MIT Reports Decline in Minority Student Enrollment Post-Affirmative Action Ruling

It appears that the number of minority students at the prestigious university has decreased.

Members of historically under-represented racial and ethnic groups have recorded a sharp fall in admissions at MIT following a Supreme Court decision to end affirmative action, according to the BBC.

According to MIT, only 16% of its new intake identifies as Black, Hispanic, Native American, and/or Pacific Islander, down 10 percentage points from last year.

In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled that university admissions schemes promoting diversity “violated the US Constitution’s equal protection clause.”

MIT’s dean of admissions, Stu Schmill, said he expected a fall and “that is what happened.”

MIT is actually the first major university to publish information on intake since the court ruling transpired.

The president of MIT, Sally Kornluth, said in an announcement that the new student intake was “as always, outstanding.”

"What it does not bring, as a consequence of last year's Supreme Court decision," she added, "Is the same degree of broad racial and ethnic diversity that the MIT community has worked together to achieve over the past several decades."

Close to 25% of MIT’s enrolling undergraduate students have identified as Black, Hispanic, and/or Native American and Pacific Islander in recent years, Schmill said.

These figures highlight that in 2024, the percentage of Black students enrolled dropped to just 5% percent from 15%, and the percentage of Hispanic and Latino students dropped to 11% from 16%.

Meanwhile, white students make up 37% of the new class, compared with 38% last year. The percentage of Asian American students rose to 47% from 40%.

Asian Americans, though, are not included in MIT’s category of students “historically under-represented” in STEM subjects, which Schmill said to be a “crude standard.”

Still, the new admissions figures do not makeup 100%, as some students are categorized as more than one race or ethnicity.

According to the 2023 census data, more than 40% of the US population identifies as a race other than white.

Schmill said the intake in the year before the court decision had the largest amount of under-represented minority students in MIT’s history.

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