Racial preferences by other names

Harvard admitted more Asian Americans and fewer blacks this year, reports Stephanie Saul in the New York Times.

Harvard College said 11.5 percent of first-year students in the Class of '29 are black. That's down from 18 percent in 2023, before the Supreme Court ban banned racial preferences, Saul writes. Hispanic enrollment, at 11 percent, is down from 16 percent last year, but has increased since 2023. "Asian-American enrollment increased to 41 percent of the first-year class from 37 percent last year, the same percentage as in 2023."

Photo: ICSA/Pexels

The year after the Supreme Court decision, some selective institutions "saw striking drops in Black students while at others, the number remained largely unchanged," she writes.

This year, “African American enrollment has dropped significantly at almost all the highly selective institutions reporting this year,” said James Murphy of Education Reform Now. “Hispanic enrollment has declined at many of the institutions, but not all.”

Many colleges that made SAT or ACT scores optional for applicants have gone back to requiring test scores. Grade inflation has made GPAs unreliable indicators of students' college readiness.

"Socioeconomic" preferences are being used to cover for racial discrimination, charges Wai Wah Chin, an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is the founding president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York.

It's a "bait and switch," she writes. Americans support a boost for applicants from low-income families. But adding "socio" lets colleges give an advantage based on categories, such as growing up in a single-parent household, that favor blacks over Asians and whites.

"UCLA Law School and Lehman College solicit 'systems-involved' or 'criminal-justice-impacted' applicants — elite-speak for applicants (or their families) with criminal records," Chin writes. Few Asian students, even those from very poor families, will qualify.

At the K-12 level, New York City public schools use an “Economic Need Index” that isn't based on family income or assets, she writes. "That’s because in New York City, Asians are as poor as blacks and Hispanics." One criterion is whether a student “lived in temporary housing in the past four years.” Low-income blacks and Hispanics are far more likely to live in temporary housing than equally poor Asians.

The latest term is “subjective socioeconomic status,” which makes the criteria even fuzzier, Chin writes.