Two Years After the Affirmative Action Ruling: What the Enrollment Data Actually Shows

Two admissions cycles in, the real data is more complicated than most predictions

The Supreme Court's June 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and UNC banned the consideration of race in college admissions. Most observers expected this to produce a sharp, broad decline in Black and Hispanic enrollment nationally. According to Washington Monthly and Hechinger Report analysis of the actual data, what happened is more complicated: overall, more Black and Hispanic students enrolled in four-year universities in fall 2024 than in fall 2023, even as enrollment declined sharply at the most selective institutions specifically.

The "cascade effect": elite schools lost diversity, other schools gained it

Class Action's comprehensive study, comparing enrollment across more than 3,000 colleges and 3 million freshmen, found a specific pattern researchers call a cascade effect: highly qualified students of color who previously would have been admitted to the most selective institutions increasingly enrolled at somewhat less selective ones instead, shifting the demographic impact rather than eliminating it nationally.

The scale of this shift is substantial: the Ivy League enrolled almost 600 fewer Black and Hispanic freshmen in 2024 compared to before the ruling, while the same demographic groups grew by more than 2,200 students at Southeastern Conference (SEC) schools over the same period, according to U.S. News analysis of the same underlying data. Consistent with this pattern, 83% of the 51 state flagship universities reported gains in underrepresented minority enrollment in their first post-SFFA admissions cycle.

At the most selective individual schools, the declines have been real and, in the second year, have deepened

Black enrollment fell sharply at several of the most selective schools specifically: Harvard from 18% in 2023 to 11.5% in 2025, Princeton from 9% to 5%, and Amherst from 11% to 6%, according to Brookings Institution tracking. A comprehensive study covering the 50 most selective schools nationally found Black freshman enrollment dropped 27% in just the first year after the ruling.

Notably, several schools saw further declines in their second post-SFFA cycle (fall 2025) specifically tied to the separate return of standardized testing requirements at institutions that had gone test-optional; Caltech's Black enrollment held steady at 5% in the first post-SFFA cycle but fell to 1.6% after the school reinstated required testing the following year, a Brookings analysis specifically links to the return of testing requirements compounding the SFFA effect, not solely the ruling itself.

How colleges have adapted, beyond just admissions criteria

• Colleges increasingly emphasize socioeconomic status and first-generation college status rather than race directly in admissions, an approach some analysts argue could achieve similar diversity outcomes with broader public and legal acceptance
• The U.S. Department of Education opened investigations into 45 universities, including Yale and UC Berkeley, over allegations that diversity, equity, and inclusion programs may violate federal civil rights law, applying stricter Title VI enforcement
• Many institutions have modified or eliminated race-specific scholarships, mentoring programs, and summer programs, along with reducing or removing diversity-focused essay prompts from applications
• Because individual colleges aren't required to disclose detailed admissions methodology, and colleges have incentive to keep procedures private, researchers note there remains real uncertainty about exactly how much of the enrollment shift reflects genuine demographic change versus reporting and methodology differences across the still-limited two years of post-ruling data

The core disagreement

Supporters of the ruling generally argue that race-neutral admissions, focused on individual merit and circumstance rather than group identity, is both constitutionally required and fairer in principle, and see the enrollment gains at flagship and SEC schools as evidence the higher education system as a whole can maintain access for students of color without race-conscious admissions specifically. Critics generally argue the sharp declines at the most selective individual institutions, the ones most closely tied to elite career and social networks, represent a real loss of opportunity concentrated specifically where it matters most for long-term outcomes, and that the "cascade effect" redistributing students to less selective schools isn't a genuinely equivalent substitute for the access that was lost. Both sides, along with researchers themselves, broadly agree that only two admissions cycles of data exist so far, meaning definitive long-term conclusions about the ruling's full effect remain genuinely premature either way.