BLACK ENROLLMENT DROPS AT COLLEGES

Trend began after justices' ban on affirmative action in admissions

- COLLIN BINKLEY

HARVARD'S Black enrollment has waned for a second consecutive year, going from 18% of freshmen in 2023 to 11.5% this fall.

After decades of gradual growth, the number of Black students enrolling at many elite colleges has dropped in the two years since the Supreme Court banned affirmative action in admissions, leaving some campuses with Black populations as small as 2% of their freshman class, according to an Associated Press analysis.

New enrollment figures from 20 selective colleges provide mounting evidence of a backslide in Black enrollment. On almost all of the campuses, Black students account for a smaller share of new students this fall than in 2023. At Princeton and some others, the number of new Black students has fallen by nearly half.

Princeton sophomore Christopher Quire said he was stunned when a recent welcome event for Black freshmen filled just half the room. Last year it filled up so fast they needed to find extra chairs.

"If this trend continues, in three years this campus will be as Black as it was in the civil rights era," said Quire, a member of the campus' Black Student Union. "It feels like tying our feet together and telling us to restart."

Some colleges downplayed trends spanning just two years, yet they raise questions about who should get a spot at elite campuses that open doors to the upper echelons of American life. It also emerges as the Trump administration unleashes a new campaign to police colleges it believes have quietly factored race into admissions decisions in defiance of the 2023 high court ruling.

Under scrutiny, colleges slower to release data