By Angelina Tang
On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court made a landmark decision overruling affirmative action in the case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. It was declared that considering race in college admissions was unconstitutional and could no longer be done, specifically denying Harvard University and the University of South Carolina’s admissions offices the right to practice it while also setting a nation-wide precedent. This ruling has reversed decades of decisions in favor of it.
Affirmative action, in the context of college admissions, is the practice of evaluating race as part of a student’s application. Colleges want to improve diversity and allow more minorities who may be predominantly low-income to receive the education that they want. Being part of a low-income community results in decreased opportunities, meaning students may not have the same level of extracurricular and academic involvement that middle-class and upper-class students do. Giving low-income students a bit more wiggle room also means giving minority students more open doors to opportunities that help them get out of the poverty cycle. In addition, diversifying our leaders in industry and politics is important as we undo the segregation and power structures racism created. In other words, certain minorities had a slight advantage in admissions because colleges needed to fulfill a certain diversity “quota.” They still need diverse student bodies, but now, the invalidation of affirmative action programs raises questions as to what colleges will do this admission cycle.
Many presidents of colleges around the U.S., including Columbia University and Stanford University, spoke out about their similar feelings of disappointment regarding the decision and made promises about how they would still uphold diversity as a core campus value. How this is being done by colleges while adhering to legality is mostly through supplemental essays, geographical data, and recognition of names that are tied to specific races. It was explicitly stated by Chief Justice John Roberts that colleges were not prohibited from considering how applicants state that race has affected their lives and using that in the admissions process. This has led some colleges to change their supplemental essay prompts to accommodate for discussions of race, offering them another way to still ensure admission of promising minority individuals.
The conversation surrounding affirmative action has been ongoing since the 1978 Regents of the University of California v. Bakke case, in which the Supreme Court voted in favor of affirmative action. In the cases Gratz v. Bollinger, Grutter v. Bollinger, and Fisher v. University of Texas, that precedent continued to be upheld. Many civil rights groups and activists have called the recent decision to overturn precedent a step backwards for integration into top universities.
Finally, California serves as an interesting case study of what impact this ruling may have on colleges nationwide. In 1996, voters approved a law outlawing affirmative action at all California public schools. The impact on competitive colleges immediately became apparent, as enrollment of Black and Latino students dropped by 40% according to a 2020 study done by Bleemer. As a result, those rejected Black and Latino individuals in the area saw 5% lower wages long-term compared to if they’d gone to a more selective, quality school like UCLA or UC Berkeley. The impacts on student diversity are still seen today; according to Naviance’s 2023 data, schools like Harvard and Stanford have 9% and 5% African-American students, while UCLA and UC Berkeley have 3% and 2% respectively. A grim note to end on, but this may be the new reality U.S. colleges will have to face.
