Many feared that the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision banning the use of race in college admissions would deal a crushing blow to campus diversity. Before oral arguments in the case, more than 30 liberal arts schools filed an amicus brief warning that without the benefit of affirmative action, Black students might fall to just 2.1% of all new undergrads at selective institutions, a return to “early 1960s levels.” When the ruling came down, the court’s three liberal justices wrote in their dissent that it would have a “devastating impact” on minority enrollment.
Thankfully, those dire predictions have yet to come true. In this report, we review data from the 2024 and 2025 admissions cycles showing that, in the wake of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, higher education institutions have not given up on diversity. Instead, they have seemingly begun the hard work of finding new paths to it. Two main facts jump out:
- Minority student enrollment fell less than critics of the court’s ruling forecasted. Most (though not all) of the country’s top colleges and universities avoided massive declines, and some saw barely any drop at all.
- In response to the demise of traditional, race-based affirmative action, top-rated schools appear to have begun enrolling more economically disadvantaged students, opening their doors to a group of learners who add their own important dimension of diversity to campus culture. In a new analysis, we show that the share of students receiving Pell Grants, which provide aid to low- and middle-income undergrads, has increased at 15 of the 18 highly selective institutions that currently provide public, up-to-date data. In 10 cases, the share of Pell Grant-eligible students increased more than 20%.
Admitting more low-income and working-class students may have helped some schools limit declines in Black and Hispanic enrollment — though, as we discuss later in our paper, how much so is actually unclear.
Regardless, there is a fair amount of good news in these results. First, it is a relief that minority enrollment did not implode as some anticipated. Diverse campuses are good for students and good for our society. When schools bring young people from different ethnic backgrounds together, it deepens learning and increases understanding across races while reducing stereotypes. It also helps diversify America’s leadership class, which tends to be drawn from the graduates of highly selective colleges.
The rise in economic diversity is also very welcome, and overdue. America’s top colleges have a long, unfortunate history of virtually ignoring economic class in their admissions decisions. As a result, they have fallen short in their role as ladders for social mobility and failed to build student bodies that truly reflect the wider nation.
The move toward economic affirmative action as a means to promote diversity is a step in the right political direction for higher education institutions that have lost much of the public’s support in recent years. Racial preferences were always unpopular; 68% of Americans backed the Supreme Court’s decision striking them down. By contrast, strong majorities of Americans think it is only fair to provide a leg up in college admissions to students who have overcome economic obstacles.
But the change is also a step toward greater fairness. Race used to be the primary obstacle to opportunity in America, and there was a time when the academic achievement gap between Black and white students was twice as large as the achievement gap between rich and poor. But America has changed in the intervening decades, and today the reverse is true: the achievement gap between rich and poor is roughly twice the gap between Black and white students, according to Stanford University’s Sean Reardon.
And the shift from race to economic need as the basis for special consideration is likely to strengthen social cohesion. While racial preferences were always a divisive and unpopular means of achieving integration, economic affirmative action can do the important work of bringing students of different backgrounds together but in a way that emphasizes a common American identity rather than reinforcing racial differences.
While the early admissions trends we document are encouraging, they cannot be an excuse for complacency. Minority enrollment need not have declined even as much as it has. Colleges could still do more to recruit more low-income and working-class students. We believe legislators and educational institutions could address both issues using the tools of economic affirmative action, even without the crutch of blunt racial preferences.
While giving an admissions edge to lower-income applicants is a good start, more universities should also offer a leg up to students from poor neighborhoods or from families with low net worths. These policies are racially neutral and can be justified as a matter of fairness but in practice would also give a larger boost on average to underrepresented minorities, offsetting some of the declines in Black and Hispanic enrollment since Students for Fair Admissions. University leaders and policymakers should also take steps to end legacy admissions that give an unfair advantage to the children of wealthy alumni. Congress could prod schools into action by reducing taxes on their endowments in return for adopting these changes and dialing up the tax for bad actors. For Democratic politicians looking to revive their party’s image with working-class voters, this is a straightforward opportunity to champion their interests. We’ve avoided a worst-case scenario for diversity on campus, and begun moving in a new, promising direction. But there’s still much work to be done.
