New Study Finds That Bans on Affirmative Action Have Boosted Asian Enrollments at the Expense of African Americans

A study published in interActions: UCLA Journal of Education and InformationStudies examined racial enrollment data at universities in California, Texas, and Florida — three states where bans on affirmative action were established in the 1990s. The bans remain in force in California and Florida but have been rescinded in Texas.

The data shows that in all three states black enrollments were harmed by the bans. In California the damage was extensive, particularly at UCLA and Berkeley. At the University of Florida the black percentage of the entering class dropped from 11.3 percent in 2000 to 9.4 percent in 2005. At the University of Texas the black percentage of the entering class dropped from 4.9 percent in 1995 to 3.4 percent in 2002. The affirmative action ban in Florida was lifted in 2003 after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Grutter. Black first-year enrollments at the University of Texas are now above the level that prevailed prior to the ban on race-sensitive admissions.

In all three states the ban on affirmative action led to an increase in Asian-American enrollments. At Berkeley the Asian percentage of the entering class increased from 37.3 percent in 1995 to 46.6 percent in 2005. There were similar increases in Asian-American enrollments at UCLA and the University of California at San Diego.

At the University of Florida the percentage of Asians in the freshman class rose from 7.5 percent in 1995 to 8.7 percent in 2005. At the University of Texas the Asian percentage of black first-year students increased from 14.3 percent in 1995 to 17.3 percent in 2005.

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