Weekly Briefing: How many colleges does the Supreme Court's admissions decision affect?

It turns out that selective colleges are a very small part of higher education. [Weekly Briefing Logo]( You can also [read this newsletter on the web](. Or, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, [unsubscribe](. How many colleges does the Supreme Court’s decision actually affect? Last month the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that race-conscious admissions is unconstitutional. The court cases in question examined the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Harvard College, two institutions where most applicants won’t get in. Many highly selective colleges have used race as one factor in determining whether a student will be admitted, and these institutions draw an outsize amount of attention in the continuing debate about the role of race in higher education. But most colleges aren’t that selective. Though it’s hard to definitively count which colleges use race when making admissions decisions, examining which colleges are the most selective can show the practice’s reach. In the U.S. there were 3,160 degree-granting institutions in the fall of 2021, the most recent year for which federal data is available. Of those 3,100 or so colleges, a Chronicle analysis found, only 68 if them admit less than 25 percent of applicants. These institutions are considered selective, but they make up only 2 percent of all degree-granting institutions in the whole country. Undergraduate enrollment at those colleges is just over 480,000 students. Even before the justices weighed in, nine states had already banned race-conscious admissions at public colleges. The bans have prohibited about 350 colleges from using race, and that has resulted in big drops in enrollment of Black and Hispanic students at highly selective public colleges in those states — think the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. So where are most students of color actually enrolled? To start, institutions that admit at least 25 percent of applicants enroll larger shares of underrepresented-minority students than do the more-selective institutions. Two-year colleges enroll a notably higher share of minority students than do four-year colleges. At community colleges, the share of enrolled Black students was 14 percent, and enrolled Hispanic students constituted 27 percent in the 2021 fall semester. While the race-conscious admissions decision occupies at a lot of head space in American minds, the numbers tell another story: Highly selective institutions and their admissions practices are only a sliver of the American higher-education picture. [Take a look at our Audrey Williams June and Jacquelyn Elias’s full data visualization here.]( ADVERTISEMENT NEWSLETTER [Sign Up for the Teaching Newsletter]( Find insights to improve teaching and learning across your campus. Delivered on Thursdays. 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