At M.I.T., Black and Latino Enrollment Drops Sharply After Affirmative Action Ban
The New York Times
Asian American students made up almost half of the 2028 class — the first admitted since the end of affirmative action.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s incoming class of 2028 saw a precipitous drop-off in the percentage of Black, Hispanic, Native American and Pacific Islander students, the university announced on Wednesday. It is M.I.T.’s first undergraduate class to be admitted since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year banning affirmative action, and M.I.T. is the first major university to release statistics on the composition of its freshman class since the high court’s ruling.
For the incoming class of 2028, about 16 percent of students are Black, Hispanic, Native American and Pacific Islander, compared with a baseline of about 25 percent of undergraduate students in recent years, the announcement said.
The comparison to the class of 2027 was also dramatic. The percentage of Black students enrolled dropped to 5 percent from 15 percent, and the percentage of Hispanic and Latino students dropped to 11 percent from 16 percent. White students made up 37 percent of the new class, compared with 38 percent last year.
On the other hand, the percentage of Asian American students in the class jumped to 47 percent from 40 percent. (The percentages do not add up to 100, according to M.I.T., because students could declare more than one race.)
“The class is, as always, outstanding across multiple dimensions,” Sally Kornbluth, president of M.I.T., said in the announcement, adding, “What it does not bring, as a consequence of last year’s Supreme Court decision, is the same degree of broad racial and ethnic diversity that the M.I.T. community has worked together to achieve over the past several decades.”
Edward Blum, the founder of Students for Fair Admissions, the organization that successfully sued to end race-conscious admissions, welcomed the decision as proof that the Supreme Court ruling was having a positive effect.
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