What Does Ohio College Enrollment Look Like After the Supreme Court Ended Affirmative Action?

It’s been a little over a year since the United States Supreme Court ended affirmative action based on race.

In the first school year since that landmark decision, there were no “meaningful deviations from historical trends with respect to students’ college application behaviors across racial/ethnic groups,” according to a June Common App report .

Their report looked at application data from 2019-20 through 2023-24.

The Common App report cautions that their report is not intended to suggest students and institutions were not impacted by the Supreme Court decision.

“Rather, these results suggest that the impacts are not clearly seen in these application metrics in this first season after the decision,” the report said. “It remains to be seen whether applicant and application behaviors change more measurably going into next season, as students and their families gain greater clarity about the repercussions of these court decisions in terms of the admissions and enrollment outcomes.”

There was initially a lot of concern the Supreme Court ruling would have a “pretty intense chilling effect” on students applying to colleges, said CJ Powell, director of advocacy at the National Association for College Admission Counseling.

“There wasn’t really that chilling effect that I think many people feared would happen, and I think that was because of a lot of the proactive and reactive work that happened following the decision coming down,” Powell said.

Last summer, the Supreme Court found the admissions processes at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

Affirmative action, which is not just limited to college admissions, emerged in the 1960s as a way to address racial and gender discrimination.

Enrollment in Ohio’s public universities

Enrollment at Ohio’s public university main campuses dipped slightly in 2023, according to Fall Term enrollment data from the Ohio Department of Higher Education. Ohio had 262,484 students in 2023 compared to 263,644 students in 2022, according to the data.

In the last ten years, enrollment at Ohio’s public main campuses peaked in 2016 with 290,079 students. Compared to 2016, enrollment has dropped 10% in 2023.

Black student enrollment at Ohio’s public main campuses jumped a bit in 2023 — going from 17,920 students in 2022 to 17,989 in 2023, according to the data.

However, in the past 10 years, Black student enrollment on Ohio’s public university main campuses has declined 20%.

The number of Hispanic students at Ohio’s public university main campuses dropped 8% from 2023 to 2022. There were 2,895 Hispanic students enrolled in 2023 and 3,149 students enrolled in 2022.

Asian student enrollment at Ohio’s public university main campuses went up 3% in 2023 (13,898 students) compared to 2022 (13,528 students), according to the data.

American Indian or Alaska Native student enrollment dipped slightly from 285 students in 2022 to 279 students in 2023, according to the data.

Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander student enrollment went down slightly from 121 in 2022 to 117 in 2023, according to the data.

Ohio State University and the University of Cincinnati previously “considered” race and ethnic status in admission decisions , according to previous Common Data Set s.

But Ohio State has since taken steps to make sure it complies with the new law.

“Any application question or line item requesting an applicant’s race or ethnicity was removed from all materials provided to application readers or other individuals participating in admissions decisions,” according to the university’s website . “The university is updating scholarship and other student support funds to ensure compliance with the law.”