Harvard’s student body is becoming more and more Asian in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision making race-based affirmative action illegal.
The most recent class to graduate this past spring was 27.6% Asian. The newly admitted class of 2030 has reached a record high of 43.2% Asian students.
The shift represents justice for Asian students and families who, until the Supreme Court overturned race-based affirmative action in 2023, had been unfairly shut out of elite institutions because they didn’t represent the “right” kind of diversity.
For years, in the name of “racial justice,” America’s premier colleges and universities discriminated against certain teenagers racially. But now meritocracy is on the rebound in academia.
In June 2023, the Supreme Court voted 6 to 2 to overturn race based affirmative action after legal strategist Edward Blum and his organization, Students for Fair Admissions, sued Harvard University for allegedly discriminatory admissions practices.
The court found that Harvard’s admissions process violated the civil rights of students, especially Asian-American students. In particular, it was alleged that admissions officers systematically rated Asian students lower on subjective personality-based metrics when compared with other groups.
“The Supreme Court opinion in Students for Fair Admissions ended an unconstitutional and polarizing factor in our public lives,” Blum told The Post. “There’s a lot of gratitude [from Asian American families]. I’ve received probably two dozen emails [in the past day] about these new numbers from Harvard.”
Another interesting trend to come out of the class of 2030’s data is the tiny share of students intending to study humanities — representing just 11% of the class, compared with 16% as recently as the class of 2027.
The incoming proportion of students studying engineering and natural sciences has held steady in recent years, hovering around 50%, while social sciences like psychology and economics have grown most dramatically, from 29.8% of the class of 2027 to 38% of the class of 2030.
The Harvard Crimson analyzed the racial breakdown of incoming classes over time and found that, before the Supreme Court ruling, the percentage of Asian students was hovering in the mid- to low-20s. After race-based affirmative action was overturned, those figures soared to 37%, then 41%, and now 43%.
The share of black and Hispanic students, the intended beneficiaries of race-based affirmative action practices, fell over the same time period. According to the Crimson, the percentage of black students has fallen for the third consecutive year, down another 2.2 percentage points this year to 9.3%.
Among the class of 2027 — the last class admitted to Harvard before the Supreme Court intervened — 18% of students were black.
The rest of the Ivy League had more mixed results this year. At Yale, the percentage of black students dropped 2 points to 10%, the lowest proportion in the past decade. But Princeton’s incoming black student population rose from 5% to 8.4%.
According to Blum’s estimations when he brought the suit, about 50% of the students at Harvard would be Asian in a purely meritocratic system — not too far off from the 43.2% figure for the class of 2030.
Chris Rim, a boutique college admissions consultant and CEO of Command Education, agrees that the numbers are approaching something that looks like justice for Asian American families.
“It lines up with what we expected, once race-conscious admissions ended at Harvard and they brought back required test scores,” he said. Harvard reinstated required standardized testing in 2024. “I expect that the [demographic proportions] will settle within the coming cycles. I think we’re closer to a plateau than people assume.”
Before the Supreme Court decision, Rim says Asian parents would often ask him, “What’s the point of even applying to Harvard? The odds are stacked against us.” But now their faith in justice is restored.
“What I’m hearing from Asian American families now is hope,” he said. “Just yesterday, an Asian American parent at Phillips Exeter told me these numbers made them more confident that their son’s years of hard work will get a fair evaluation.”
Yet another year of gains for Asian students at Harvard is just further proof that the school’s years-long endeavor to diversify their student body advantaged certain minority groups at the expense of others — and treated high school students as members of groups, rather than sovereign individuals.
Affirmative action was a political project of admissions officers, but it rendered hardworking kids collateral damage on the basis of their skin color. Diversity is a noble ideal, but not if it requires systemic discrimination to achieve.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
