Articles - Journaltalk

A landmark June 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision (SFFA v. Harvard) held that race-based admissions at colleges and universities are unconstitutional. During the litigation, elite schools predicted what would happen if SFFA were to win, as it went on to do. Thirty-three selective colleges forecast Black enrollment declines of 50 to 70 percent. Fifteen research universities assured the Court that race-neutral admissions "would undercut" the diversity they seek. Harvard's expert witness, David Card, estimated that eliminating racial preferences would cut the Black share of Harvard's admitted class from 14 percent to 6 percent. I test these predictions using Common Data Set and IPEDS records for sixty-three selective institutions through fall of 2025. The average Black share of the 2024 and 2025 entering classes, relative to the 2010–2015 litigation-era baseline, is mostly steady, with Harvard's unchanged. Because Black shares rose after the events of 2020, the post-ruling averages do sit below the 2020–2023 levels by roughly a tenth at the thirty-three colleges and a fifth at the fifteen universities, declines still far short of those forecast. The results raise the issue: Does following the Court's ruling not have the predicted effect, or are the schools not abiding by the decision?