In the past few weeks, colleges have started reporting the racial makeup of the first class admitted after the Supreme Court ended affirmative action in 2023.
While it’s tempting to try to compare the numbers coming out from different colleges, it’s difficult to do so based on what we know so far.
Take the share of Black students reported by Harvard and Princeton: Harvard reported that this figure declined to 14 percent in its incoming class this year, from 18 percent last year. And Princeton reported that its share of Black students remained at 9 percent.
If you didn’t read the fine print, you might reasonably assume that although the share of Black students declined only at Harvard, it’s still much higher than the share at Princeton. But they are actually much closer than these figures suggest.
The reason: When reporting these figures to the public, many colleges use different formulas to calculate their racial makeup, an often overlooked fact.
If that sounds surprising, the explanation is that there is no single, obviously “correct” way to report race. Do you include international students? If so, how? If a student identified as both Black and white, do you count them only as multiracial, or do you also count them in each race? And does your pool include students who didn’t submit a race?
Colleges often answer these questions differently and arrive at figures that can be hard to compare.
To see why, let’s take a closer look at Harvard’s enrollment numbers from last year, using the more detailed records that it shared online (colleges are required to submit these detailed enrollment figures to the government in October, and they often publish them online later in the year).
Based on those figures, if Harvard were to use the same method that Princeton did to report race, its share of Black students in last year’s incoming class would be 10 percent — not 18 percent — a figure much closer to the 9 percent share at Princeton.
Here’s where that 10 percent comes from: the number of U.S. students that identify as Black alone, as a share of all freshmen.
This simple exercise illustrates that two different ways of reporting race lead to very different answers.
Which way is better? That depends on whom you ask. Both methods are internally consistent, but they answer different questions.
The method that Princeton uses is based on how the government requires colleges to report their data. It defines Black students as those who identify as Black, but not Hispanic or multiracial, and are U.S. residents. And the denominator includes international students and those who did not submit a race. Put the two together, and you end up with a smaller overall Black share.
Other colleges use variants of these approaches. Duke’s method is similar to Harvard’s, but it also counts Black students from other countries. And Tufts uses the government-based method that Princeton does, but it excludes international students.
All of this can be confusing for anyone who encounters these enrollment figures without the context of how they were calculated.
“For some schools, what they put on their website might be the way they want to portray their data,” said Bryan Cook, director of higher education policy at the Urban Institute.
Either way has pros and cons. The government’s reporting system offers consistency: It’s clearly defined and the shares add to 100 percent, which makes it easier to compare the racial makeup across colleges, or at the same college over time. But the other way better reflects the racial identities of a growing share of U.S. students who identify with more than one race or ethnicity.
And it isn’t always clear exactly what method a college used. Many mention the caveats on their websites, but some do not.
Cutting through the differences
To reach a more comprehensive picture of the enrollment landscape, it will take some time and effort to reconcile the enrollment figures reported by many colleges.
And so our Upshot team at The Times has reached out to over 90 selective colleges to request this data in two formats — the version that they will report to the government, and the version that reflects the self-identified races of their students.
Early results show a mix of outcomes. Many colleges have reported that their incoming classes have far fewer historically underrepresented minorities, mainly Black and Hispanic students, than in recent years. But some have shown smaller changes, while a few have reported increases.
As we pore through the data that colleges send us, as well as what we can find online, we’ll put together a resource to help you understand these enrollment statistics in a way that tries to account for the differences in reporting.
Other things to look out for
Even once the numbers are in, experts caution that it will take time to tease out the role of the Supreme Court’s ban.
That’s because enrollment is just one part of the picture on college admissions. We don’t know how many students of each race applied to these colleges in the first place, and how many of each race were admitted before the decision to enroll.
Without that data, it’s hard to draw firm conclusions on what caused the share of minority students to decline at a particular college — was it the admissions process itself, or did fewer students apply?
“The enrollment data only tell you the what,” said Mr. Cook, who is undertaking a project to also gather application and admissions data grouped by race from many universities. “They only give you one piece of the puzzle. They don’t tell you the why.”
On top of this, the federal student aid program that tens of millions of students rely on had problems rolling out a new application system last year, which may have affected the applicant pool at some colleges.
And some colleges are also seeing the share of students who did not disclose their race go up this year, which can make it harder to compare this year’s incoming student body with past years.
“We shouldn’t be rushing to tell the story of what happened” after the Supreme Court banned affirmative action, said James Murphy, the director of post-secondary policy at Education Reform Now.
That’s in part because small shifts in the enrollment of minorities can occur from year to year. To really understand the impact of the decision, we’ll need to see how the recent shifts in enrollment compare with those that have occurred in the past — a task that will be made easier as colleges report their enrollment numbers in a clear and consistent manner.
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