The Supreme Court’s Admissions Ruling Mainly Affects Selective Colleges. They’re a Tiny Slice of Higher Ed.

The lawsuits that ultimately led to the Supreme Court’s long-awaited decision on race-conscious admissions centered on two colleges where most prospective students who apply won’t get in.

At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, just two in 10 applicants were admitted for the fall of 2021, according to the most recent federal data. The odds of enrolling at Harvard were even slimmer: The Ivy League institution had an admission rate of 4 percent.

Institutions like them — selective enough to need to use race as a factor in admissions to diversify their student bodies — have garnered outsize attention in the long-running debate over affirmative action’s role in higher education. That’s in part because the road to high-level positions in government and industry often includes a stop at a highly selective institution. One example: Five out of six living U.S. presidents earned undergraduate degrees at colleges that admit less than 15 percent of applicants.

Still, in the landscape of colleges and universities, highly selective institutions are far outnumbered by those with much higher acceptance rates. Most students never participate in an admissions process that considers race in the manner of UNC and Harvard. Although it’s hard to say definitively which colleges use race in some way when making admissions decisions, selectivity is a useful lens through which to view the practice’s real reach, as the following data visualization shows.

In the fall of 2021, according to the most recent federal data available, there were 3,160 degree-granting two- and four-year institutions. They enrolled about 15.4 million undergraduate students.

However, a look at those institutions by selectivity shows the few colleges most affected by the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Of the more than 3,000 colleges in The Chronicle’s analysis, only 68 of them — that’s 2 percent — admit less than 25 percent of applicants. The undergraduate enrollment at those institutions is just over 480,000.

Meanwhile, more than 2,900 colleges admit at least half of their applicants. Those institutions enrolled over 14 million undergraduates in the fall of 2021.

Another factor that further shrinks the universe of colleges affected by the ruling is that nine states have already banned race-conscious admissions at public institutions. The bans in those states cover about 350 institutions. The statewide bans have resulted in the enrollment of fewer Black and Hispanic students at highly selective public colleges like the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

Colleges that admit at least 25 percent of applicants enroll larger shares of underrepresented-minority students than do their more-selective peers.

There’s a six-percentage-point gap between the shares of Black students and a seven-percentage-point difference between their shares of Hispanic students.

At two-year colleges, the share of minority students is notably higher than at four-year institutions.

For example, the share of Black and Hispanic students at community colleges was 14 percent and 27 percent, respectively.

The fate of race-conscious admissions is deeply significant, as is the proportion of minority students at highly selective institutions. But the data is a reminder that efforts to diversify higher education stretch far beyond those struck down this week by the Supreme Court.

Methodology

This analysis considered more than 3,000 degree-granting institutions in the United States that participate in the Title IV student-aid program. The percentages by race include the total minus students who identified as nonresidents or of unknown race. “Underrepresented minority” is the sum of students who are American Indian/Alaska Native, Black, Hispanic, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and two or more races. Only institutions that received more than 50 applications for first-time, first-year students for 2021-22 and had 150 or more undergraduates in the fall of 2021 are included. The percentages may not add up to 100 percent because of rounding.