Those anticipating a spike in Asian American enrollment at Harvard following the end of affirmative action will be disappointed.
The Harvard Gazette reports enrollment remained steady with 37% of this year’s admitted class identifying as Asian American. That’s the same as last year.
1% said they are Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. Again-that’s no change.
Opponents of affirmative action, including the Asian American group 80-20, had expressed optimism that enrollment would increase after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology saw its Asian American admits increase by 7 percentage points to 40%.
“The % admissions of Asian Americans by elite colleges will roughly DOUBLE from the year when we first sued Harvard in 2014. 80-20 supporters can be immensely proud of this fantastic news,” the group wrote in an email to its subscriber list just last week.
However, it hasn’t exactly worked out that way.
Enrollment of African Americans at Harvard declined four percentage points to 14% and Hispanics saw an uptick of two percentage points to 16%. White enrollment increased from 29% to 32%, according to the Harvard Crimson.
Both Yale and Princeston saw a decline in Asian American admits this year. Enrollment dropped to 24% from 30% the previous year at Yale and at Princeton, the class saw a 2% decline among Asian American admits to 24%.
In response to the Supreme Court ruling overturning Harvard’s race conscious admission policy, the University no longer allows admissions staff to access demographic information, reported Harvard Magazine.
Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi Hoekstra issued the following statement:
“As the University’s leadership asserted when the Court’s decision was announced, the change in law did not change our fundamental commitments. We know that diversity measured on multiple axes drives academic excellence and shapes the transformational educational environment of Harvard College for our students. We will continue to work tirelessly to pull down barriers to a Harvard education, and, in compliance with the law, to deepen even further our commitment to broad-based diversity. As we nurture students as both scholars and leaders for a complex world, one that requires their innovation and creativity, we owe them nothing less.”
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Do the schools still use a subjective video interview or in person interview as an admissions factor? That way they can still discriminate by flunking Asians on a phony “personality test” and become aware that the candidate is Asian.