12-03-2025
How College Admissions Has Changed After the Affirmative Action Ruling
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Richard Kahlenberg occupies a unique space amongst higher education reformists. A Harvard-educated progressive whose heroes include Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., Kahlenberg—who is director of the American Identity Project at the Progressive Policy Institute—has spent decades advocating for the rights of economically disadvantaged Americans. But in recent decades, as liberals have prioritized race over socio-economic status when it comes to who gets a leg up in the world, Kahlenberg began to fall out of step with some of his civil rights compatriots. This was never more so than when he became an expert witness for the conservative advocacy group Students for Fair Admissions, which sued Harvard University and the University of North Carolina for allegedly discriminating against Asian American applicants. The group claimed that those institutions, hiding behind the veil of 'holistic admissions,' were docking high-performing Asian American applicants for lacking qualities such as leadership and 'grit' over other applicants.
The case, of course, went all the way to the Supreme Court and resulted in the 2023 law banning affirmative action in college admissions. The milestone turned the limelight on Kahlenberg, who, however controversial amongst some liberals, nonetheless had pragmatic, left-leaning solutions for universities that suddenly had to come up with new ways to achieve racial diversity on their campuses—among them are banning legacy preference; expanding financial aid programs; and recruiting from community colleges. The case also validated much of what Kahlenberg had been saying all along—that elite schools' efforts to diversify their classes through racial preference ultimately amounted to virtue signaling. Despite billion-dollar endowments, schools like Harvard have been loathe to dip into financial aid, instead boosting their diversity numbers by tapping wealthy kids from underrepresented ethnic groups, creating what Kahlenberg calls a 'multi-racial aristocracy' on campuses.
Two years after the SCOTUS decision propelled Kahlenberg into the national discourse around affirmative action, he has a new book, Class Matters: The Fight to Get Beyond Race Preferences, Reduce Inequality, and Build Real Diversity at America's Colleges, which chronicles his personal and professional journeys through the increasingly combustible debate over equity in college admissions. He spoke with Town & Country about the current admissions landscape and where he sees things headed in the new world order under President Trump.
RH: I've been generally pleased that a number of universities have been able to sustain high levels of racial diversity without hopefully resorting to racial preferences. The truth is, we don't know what's happening behind closed doors. But there is good evidence that universities are, for the first time, really opening their doors to working class students in meaningful numbers. A number of universities reported that they had record levels of socio-economic diversity, and that can help explain why they were also successful in achieving racial diversity. The backdrop here is that universities were almost uniformly predicting catastrophe. They said that if they couldn't use racial preferences that racial diversity would plummet everywhere. That did not happen. There were variations. Some universities did see declines in racial diversity, but a number were able to get as much racial diversity, in some cases more racial diversity in the past. It's just they can no longer do it the cheap and easy way, which is to bring together rich kids of all colors.
I just wish there'd been a fuller picture provided by the media showing the complete set of results. That, yes, some universities did see declines. But many if not most were able to preserve high levels of racial diversity. As to why Amherst and Tufts saw declines, I can't know for sure because I don't know what was going on behind the curtain. But at the very least we can say confidently that there are plenty of examples of successful universities. Amherst and Tufts should try to learn what they can from what Yale and Duke and the University of Virginia did right.
Duke doubled its percentage of Pell (Grant)-eligible students in just a two-year time period. Yale and Dartmouth reported record levels of socio-economic diversity. Harvard tripled the percentage of students who are first-generation college students over about a 10 year period. So when the litigation was filed at Harvard only 7% of students were first-gen college students; now about 21% are. So these are all signs of universities making progress on socio-economic diversity and also preserving high levels of racial diversity. I want to be careful though and say it is possible that some of those universities were also cheating. I don't know. I'd like more data. But from the outside it's clear that a number of universities made new efforts to increase economic diversity and also saw high levels of racial diversity.
I think the Supreme Court had no choice but to allow students to write about their experiences with race in their essays. It's unimaginable that a censor would have to go through and black out any reference to race. But having said that, a fair reading of the Supreme Court decision is that the personal essay loophole is extremely narrow. I find it's easier to talk about this in terms of concrete examples. So if a university says, We're going to value and give credit to a Black student who talks about overcoming discrimination because the university values grit and determination. Then they need to apply that universally. That is to say, an Asian American student who faced discrimination would also have to get credit, even though Asian Americans are overrepresented at a lot of selective universities. And if the underlying value is grit and determination, then low income students of all races should be receiving credit for that quality, too. So a university that only values grit and determination in overcoming anti-Black discrimination would be violating the Supreme Court decision in my view.
The other thing to note is that the dissenters in the case—Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson—called the essay provision in the Supreme Court decision 'lipstick on a pig.' So they minimized the significance of it and did not think that if universities were following the decision they could achieve a lot of racial diversity. So my hope is universities are not employing the essay in a way unintended by the Supreme Court, but I simply don't know.
Interestingly, I'm actually now in alliance with some of my liberal friends because of Trump and his 'Dear Colleague' letter that went out to universities. In that Dear Colleague letter, the Trump administration took a very unpopular position, which is that race-neutral strategies are themselves illegal if racial diversity is part of the motive. So what that means is that if a university got rid of their legacy preferences because they wanted to promote racial diversity or if they gave a bigger break to first-gen college or low-income students because that was a way of promoting racial diversity, under the Trump administration's extreme theory, that is itself illegal. In other words, Trump has gone after not only racial preferences but what I've advocated as well. And so in a sense I'm back with my people in support of finding a way to get racial diversity through new means. I'm not perfectly aligned with the left because they still want racial preferences. But the pragmatists among them recognize that considering economic disadvantage is the best way to produce racial diverse in a legally sustainable manner.
I'm happy that there was a lot of progress. For context, there was a lot of discussion after the Varsity Blues scandal about getting rid of legacy preferences and it petered out very quickly. By contrast, after the SCOTUS decision on affirmative action, we saw several states enact legislation. So California, Virginia, Maryland and Illinois all eliminated legacy preferences and some of those laws extended to private schools as well as public schools. And we have seen—essentially in the last decade, as the challenge to affirmative action made its way through the courts and we got the court decision—that the percentage of schools using legacy preference has been cut in half. That's in a new study from Ed Reform Now. So I'm very grateful that there's been progress.
Having said that, the entire Ivy League has stubbornly held on to legacy preferences. I think they do so at their peril because there will be another wave of litigation to enforce the Students For Fair Admissions decision. I want to be careful here, because I'm not drawing a moral analogy, but after Brown vs. Board of Education, there was fierce resistance from Southern states and some Northern jurisdictions and decades of enforcement litigation to ensure that the schools and districts followed the law. There will be something similar with respect to the Students For Fair Admissions decision. And the Trump administration has said they're going to join that effort to enforce the decision.
The reasons for (doing away with) legacy preferences is as follows. If you're a university that preserved racial diversity, the best defense you have in court is to say yes, we preserved racial diversity but we did not cheat. The way we achieved racial diversity was to get rid of legacy preferences, was to expand financial aid, increase our consideration of socioeconomic disadvantage. If by contrast a university hangs on to legacy preferences, doesn't make progress on socio-economic diversity and somehow magically manages to make their racial numbers work out, that looks like they're cheating. So it's an affirmative defense against the charge of cheating to take steps like eliminating legacy preferences.
There was an interesting book written by a former president of Harvard, Derek Bok. He said in essence that that litigation had exposed the system and that elites could no longer continue the practices that they employed to elevate wealthy and advantaged applicants; that eventually that system was going to fall. In essence, that the litigation had blown the cover and the jig was up. Now universities were under attack for being so economically segregated and using practices that benefit the wealthy that they would need to change. To be clear, Derek Bok presided over Harvard University for two decades. He did nothing to change any of those policies. But he's a respected voice. He said the handwriting's on the wall, we need to change. And certainly the troubled political position that higher education finds itself in today has exposed them, so I think they need to reform in order to survive. The horrific response of elite universities to the massacre of Jews on Oct. 7th really exposed the moral rot behind some of the race-essentialist thinking, which says the world divides into oppressed and oppressors and raping and murdering children isn't inherently wrong, it depends on who's doing it. And that's a position that very few regular Americans can Might Also Like
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