When universities claim that economic-based efforts to diversify college enrollment fail, journalists should report the full story, says the author of a new book, CLASS MATTERS.
By Richard D. Kahlenberg
At a time when the Trump administration is attacking diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies in K-12 schools and colleges and universities as part of a larger high-profile campaign against what Trump calls “woke ideology,” the press is faced again with the challenge of how to accurately report on these programs.
In the past, members of the media have not always risen to the challenge, downplaying education institutions’ economic incentives for racial preferences.
Polls show that most Americans support racial diversity in educational institutions, but most don’t like using racial preferences as the means of achieving that goal.
A number of researchers, including me, say there is evidence that if selective universities or magnet schools provide an admissions boost to economically disadvantaged students of all races, they can achieve racial diversity without racial preferences.
Education leaders, however, typically claim that racial preferences are the only way to achieve racial diversity.
Too often, the press has uncritically reported the position of universities without acknowledging that those institutions have a strong financial interest in favoring racial preferences.
Assembling a student body of upper-middle class students of all colors through the use of race in admissions, as universities often do, is much cheaper than economic affirmative action, which requires universities to provide financial aid and support to low-income and working-class students of all races.
Too often, the press has uncritically reported the position of universities.
We have a lot of evidence about how well economic diversification has worked as a strategy for increasing racial diversity without racial preferences.
But when universities have claimed these efforts don’t work, media outlets seem to accept these claims at face value, without closely examining the evidence.
A few years ago, when the U.S. Supreme Court was considering lawsuits brought by a conservative group, Students for Fair Admissions, against Harvard and the University of North Carolina for using race in admissions, the issue of whether racial preferences provide the only path to diversity was hotly contested.
Leading universities at two states where racial preferences had been banned by voter referendum – the University of California and the University of Michigan — submitted amicus briefs claiming that their attempts to achieve racial diversity without racial preferences were a failure.
They said they tried economic affirmative action, greater outreach to applicants, policies which admit top students from every high school in a state, increasing financial aid and boosting the number of transfers from community colleges, but nothing worked.
Many news outlets took universities at their word.
The Guardian, for example, outlined the views expressed in the Michigan and California amicus briefs and concluded, “When schools are barred from factoring race into the admissions process, they lack meaningful tools that would help facilitate a more racially diverse student population.”
An article from Reuters, likewise, presented the claims of universities that race-neutral strategies would fail in an uncontested fashion.
The author wrote: “A decision banning affirmative action would force elite colleges and universities to revamp their policies and search for new ways to ensure diversity in their student populations. Many schools have said other measures would not be as effective, resulting in fewer minority students on campuses. In briefs filed with the Supreme Court, the University of California and the University of Michigan – top public school systems from states that have outlawed race-conscious admissions – said they have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on alternative programs intended to improve diversity, but that those efforts have fallen far short of goals.”
When universities have claimed these efforts don’t work, media outlets seem to accept these claims at face value.
An October 2022 New York Timesarticle reported the amicus briefs claims in a largely uncritical manner. The story stated that the California and Michigan universities “admitted” that race-neutral strategies “have fallen abysmally short.”
The same is true of a June 2023 NPR story, which reported that: “A quarter-century after California banned race-based admissions at public universities, school officials say they haven’t been able to meet their diversity and equity goals — despite more than a half billion dollars spent on outreach and alternative admissions standards.”
After the U.S. Supreme Court ended the ability of universities to employ racial preferences in 2023, the Associated Press ran a story which relied heavily on the Michigan and California amicus briefs with the headline: “As Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action, colleges see few other ways to diversity goals.”
I find all these news reports incredibly frustrating. As I outline in my new book, Class Matters: The Fight to Get Beyond Race Preferences, Reduce Inequality, and Build Real Diversity at America’s Colleges, while the amicus briefs were pleading failure in an attempt to persuade the Supreme Court to allow universities to preserve racial preferences, the admissions offices at U.C. Berkeley, UCLA, and the University of Michigan were painting a very different story.
That’s right. The legal pleadings said one thing, while the universities said another. And almost nobody seemed to notice.
The legal pleadings said one thing, while the universities said another. And almost nobody seemed to notice.
In 2021, UCLA said despite the 1996 ban on racial preferences in Proposition 209, the college admitted the highest proportion of underrepresented minority students “in over 30 years.” UCLA’s Black share subsequently climbed to 7 percent in 2022, and the university “ended up more racially diverse than it had been when affirmative action was allowed.” UC Berkeley, likewise, reported in 2020 that it had “the most ethnically diverse freshman admitted class in more than 30 years ”
Similarly, while the University of Michigan lawyers were complaining about the ban on racial preferences in Michigan’s amicus brief, the admissions office said its 2021 incoming class was “among the university’s most racially and ethnically diverse classes, with 37% of first-year students identifying as persons of color.” At the University of Michigan Law School, the class starting in the fall of 2022 had “a record-setting 42 percent people of color.” Black students constituted 10.4 percent of the entering class and Hispanic students 11.3 percent—shares that were both higher than when racial preferences were employed.
Some media coverage does take note of this discrepancy. One newspaper that did a much better job of providing balanced stories was the Los Angeles Times. In one article, a Times journalist reported the skepticism of university officials that race-neutral alternatives could produce racial diversity, and then added this context: “But [UC] campuses are making notable strides. Black and Latino students increased to 43% of the admitted first-year class of Californians for fall 2022 compared with about 20% before Proposition 209.” At UCLA, the Times noted, “by 2021, UCLA’s California first-year class included more Black students — 346, or 7.6 % — than their 1995 numbers of 259, or 7.3%. The same is true for Latino students, whose numbers grew to 1,185, or 26%, from 790, or 22.4%, during that same period.”
One newspaper that did a much better job of providing balanced stories was the Los Angeles Times.
After the U.S. Supreme Court banned racial preferences nationally in 2023, many (though not all) universities were able to preserve racial diversity, even as they adopted numerous race-neutral strategies that greatly expanded their socioeconomic diversity. UVA used new outreach and financial policies to increase its share of Pell Grant eligible students from 14 percent five years earlier to 24 percent. At Duke, new policies doubled the share of Pell students in just two years, from 11 percent to 22 percent. At Yale, which adopted a number of new programs, the admissions dean announced that “the class of 2028 includes the greatest representation of first-generation and low-income students on record.” Dartmouth also said it increased its share of first-generation college students to a “record-setting level,” and its share of Pell Grant recipients increased five percentage points in a single year to an “all-time high.”
A great deal of press attention was paid to some universities, such as MIT, which did see significant declines in racial diversity after the Supreme Court’s decision. But contradicting the gloomy predictions from the California and Michigan amicus briefs, and reporters at places like the Guardian, Reuters, The New York Times, NPR, and AP, many universities were able to preserve racial diversity. In particular, universities such as Dartmouth, the University of Virginia, Yale, and Duke that reported increases in socioeconomic diversity were also all highly successful in maintaining racial diversity.
But again, the good news seemed to get lost while the gloomy results got all the attention.
The good news seemed to get lost.
A very recent New York Times article, for example, focused on Amherst, which the newspaper reported had seen a shocking drop from 11% Black representation to 3%. A Black student is quoted as feeling unwelcome and upset because she “didn’t really see students who looked like me.” Only much later in the article does it turn out that when international students are included, the share of Black students at Amherst totals 9%. And these figures of Black representation do not including multiracial students with a Black parent — people like Barack Obama or Kamala Harris — who are widely considered in American society to be Black.
To its credit, the Times article did include an acknowledgement in passing that “Some schools saw only minor changes in their enrollment makeup.” But a reader has to click on the link to discover that the average drop in Black enrollment at 59 colleges was one percentage point – one-eighth the drop Amherst suffered.
Overall, the reporting on the efficacy of race-neutral strategies has been very disappointing.
Reporters are trained to be deeply skeptical of claims of institutions that have a strong financial interest at stake in a particular debate. But in the case of affirmative action, it may be that a well-meaning desire to be on the side of racial justice clouded the judgement of reporters. They failed see that perhaps in the face of a ban on racial preferences, universities could in fact maintain racial diversity – and increase economic diversity – though it would cost them more money to do so.Richard D. Kahlenberg is director of the American Identity Project at the Progressive Policy Institute and author of Class Matters: The Fight to Get Beyond Race Preferences, Reduce Inequality and Build Real Diversity at America’s Colleges. He served as an expert witness for the plaintiffs in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.
Previously from Kahlenberg
Single-family housing and education
Previously from The Grade
The business of online learning: a blind spot in mainstream higher education coverage
Take it from me; reflections on covering a hazing death at a Florida HBCU
What makes Casey Parks’ New Yorker HBCU story so good
‘Varsity Blues’ scandal reveals troubling blind spot in college admissions coverage
New York Times college admissions story exposes school fraud and media credulity
Shut up about Harvard
