Photo by Bob O’Connor

Admissions

BU Sees Drop in Black Students Enrolled after Supreme Court Affirmative Action Ruling

Officials say they will focus on recruitment activities, finding new pipelines to attract Black students, and building a more inclusive environment

The demographic data for Boston University’s Class of 2028, the first class admitted after the US Supreme Court’s ruling that banned colleges from considering race as a factor in the admissions process, revealed a sharp drop in Black students enrolled, BU officials say. The decline in enrolled undergraduate Black students from 9 percent to 3 percent was “concerning and disappointing,” BU President Melissa L. Gilliam says, and addressing it “will be a priority” for the University. 

She says BU’s focus must be on why the decline in Black students occurred and what steps can be taken to ensure that future classes continue to be broadly diverse. The focus, she says, will be a broad-based approach aimed at improving the ways the University connects with, and communicates with, potential students. 

“This goes beyond the admissions team,” Gilliam says. Some ideas include greater outreach through summer programs, creating more pipelines to attract a diverse student body, reviewing and seeking to improve BU’s financial aid program, and building an inclusive environment once students are admitted and arrive on campus.

BU’s newest class remains highly diverse, with 42 percent overall students of color, a slight decrease from 44 percent; 21 percent Asian-American students, an increase from 18 percent; 12 percent Hispanic students, a slight tick down from 13 percent; and 20 percent first-generation college students. The number of enrolled white students remained flat, at 29 percent. Additionally, 22 percent of the class are Pell Grant recipients (Pell grants are need-based aid awarded to mostly lower-income undergraduates; unlike loans, students do not repay Pell grants).

“We have another terrific incoming class. I am pleased by the number of Pell Grant–eligible and first-generation students,” the president says. “However, we will set up a task force to ensure we are implementing the full array of strategies to maintain the excellent and diverse classes we have attained in the past decade.”

One point that BU officials note is that over the past 10 years, when colleges and universities were permitted to factor race into their admissions decisions, the academic quality of each new incoming class improved. And at the same time, BU maintained a “strong commitment to enrolling a diverse student body,” says Kelly Walter (Wheelock’81), BU associate vice president for enrollment and dean of admissions.

But what declined this year was the enrollment of underrepresented students. After climbing from 17 percent in 2015 to 22 percent in 2023 under the previous guidelines, it fell back to 15 percent in 2024, when race was no longer allowed to be considered.

“That’s what’s especially disappointing for us,” Walter says.

“We understand what the law is and we will, of course, comply with the law,” adds Gilliam, who took over as BU president on July 1. She describes the court’s ruling as “deeply concerning,” and says “diversity is a core value of this institution, and we have to learn and improve.”

The way to do that, she says, is to focus on the “entire life cycle of students.” 

BU’s numbers (all of the data is preliminary, with final numbers expected in October) reflect a broader trend being seen nationwide in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision in June 2023 to end race-conscious admissions, which many colleges feared would have an impact on the makeup of their student body. In recent weeks, a number of colleges and universities in Massachusetts and nationwide have released numbers showing a decline in Black students enrolling coupled with increases in white and Asian students.

The court’s ruling came after Students for Fair Admissions, an anti–affirmative action group, sued Harvard and the University of North Carolina, arguing that their admissions practices were unlawful. By voting 6-3 that the admissions practices violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, the court essentially ended more than 40 years of legal precedent permitting race-conscious college admissions practices.

The view from Admissions

In a joint interview with BU Today, Walter and Christine McGuire, vice president and associate provost for enrollment and student administration, say that they look at BU’s Class of 2028 through two lenses: how did the court ruling impact the applicant pool, and how did it impact which students BU admitted. (The race of an applicant was not available to the admission officers who were evaluating applications, and Walter’s team reviewed the racial composition of the class only after students had submitted deposits and made their enrollment decisions.)

“I was very pleased with our applicant pool,” Walter says. “In terms of size, scope, diversity, the applicant pool was very similar to what we saw in previous years. There was an increase in the number of applications from Hispanic and Latinx students and the percentage of Black students who applied for admission was nearly identical to last year. This reflects my team’s commitment to recruiting students from diverse backgrounds, and it also suggests that the Supreme Court decision did not have an impact on a student’s desire to attend BU.”

However, the Supreme Court’s ruling was not focused on recruitment or outreach or engagement, Walter notes. It was about the admissions process and how colleges and universities determine which students would be offered a seat in their class. In making these decisions for the Class of 2028, BU’s Admissions team was no longer allowed to consider race as one of many factors in shaping the class. This change resulted in a drop in the number of Black students enrolling.

“We are very disappointed by that result,” McGuire says. “We care deeply about diversity in every sense. We believe in having a diverse classroom filled with students from a diversity of backgrounds and lived experiences.” 

Walter’s office surveys students every year, she says, and there is one message they hear over and over: “Diversity on a campus community is one of their top five priorities in selecting a college. Students want to be surrounded by people from diverse backgrounds, with different perspectives, and who have had varied life experiences. Students clearly understand that diversity enriches the educational experience for everyone.”

The same goes for BU faculty, she says, who value the “richness of the interactions in the classroom.”

After the court’s ruling, Walter says, she and her team knew there was a possibility that the racial composition of the class would be impacted. But at the same school that in 1864 graduated the first Black woman from a medical school [Rebecca Lee Crumpler] and civil rights icons like Martin Luther King Jr. (GRS’55, Hon.’59) and Howard Thurman (Hon.’67), she says, “We hoped this would not be the outcome. Diversity is crucial to BU’s DNA.”

Echoing Gilliam, McGuire says a priority now is on strengthening the pipelines into BU and creating “more direct pipelines run by BU,” in addition to the existing partnerships BU has with outside organizations, such as the Posse Foundation and Questbridge.

“We are excited about that,” McGuire says. “We want to honor the tradition of a university that has always been open to anyone.”

Some steps are already underway, Walter says. Her staff spent the summer evaluating BU’s recruitment and outreach strategy, reevaluating where staff members travel, what types of schools they visit, and reviewing all messaging and marketing tools. “It’s incredibly important to me that we move forward and prioritize building a diverse community of students at BU,” she says.