What to make of the puzzling data coming from colleges regarding the racial makeup of this fall’s freshman class? It appears that last year’s Supreme Court decision banning the use of race in college admissions has led to different responses from leading institutions.
Why would the Massachusetts Institute of Technology report a drop in the share of black students from 15% to 5% while the numbers at the University of North Carolina remained stable? Why would Yale University find that the percentage of black students was unchanged at the same time as the percentage of Asian admissions fell, while at Harvard University the percentage of black students dropped and the share of Asian students remained the same? It is difficult to interpret college admission practices in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision when more students do not report their race in applications, and some schools, such as Harvard, seem to have changed the ways they count admissions in regard to race and ethnicity.
There are good reasons to suspect that schools are not following the letter of the law — not to mention playing fast and loose with their data. But it is worth noting that they are doing it in different ways and not according to any single plan. The fact that schools are forging their own paths on this and other issues is a positive development for higher education — particularly for students.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the Washington Examiner (paywall)
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James Piereson is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Naomi Schaefer Riley is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of No Way to Treat a Child.
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