The prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology says it has recorded a sharp fall in admissions from minorities, following last year’s Supreme Court decision to end affirmative action, the BBC reports.
MIT said 16% of its new intake identify as being from a minority − down 10 percentage points in one year. Its figures show that this year, the percentage of black students enrolled dropped to 5% from 15%, and the percentage of Hispanic and Latino students dropped to 11% from 16%.
White students make up 37% of the new class, compared with 38% last year, while the percentage of Asian American students rose to 47% from 40%.
Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that university admission schemes promoting diversity violated the US Constitution’s equal protection clause.
Stu Schmill, MIT’s dean of admissions, said he expected a fall and “that is what happened”. He said he had “no doubt that we left out many well-qualified, well-matched applicants… who would have excelled”.
Sally Kornbluth, the president of MIT, said in an announcement that the new student intake was “as always, outstanding”.
“What it does not bring, as a consequence of last year’s Supreme Court decision,” she added, “is the same degree of broad racial and ethnic diversity that the MIT community has worked together to achieve over the past several decades.”
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