The College Fix

MIT’s class of 2028 has fewer black and Hispanic students while Asian enrollment increased

Newly released data from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reveals a significant shift in the school’s racial demographic makeup following a Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action.

The class of 2028 is the first cohort admitted to MIT under the new guidelines set by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which prohibits considering race as a factor in college admissions, as previously reported by The College Fix.

Now that MIT has eliminated its race-based admissions practices, Asian enrollment has increased from 41 percent to 47 percent, according to MIT data.

Additionally, the proportion of black, Hispanic, Native American, and Pacific Islander students has declined. While these groups typically make up about 25 percent of MIT’s student body, they represent only around 16 percent of the incoming class, Stu Schmill, dean of admissions at the school, told MIT News this week.

The percentage of black students experienced the most significant decline, dropping from 13 percent to 5 percent. Meanwhile, the proportion of white students remained largely unchanged, according to the data.

“Following the [affirmative action] decision, we are unable to use race in the same way, and that change is reflected in the outcome for the Class of 2028,” Schmill told MIT News. “Indeed, we did not solicit race or ethnicity information from applicants this year, so we don’t have data on the applicant pool.” 

Schmill also expressed concern that the school “left out many well-qualified, well-matched applicants from historically under-represented backgrounds who in the past we would have admitted — and who would have excelled.”

MIT president Sally Kornbluth (pictured) also lamented the decrease in racial diversity within the new class in a video statement earlier this month. “The class is, as always, outstanding across multiple dimensions and will…like last year’s class, and those before it…bring us an inspiring influx of new talents, interests and viewpoints,” she said. 

“But what it does not bring, as a consequence of last year’s Supreme Court decision, is the same degree of broad racial and ethnic diversity that the MIT community has worked together to achieve over the past several decades,” Kornbluth said.

While MIT’s leadership expressed concerns about the reduced racial diversity in the incoming class, others argue that the new admissions process is a step toward fairness in higher education.

Heritage Foundation visiting fellow Adam Kissel told the Washington Examiner the new statistics make it “hard to escape the conclusion that MIT was engaging in unlawful discrimination.”

Students for Fair Admissions president Edward Blum celebrated the change in the school’s admissions process. “Every student admitted to the class of 2028 at MIT will know that they were accepted only based upon their outstanding academic and extracurricular achievements, not the color of their skin,” he told the New York Times.

MORE: UNC Chapel Hill works to fully abolish race-based admissions

IMAGE: Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Youtube

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