In 1964, in an effort to shed its image as a privileged stronghold for wealthy white families, Wesleyan University contacted 400 black high school students across the country to convince them to apply.
The initiative resulted in a class that would become known as the Vanguard class at Wesleyan, with one Latino student and 13 black students. She helped define the institution’s engagement with diversity.
Today, nearly 60 years later, this type of student recruitment practice faces an existential threat.
In lawsuits filed against Harvard and North Carolina universities, the widespread expectation is that the Supreme Court will revoke or sharply reduce affirmative action in student admissions to higher education.
Many education experts say such a decision could not only change who gets accepted to college, but also undermine strategies that institutions have used for years to build diverse classes, including teaching programs designed to attract students from specific racial and ethnic groups to scholarships, special programs (“honors programs”) and university entrance.
These cuts may then prompt universities to end other admissions practices that would have historically benefited high-income students. Some universities have already ended the requirement for standardized exams and the preference given to children of alumni. There is also pressure to end early decision, which accepts applicants before the general admission deadline ends.
University representatives warn that there is no way of knowing what the scope of the Supreme Court decision will be. But the decision, scheduled for June, is likely to have a broad impact on many institutions, according to Vern Granger, director of admissions at the University of Connecticut.
“Most people are thinking about the admission process to selective institutions, but I am predicting that the Supreme Court’s decision will be far-reaching,” he said.
First launched in 2014 by the anti-affirmative action group Students for Fair Admissions, the lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina argued that universities discriminate against white and Asian applicants when they give preference to black, Hispanic and indigenous students.
Universities say they use admissions criteria that take race into account because diversity is critical to learning. That argument was met with skepticism by the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority at an October hearing.
Recent polls suggest that most people think universities should not consider race or ethnicity in student admissions decisions.
If the Supreme Court makes its anticipated decision, education officials said, the classes that will start college in the fall of 2024 will be very different from those today.
“We’re going to see a drop in the share of non-white students at college, before a further increase,” said Angel B. Pérez, CEO of the National Association for College Admissions Guidance. “We’re going to lose an entire generation.”
Granger predicts the situation will change even at public colleges. Citing a drop in enrollment following state bans on affirmative action in Michigan and California, he said some students from underrepresented groups may simply not apply to college.
The institutions most likely to be heavily affected are the 200 colleges and universities seen as “selective” — that is, accepting 50% or less of applicants. And for smaller, highly selective institutions like Wesleyan, the impact on university culture can be especially noticeable: Professors at these schools say their class sizes are smaller and foster interactions between diverse groups of students.
In August, a group of 33 of these institutions filed a briefing with the Supreme Court. Some of them had trained black students even before the American Civil War.
“The likelihood of black applicants receiving offers of admission will drop to half that of white students, and the percentage of black students enrolling will drop from 7.1% of the student body to 2.2%,” according to the document.
According to Angel Pérez, the Supreme Court can bar colleges from purchasing lists of potential candidates that focus on their race and ethnicity, a practice commonly used in recruiting.
The so-called “fly-in” programs, in which certain students have their expenses paid to visit universities, may also be cut, as well as the scholarship programs created for non-white students, without which many of these students cannot afford to pay for studies.
Kenneth L. Marcus, a former education official in the Trump administration, said that many student admissions practices that benefit certain racial groups may already be violating articles of the Civil Rights Act.
To avoid legal challenges, many of these programs broaden their admissions criteria, for example by accepting applicants who are the first in their families to attend college. But, he said, even with those criteria, “middle-class white students would generally be excluded from these programs on racial grounds.”
The Supreme Court decision could shed light on the legality of these programs, said Marcus, now president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under the Law.
Some institutions have already adopted preventive initiatives. Standardized exams, for example, have long been criticized for hurting poor and non-white students, in part because they don’t have access to expensive exam preparation courses.
Now the “tests are optional” policies, which grew exponentially during the pandemic, are becoming the new normal. More than 1,800 four-year colleges say they no longer ask for SAT or ACT test scores — one of the requirements for admission to an American university. And the number of students taking the SAT has dropped from nearly 2.2 million in their senior year of high school in 2020 to 1.7 million in 2022.
Julie J. Park, a professor at the University of Maryland, said low-income students are less likely to submit their SAT scores when applying to college.
“The fact that half of black and Latino students are saying ‘I don’t want to submit my grades’ tells me something,” Park said. According to her, research indicates that when exams are optional, it has a small but positive impact on minority student enrollment from underserved communities.
Some opponents of affirmative action argue that preferences should be based on socioeconomic class rather than racial criteria. They also objected to special considerations that benefit high-income students.
Richard D. Kahlenberg, a consultant who advised plaintiffs in the lawsuit brought by the Fair Admissions group, said early decision programs could be vulnerable. These programs attract high-income applicants because they must commit to studying at that college, in many cases before they have the opportunity to look at financial assistance packages.
“It’s one of the inequalities built into the system,” said Kahlenberg, who advocates affirmative action based on socioeconomic class.
Children of former students may also lose their benefits. Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts is studying the possibility of eliminating this advantage. That would include it in a small group of highly selective universities that intend to end the preference given to children of alumni. The group includes, among others, Johns Hopkins University and Amherst College.
According to Matthew L. McGann, Amherst’s director of admissions, the school is already making plans to pre-empt the Supreme Court’s decision. “We’re not waiting for that moment to come.”
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