Minorities Reap the Benefit When Affirmative Action Ends

Colleges across America see the first signs of a repeat of what happened in California after 1996

By Jason L. Riley. Excerpts:

"Nevertheless, because admissions offices can no longer use double standards to select black applicants, a decline in black enrollment at the nation’s highest-ranked colleges was to be expected. That’s what happened in California and other states that prohibited colleges from choosing applicants based on race before last year’s Fair Admissions ruling. In the Golden State, where Proposition 209 banned affirmative action in 1996, the initial reduction in black and Hispanic students was more pronounced on the most selective campuses, UC Berkeley and UCLA. But as the New York Times later reported, “eventually the numbers rebounded” and “a similar pattern of decline and recovery followed at other state universities that eliminated race as a factor in admissions.”

More important, however, black graduation rates rose sharply after racial preferences ended and more students were funneled into schools throughout the University of California system that better matched their academic qualifications. The obsession with the racial composition of first-year students at elite schools is misplaced. The more consequential metric is what percentage of black students in the Class of 2028 make it to senior year and graduate with a degree in their intended major.

Before California’s prohibition on racial preferences, black enrollment at UC Berkeley had been growing, yet only about a quarter of black students were graduating within five years, compared with two-thirds of white students. The end of racial preferences prompted a redistribution of students. System-wide, the number of black and Hispanic freshmen who graduated in four years increased by more than 50%, as did the number who earned STEM degrees and graduated with grade-point averages of 3.5 or higher.

Blacks and Hispanics admitted to the UC system’s most selective schools likewise benefited. “Prop 209 changed the minority experience at UCLA from one of frequent failure to much more consistent success,” wrote Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor Jr., in their empirical analysis of affirmative action policies. “The school granted as many bachelor’s degrees to minority students as it did before Prop 209 while admitting many fewer minority students and thus dramatically reducing failure and drop-out rates.”"