Harvard University’s use of race-conscious admissions was upheld in federal court on Tuesday, after it was sued by an anti-affirmative-action nonprofit group that accused the institution of systematically discriminating against Asian American applicants.
Since 2005, Harvard’s incoming classes have consistently been more diverse than those entering all other four-year public and private nonprofit baccalaureate, master’s, and doctoral institutions. While Harvard lags a few percentage points behind those other institutions in the representation of blacks and Hispanics, it far outpaces them in its representation of Asian Americans.
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Harvard University’s use of race-conscious admissions was upheld in federal court on Tuesday, after it was sued by an anti-affirmative-action nonprofit group that accused the institution of systematically discriminating against Asian American applicants.
Since 2005, Harvard’s incoming classes have consistently been more diverse than those entering all other four-year public and private nonprofit baccalaureate, master’s, and doctoral institutions. While Harvard lags a few percentage points behind those other institutions in the representation of blacks and Hispanics, it far outpaces them in its representation of Asian Americans.
Note: Percentages of racial and ethnic groups for Harvard are compared with data from 1,475 degree-granting four-year public or private nonprofit institutions in the United States that were still open in 2017, that participate in federal Title IV financial-aid programs, and that fall into the following 2015 Carnegie Classifications of Institutions of Higher Education: baccalaureate, master’s, or doctoral. “Hispanic” students may be of any race, and they are excluded from other categories. New racial/ethnic categories of “Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander” and “two or more races” were introduced by the U.S. Department of Education in 2008, but institutional reporting using those categories did not become mandatory until 2010. “Asian” includes Pacific Islanders in the data shown for 2005 to 2009. Percentages are based on fall enrollment figures of degree-seeking full-time, first-time undergraduate students for each year. “Other” includes smaller racial- and ethnic-minority groups (American Indians, and, from 2010 on, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders, and two or more races), nonresident aliens (international students), and people of unknown race or ethnicity.
Source: Chronicle analysis of U.S. Department of Education data
Ruth Hammond is editor of the Chronicle Focus collections, the Chronicle List, and the Almanac; follow her on Twitter @RuthEHammond, or email her at ruth.hammond@chronicle.com. Audrey Williams June is a senior reporter who writes about the academic workplace, faculty pay, and work-life balance in academe. Contact her at audrey.june@chronicle.com, or follow her on Twitter @chronaudrey.
As senior editor, Ruth Hammond was responsible for the weekly Chronicle List, which compared higher-education institutions on various measures; the annual Almanac issue of data on higher education; the Chronicle Focus series of collections of articles from The Chronicle’s archives; and the monthly Bookshelf page.
Audrey Williams June is the news-data manager at The Chronicle. She explores and analyzes data sets, databases, and records to uncover higher-education trends, insights, and stories. Email her at audrey.june@chronicle.com, or follow her on Twitter @audreywjune.
