How Diverse Are America’s Campuses?

For almost five decades, many selective colleges have used race-conscious admissions policies to increase racial diversity on their campuses. High-profile debates about the practice — used by a small slice of institutions — have been around for just as long.

Before the end of the month, the Supreme Court, with its 6-to-3 conservative supermajority, is expected to put an end to the practice. Colleges have begun to examine race-neutral alternatives to affirmative action, which has already been banned in nine states.

Although the court’s impending actions have brought outsized attention to the makeup of undergraduate enrollment at elite colleges, non-white students are still underrepresented, relative to their share of the population, on college campuses across the nation, with the exception, in many cases, of Asian students and those of two or more races. According to recent research, renewed efforts to diversify higher education have fallen short.

But the top-line numbers for undergraduate enrollment by race and ethnicity hide some diverging trajectories among institutions and students. Overall, less-selective colleges enroll more underrepresented students than selective institutions do. At two-year colleges, the share of minority students is notably higher than at four-year institutions.

Here’s a closer look at what federal data says about the race and ethnicity of students at two- and four-year public and private nonprofit colleges: