The question of whether colleges should consider race in admissions has been a longstanding national debate. With the Supreme Court becoming more conservative in recent years, there was speculation about the possibility of overturning long-standing precedents supporting affirmative action. This week, it became a reality as the Supreme Court ruled against race-based admissions practices at both public and private universities.
The justices determined that the admissions policies of the University of North Carolina and Harvard University violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, marking a significant shift in affirmative action practices.
As colleges now adjust their admissions policies in response to the Supreme Court ruling, California’s experience offers insights into what the rest of the country might expect. Despite more than half a billion dollars spent on outreach and alternative admissions standards, California officials have struggled to meet their diversity and equity goals after banning race-based admissions at public universities a quarter-century ago.
University of California chancellors, in an amicus brief supporting Harvard and UNC’s race-based admissions programs, admitted that their efforts to develop race-neutral policies had fallen short. Although these alternative programs had contributed to system-wide diversity gains, UC still faced challenges in enrolling a sufficiently racially diverse student body to reap the educational benefits of diversity, particularly at the most selective schools.
The impact of the affirmative action ban in California was stark. Following the ban’s implementation in 1998, enrollment of Black and Latino students at UCLA and UC Berkeley dropped by 40%.
These students were then redirected to less competitive campuses, resulting in poorer long-term labor market prospects, reduced likelihood of earning graduate degrees, and limited access to lucrative STEM fields. The ban also discouraged high-performing minority students from applying to schools where their representation was lacking.
Efforts to restore diversity led admissions offices to adopt a holistic approach, considering factors beyond grades and test scores.
Initiatives were introduced, such as guaranteeing admission to top-performing students from most high schools in the state and implementing a comprehensive review process. Additionally, the UC system eliminated standardized test scores as an admission requirement in 2020.
However, these endeavors came at a significant cost, with the UC system spending over half a billion dollars on outreach programs and application reviews.
After 25 years of experimenting with race-neutral policies, UC schools have begun to make progress in recovering the lost racial diversity. However, system-wide diversity goals remain unmet, and many schools still enroll fewer Black and Latino students compared to their share of California high school graduates.
Experts anticipate that the Supreme Court’s ruling will impact similarly competitive universities nationwide. Private institutions like Pomona College in Southern California, which were not subject to the state ban, express concern about losing racial diversity under the nationwide affirmative action ban.
Considering race has allowed these schools to create a campus that reflects the diverse world in which their students will live—an essential value for their educational mission.
