Must the End of Affirmative Action Mean Fewer Black Students in Elite Universities?

A guest essay by Robert Cherry

Last week, news broke that black and Latino enrollment at MIT dropped significantly this year as compared to years previous. MIT’s reintroduction of required SAT scores in applications and the Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions decision are likely responsible for this marked shift. Black student admissions at Amherst and Tufts—both of them highly selective schools—have met the same fate.

I’ve long advocated for the value of testing in higher ed admissions, and I applauded the SFFA result, even though I—and pretty much everyone paying attention to the issue—also predicted that it would result in fewer black students being admitted to elite schools. I don’t think it’s a good thing that there are fewer black students at these schools, but I but I also do not think it’s unfair.

The question now is, with the playing field more level than it has been in many, many years, how to make black students truly competitive in the college admissions race. This is a tough problem that involves far more than better test prep and tutoring (though it involves that, too). My friend Robert Cherry, a distinguished economist, has been studying these issues for years. He wrote in with an essay that suggests some paths forward that will help black students compete in this new environment.

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Must the End of Affirmative Action Mean Fewer Black Students in Elite Universities and Programs?

by Robert Cherry

MIT reported its incoming freshman class—the first since the Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions decision banning race-conscious affirmative action—will have fewer minority students than in recent years. In particular, the share of Latino students declined from 15% to 11% with an even more drastic change in black enrollment: from 16% to 5%. Both the New York Times and Chronicle of Higher Education focused on the lack of high-level preparatory courses in the schools students from these groups attended, inferring that this is the reason that so few black students have SAT scores above 600, the minimum necessary for strong performance in STEM areas. In particular, Brookings documented that only 12% of black test takers in 2015 (when scores were similar to 2023) scored at least 600 on the math section compared to 15%, 28%, and 54% of Latino, white, and Asian test takers, respectively. 

The [MS1] substandard math scores of black and Latino fourth graders predict that few of them will be prepared to take demanding courses like calculus when they progress through the school system. Yet many liberals ignore these signals. Brookings documents that, in 2015, more than two-thirds of black students who took calculus were not proficient in math as measured by the national NAEP scores compared to an overall 30% rate. They ignored the widespread absenteeism and the lack of time spent on studying and homework. That is, they follow the liberal approach: never focusing on the personal behaviors or family environments that might hold black students back.

By contrast, conservatives like Glenn Loury are more direct. Recently, he posted on X, “If a poor Asian kid living in a 3-room apartment with four siblings can ace the test, black kids can do it, too. We just need to put our heads down and do the work.”

Ivy League schools and elite medical and law schools have been so focused on raising black enrollment because it is the only way to close the black-white wealth gap. On average, white families have four times the wealth of black families. However, most black and white families have little wealth. If black families in the lower half of the black distribution had the same wealth as white families in the lower half of the white distribution, 97% of the racial wealth gap would remain. This gap is overwhelmingly driven by the disparities between the wealthiest black and white families. Over two-thirds of the racial gap reflects the differences in assets held by the top ten percent of households in each group.

Faculty at Ivy League schools and prestigious medical and law schools are overwhelmingly among the wealthiest whites. They no doubt believe that black wealth would increase dramatically if more black students attended their schools. Many elite medical schools have begun to rely less on MCAT exams, most noticeably at UCLA’s medical school. Whistleblowers there have reported that under Jennifer Lucero’s tenure as admissions director, which began in 2020, factors like grades and other academic qualifications are virtually disregarded for “underrepresented minorities.” One whistleblower said Lucero once complained about a black student not getting into the school based on grades."Did you not know African-American women are dying at a higher rate than everybody else?" Lucero allegedly told an admissions officer. "The candidate's scores shouldn't matter," she said, because "we need people like this in the medical school."

For many, these admissions decisions explained the poor performance of UCLA medical students. Within three years of Lucero's hiring, UCLA dropped from 6th to 18th place in U.S. News & World Report's rankings for medical research. And in some of the cohorts she admitted, more than 50 percent of students failed standardized tests on emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics.

There was also concern that black students were not being accepted into the most prestigious specialties. Often this was based on their weak scores on the Step 1 medical scores taken by second year students. To eliminate this hurdle, according to Medscape, medical schools stopped grading the exam on a three-digit measure in 2022; it is now pass/fail. For competitive specialties, such as dermatology, neurosurgery, or orthopedic surgery, there were unofficial score cutoffs. Only students with a certain Step 1 score or higher were considered for certain programs. Lena Josifi, MD, a fourth-year orthopedic surgery resident at Southern Illinois University, told Medscape, "I was told if you [scored] under 240, you should be wary of applying [to orthopedic surgery programs]." She heard that the benchmark continued to inch upward after she took the exam in 2017. "For comparison, the national average was around a 230 or 220" at the time, Josifi said. The pass/fail model will surely allow more black medical students into competitive specialties. But that comes at the expense of lowering standards across the board and allowing doctors to practice in fields for which they may not be equipped.

In the long run, a substantial closing of the race enrollment disparities can occur if more efforts were made to aid the educational attainment of elementary-school black students.  Crucial are programs to directly aid struggling parents. Visiting nursing programs have proven effect with first-time young mothers as have other in-house programs to aid in school readiness. These initiatives have proven more successful than programs outside the home like universal pre-K.  Once of school-age, black and Latino urban students flourish in charter schools. These and other effective programs are documented in my book, The State of the Black Family: Sixty Years of Tragedies and Failures: And New Initiatives Offering Hope.

In the short run, there are effective alternatives to lowering standards that could modestly increase black participation in demanding fields. Thirty years ago, the US Army faced a similar situation: it needed more black officers, but the current educational policies severely limited the share of black students who passed officer training entrance exams or the qualifications for West Point. In response, the Army initiated developmental affirmative action programs. For officer training exams, they initiated paid summer programs at the historically black colleges to prepare students for the exam. At Fort Lee, the Army ran year-long fully paid educational enhancement programs for promising black students desiring admission to West Point. Both programs were highly successful, leading to a dramatic increase in black enrollment in officer training programs and West Point while keeping admissions standards high.

Today, there are a number of similar developmental programs. Fisk and Vanderbilt run a joint master’s program that prepares black and Latino students for PhD science programs. University of Pennsylvania admits a number of students from the historically black colleges without the MCAT by requiring certain coursework and training at the university. This approach can aid enrollment without lowering standards and should be implemented by more schools.

There are relatively simple—though by no means easy—things struggling young black men and women can do to improve their prospects in the world. They can work harder at overcoming the modest barriers faced and embrace the success sequence to escape poverty: complete high school, then work full-time, then marry, and then have children. Those concerned about these young people should do all we can to help them in this.

The main sources of disparities at the highest levels are structural impediments, not personal behavioral deficits. Melissa Kearney has written persuasively about the benefits of two-parent households, while Richard Reeves documents the obstacles faced by young boys, particularly those raised in households without their biological fathers. These impediments justify policies to aid the advancement of young children so that many more will have the skills and behaviors necessary to be competitive in the higher academic reaches. That process must start much earlier than middle school and high school. This is why the in-house policies mentioned should be a central focus if we desire to narrow the racial wealth gaps.

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