| You might have seen the news last week that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released demographic data for its incoming class of 2028 — the first group of students admitted after the US Supreme Court outlawed the consideration of race in college admissions last year. The share of Black students dropped from 13% in recent years to 5%. Hispanic and Latinx student enrollment also fell, from 15% to 11%. White enrollment held more or less steady (technically there was a small 1% dip) while Asian students jumped from 41% to 47%. Wow, that's fascinating, I thought when I saw the numbers. I wonder what other schools have reported. It turns out the answer is: not much. "Racial data has not been included in any of the class profiles for schools we look at this year, except MIT," says Hannah Skaran, a senior admissions consultant for the private college admissions advisory company, Ivy Coach. Now granted, the school year is just getting underway and many universities probably haven't gotten their reports ready yet. But according to Skaran, it's taking longer than usual. "Traditionally, we start seeing stuff in May when students are accepted," says Skaran, who is also a former admissions officer for the University of Chicago. "That hasn't happened this year." The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (JBHE) has also been having trouble compiling data. For 30 consecutive years, the JBHE published Black enrollment figures for the top 25 leading research universities and liberal arts colleges. Schools provided information to the journal voluntarily. "When we started the list in 1993, schools were very willing to not only release their enrollment data but also applicant data: how many Black students applied to college or university, how many were accepted, of those accepted how many enrolled," says Robert Bruce Slater, managing editor of JBHE. But in recent years, many institutions have stopped agreeing to participate. Last year, for example, one university provided its data to JBHE then later requested it not be published because it showed that the acceptance rate for Black applicants was more than twice as high as the overall one, which opened the school up to a potential lawsuit. JBHE complied and withheld the data. "Colleges are scared they'll get sued," says Slater. "It's gotten a lot harder to convince them to open up." The last time JBHE managed to publish its list was in January 2023, before the Supreme Court decision, and even then it was difficult. Less than half of the schools agreed to participate. This year, JBHE couldn't get enough information to publish its list at all. "We stopped compiling the list," says Slater. "I don't think there's going to be a time when schools will give us that information ever again." To be clear, that doesn't mean schools are refusing to share any racial data. It's just they're likely being careful about what they release, and when. In March, The Yale Daily News noted that due to the Supreme Court decision, Yale's admissions officers didn't have access to racial data during the administration process in the way that they used to, so they wouldn't know the racial composition of the class of 2028 until after students had been accepted. Figuring out that racial composition would take a while. By this time last year, Yale had already released a two-page profile of its class of 2027, with all sorts of interesting demographic information (63% of freshman went to public school!), including race. This year's profile is in the works but isn't ready yet. Mark Dunn, a senior associate director at Yale's undergraduate admissions office, confirmed to me that Yale will release it in the coming weeks. Eventually, the data will come out. Some of it, anyway. Schools that receive federal funds are required to report racial statistics to the US Department of Education. On top of that, many also fill out an annual demographic profile, known as the common data set, or CDS, for their entire undergraduate populations. Race and ethnicity are included in that, too. Technically, filling out the CDS is voluntary, but the information is used by a number of institutions including the College Board, Department of Education and US News & World Report, so thousands of schools participate in the survey. Common data sets typically come out in the late fall. That's when we'll start to get the first glimpse of just how big the ripple effects of the Supreme Court's decision will be. But it might not be a particularly clear picture at first. For one thing, a school's common data set only covers students who come from the US. If a school has a sizable international population, those students will be excluded from the reported data. To explain why this matters, I'll use Yale as an example again. In its class of 2027 profile, Yale reported that 14% of incoming freshmen were Black, but the figure provided in its common data set was 9%, with another 11% identifying as two or more races. Which two races? What about international students? The common data set doesn't say, which is why the clarity provided by voluntary class profiles is so helpful. There's another way the information can come out: students. Every year The Harvard Crimson, Harvard's student newspaper, conducts its own incoming student survey and publishes the results. Last year's survey was incredibly expansive, covering not just demographics (43% of surveyed freshmen were White, 33% Asian or Asian American) but also students' views on things such as racial diversity (86% wanted Harvard to pursue it) and affirmative action (67% supported it). Of course, not every student newspaper conducts this kind of survey. And not every school will be like MIT or Yale and continue to voluntarily publish racial data in its class profiles. "I think what we're going to see is that at a lot of schools, they will report the numbers that the government requires them to, but nothing more," says Slater. "We knew when the Supreme Court made its decision that this was going to happen." | 
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