives to ensure families understand our full range of affordability measures and student support resources.”

At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the percentage of freshmen who identify as Black dipped slightly from 5.4% to 4.9%, and the percentage who identify as Hispanic rose slightly from 15% to 15.9%.

“As we welcome our largest class in university history, we are at a point of transition for our university,” Kevin Jackson, vice provost for undergraduate education, said in a statement. “Our new approach is more representative of a student’s entire identity and is a better reflection of the world in which we live.”

The University of Chicago declined to share admissions and enrollment statistics for the Class of 2028.

James Murphy, policy director for the nonprofit Education Reform Now, said journalists, administrators and advocates need to be careful interpreting the new enrollment data in relation to the race-conscious admissions ruling.

“There are a lot of concerns,” said Murphy, who advocates for equitable college access. “The big one is that it's very early, right? So the data that's been released is preliminary data from colleges. These numbers are going to change as students inevitably go from not identifying their race on their application to identifying their race upon enrollment. And probably the most important concern of all: It's a single year.”

WBEZ’s higher education reporter Lisa Kurian Philip sat down with Murphy to talk about the first freshman class to be admitted following the controversial ruling. Their conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

There’s been a lot of coverage of the racial demographics of the freshman class this year. Why has there been so much interest? The institutions impacted by the decision are tiny in terms of the percentage of students they serve.

On the one hand, should we have been as curious about the outcome of the [Students for Fair Admissions] decision? Maybe not, in the sense that most students were not affected by this. Most institutions of higher education weren't affected by it.

On the other hand, this small number of colleges send a lot of students into politics, into entrepreneurship, off to law schools and med schools and PhD programs, and so they matter in that sense. And this was the first year that they were admitting a class without … the power … to consider race in the admissions process.

Is there anything that the data can tell us about the impacts of the race-conscious admission decision?

What it really gets to is that Ed Blum and Students for Fair Admissions and the Supreme Court wanted to argue that college admissions in America is race-based. That's the term that Chief Justice Roberts used repeatedly in the Supreme Court majority decision.

The reality is that, at these kinds of colleges that have way more applicants than seats to offer, nothing is based on any single factor. Even legacies don't get in [just] because they're legacies. Even donors’ kids don't get in because they're [donors’ kids].

College admissions is complex. There are a lot of competing priorities, and so it's not actually surprising that there isn't a good, clear pattern on the outcome for Hispanic students, Asian American students and white students.

What are your concerns about reporters covering this data and trying to interpret it in the context of the Students for Fair Admissions decision?

There are pretty dramatic shifts from year to year, which is why you've got to be careful. A single year of data compared to just one year of data about last year's class is not a very good way to figure out what on earth is going on.

The big problem would be rushing to a conclusion like, ‘This is exactly what happened, and it went according to this script’ and … saying, like, ‘Oh, this was a win for white students and for organizations that were really secretly trying to increase the number of white students at these institutions.’ That didn't happen at most institutions.

At Northwestern and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the numbers stayed relatively stable. I'm wondering if you have any takeaways from those schools that are local to Illinois.

It's not too much, in a sense, because we don't know why these outcomes happen.

They were doing something in their admissions process to really prioritize diversity, but maybe not. It could have, honestly, just been luck.

So Northwestern shouldn't necessarily be patting its own back because the percentage of Black students went up from 14% to 15%.

I'll give them a pat on the back. But let's wait to see what happens next year and the year after and the year after that. This is hard work. The thing about enrolling a diverse class is that it is challenging when you have taken away the primary tool that would help a college enroll a diverse class of students. All the proxies in the world are probably not going to make up for the difference.

Lisa Kurian Philip covers higher education for WBEZ, in partnership with Open Campus. Follow her on Twitter @LAPhilip.