Harvard’s latest enrollment data shows that the share of Black students in its incoming class has fallen for the third consecutive year.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned race-conscious admissions in 2023, that share has dropped from 18% to 9.3%—nearly 50%. Over the same period, the share of Asian American students in the incoming class rose from 30% to 43.2%.
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Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard 2023
In 2014, a group called Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) filed lawsuits against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina over admission policies it called discriminatory. Led by conservative legal activist Edward Blum, SFFA argued that Harvard University was intentionally discriminating against Asian American students. During the admissions process, Asian American students were rated highly on academics and test scores. However, SFFA argued that Harvard assigned them “arbitrarily low personality scores.”
Harvard and UNC rebutted these claims, arguing that their use of race in the selection process was completely legal under Supreme Court rulings. In the 1978 case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the court ruled that fixed racial quotas are unconstitutional. But it said that universities could look at an applicant’s race as one of many factors in building a diverse student body. The court upheld that approach in 2003 in Grutter v. Bollinger, saying campus diversity provides substantial educational benefits to all students. As a result, admissions offices could use race as a minor “plus factor” when assessing applicants.
At first, lower courts ruled in favor of Harvard and UNC. But SFFA kept appealing until the Supreme Court agreed to hear the cases in 2022. In a landmark 2023 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that race-conscious admissions programs violate the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
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The Impact on Enrollment Data
Three years after the ruling, the impact is becoming evident. This year, the share of Black students at Harvard has dropped by nearly half. Other Universities report similar declines. At Yale University, the incoming class has the lowest share of African American students in the past 10 first-year cohorts. Research on the enrollment demographics across 29 elite institutions found that 19 reported a drop in Black student enrollment between 2022 and 2025.
Julie Park, a professor of education at the University of Maryland, studied the impact of these declining Black enrollment rates. She found that enrollment of underrepresented minority (URM) students is “cascading” from elite institutions and Ivy League schools to state colleges and universities. “While the negative impact of SFFA is most obvious in the elite sector, there are negative repercussions across the broader higher education system,” Park said. “Over time, more URM –particularly Black students– will likely end up in institutions where they are more vulnerable to adverse outcomes.”
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Maintaining Diversity on Campus
With race no longer permissible to consider during admission, Harvard has expanded its efforts to reach low-income students. Wealth gaps in the U.S. track closely with race after generations of systemic discrimination. Class-based approaches can help widen access for some Black students.
For the 2025-2026 academic year, Harvard expanded its financial aid so that attendance is completely free for families with annual incomes of $100,000 or less. Families earning $200,000 or less pay no tuition. Before the change, that level of aid went only to families earning under $85,000. The incoming class this fall was also the first admitted through a partnership with QuestBridge, a nonprofit that pairs strong low-income applicants with selective colleges. In this class, 39% of students pay no tuition, Harvard reported.
While class-based aid can open the door for low-income students, Black enrollment has still fallen in the two classes admitted since Harvard expanded it. The next admission cycle will show whether its new policies can change the trend.
