What The UW's Efforts on Diversity say about Affirmative Action Mandates

In June of 2023, when the verdict of “Student Admission v. Harvard,” a landmark decision by the US Supreme Court on race-based affirmative action in college admissions, was made public, the consequences were clear. No public college in the nation, as decided by the Supreme Court, could use race as a criterion in their admissions process. What was made less clear was how the ruling would impact students. Was a world without affirmative action a step forward for those living on campus, or a step back?

“This is a very, very consequential decision of the highest court of the land,” said Lee Bollinger, President of Columbia University, interviewed by the school’s student newspaper. “And we are in really new territory in how to address what is really a terrible past and an ongoing present.”

The negative outcomes were quick to grab attention. MIT reported a sudden 10% drop-off in Black/African-American enrollment. Harvard reported a sharp drop in Black and Hispanic enrollment in the Law School. Similar drops at smaller schools like Tufts and Amherst, alongside sharp rises in white enrollment, also rang national alarm bells.

Yet the largest public college in the northwest, the University of Washington, tells a different story. The UW, which hasn’t used affirmative-action criteria for decades, has deployed tools to keep black enrollment steady and even growing a bit. If you look at UW’s Black enrollment over the last decade, you’d see that change has been slow and gradual, but ultimately positive. (The chart below counts UW undergraduates.)



https://www.postalley.org/2024/12/19/what-the-uws-efforts-on-diversity-say-about-affirmative-action-mandates/