A First Look at College Enrollment Outcomes After the End of Affirmative Action
- James Murphy
- Feb 3
- 2 min read
The release of federal data on college enrollment in 2024 makes it possible to evaluate the impact of the 2023 Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows Of Harvard College (SFFA) on the entire college admissions ecosystem, not merely a few dozen elite institutions. Class Action’s new report, The Future of Fair Admissions: A First Look at College Enrollment Outcomes After the End of Affirmative Action, compares first-time enrollments in 2022 and 2023 to enrollments in 2024 at over 3,000 colleges and universities for more than 3 million freshmen.
In our analysis of the immediate impact of the Supreme Court ending the consideration of race in college admissions we make several significant findings:
Both the number and the percentage of underrepresented students of color significantly declined at highly selective institutions and even more sharply at Ivy Plus schools. The largest declines were among Black students.
The number and share of underrepresented students of color increased almost everywhere else, most notably at state flagship universities. For example, Black freshman enrollment increased by 30% at LSU and 50% at The University of Mississippi, while Hispanic enrollment increased by more than a third at the University of Tennessee and the University of South Carolina.
Total enrollment and Black enrollment both declined in aggregate at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
Hispanic enrollment increased in aggregate at more selective institutions that did not provide a legacy preference and declined at those that did. This disparity was not observed for Black students.
The number and share of White and Asian American freshmen remained relatively flat across the board, although there was a slight uptick in the number and share of Asian American freshmen at Ivy Plus schools.
There was a slight shift in Black freshman enrollment toward institutions with lower graduation rates and expected earnings after college.
These enrollment patterns reflect a phenomenon known as a cascade effect, in which highly qualified students of color who would have been much more likely to be admitted to highly selective institutions pre-SFFA ended up enrolling in less selective institutions, thus displacing students there and pushing them to less selective institutions.
Enrollment outcomes following the Supreme Court decision are a reminder that college admissions were never “race-based” and that a comparison of pre- and post-SFFA enrollment numbers is far from sufficient to determine why these numbers changed at a particular institution. College admissions and enrollment occur within a complex ecosystem where the actions and decisions of admissions officers, financial aid officers, and students themselves shape and are shaped by each other.
Class Action has created the Post-SFFA Enrollment Dashboard on our website. It allows you to compare enrollments by race and gender over time at more than 3,000 institutions and in hundreds of different groupings.
You can read or download the full report below.
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