The number of Black students at Tufts University and Amherst College declined this year as white enrollment increased.
Two elite colleges in the United States in the first class saw a significant fall in enrollment for Black students since the Supreme Court ruled to strike down affirmative action in university admission last year, upending the country’s academic landscape.
According to the New York Times, two tertiary institutions in Massachusetts, Tufts University and Amherst College, report a decline in the percentage of black first-year students. This is an early indication that a high court ruling may negatively impact racial diversity at the nation’s most prestigious colleges and universities.
On June 23, the Supreme Court, driven by its conservative supermajority, ended race-conscious admission nationwide in June 2023. This ruling dealt a serious blow to the cause of increased student diversity on campuses, which critics warned would have far-reaching effects throughout society.
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According to the survey, Amherst College’s Black student enrollment for the incoming first-year class decreased by 8% from 11% last year to 3% this year. Hispanic student enrollment declined from 12% to 8%.
Also, at Amherst College, the percentage of Asian American students increased from 18% to 20%, while white students rose sharply from 33% to 39%.
The percentage of Black students in the incoming first-year class at Tuft University fell from 7.3% to 4.7%, while the percentage of white students increased from 46.8% to 49.3%. The percentage of Asian Americans slightly decreased from 20.3% to 19.7%.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the first major US university to release statistics on the composition of its incoming freshmen class since the Supreme Court’s ruling, disclosed last week that admissions from “members of historically under-represented ethnic and racial groups” had declined sharply.
According to MIT’s admissions office, the percentage of Black students enrolled this year declined from 15% to 5%, while the rate of Latino and Hispanic students dropped from 16% to 11%.
Matthew L. McGann, Amherst’s dean of admission, revealed in a statement to students obtained by the Times that “as a consequence of the Supreme Court’s decision, the incoming class is not as racially diverse as recent classes have been.”
Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, the two universities at the centre of the Supreme Court’s decision, still need to release their admission statistics.
