Andre Hunter, Unsplash The largest changes in college enrollment by black students have nothing to do with Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023), which banned affirmative action (“diversity”) in undergraduate admissions. SFFA practically only affects the narrow sliver of elite colleges. For most black students, the question remains the same as it is for all American students: Is it worth going to college at all? Many black students are saying no—because many American students are saying no.
Kimberly Wilson writes in Essence (“Where Black Women Come First”) an article about the decision to enroll in college that applies just about word for word to any American kid’s thought-process:
Does the investment actually pay off anymore (I say this as someone who also carries more than $200K in law school student loan debt)? […] [H]igher education isn’t a one-size-fits-all path anymore. Whether it’s a four-year university, community college, trade school, or direct-to-workforce training, the most important question is no longer Where are you going?—it’s What will it be worth? [emphases in original]
And fewer black students are going to college—just as there are fewer white students going to college. White student enrollment fell 22 percent from 2012 to 2022, slightly more than the 19-percent fall in black student enrollment. Even though Hispanic and Asian student enrollment rose during that time period, total undergraduate enrollment was down 8.43 percent between 2010 and 2024. American students, white and black, increasingly are unconvinced that college is worthwhile for them.
While the costs of college loans affect all Americans, they weigh particularly heavily on black Americans. Rising awareness of the cost of college loans surely must play a role in this development. While these affect all Americans, they weigh particularly heavily on black Americans: “Black and African American college graduates owe an average of $25,000 more in student loan debt than white college graduates. […] Four years after graduation, Black students owe an average of 188% more than white students borrowed.” The current combination of badly structured government subsidies for tuition and university rapacity has turned an entire generation of Americans into debt slaves—and has especially ill-treated black Americans. Black students who decide to avoid going to college, thus sidestepping the debt trap that usually accompanies it, make an entirely sensible decision—and one that Americans of all races make with equal good sense.
The proportion of black students at elite colleges will rebound as America strategically reforms its education culture. This is not to say that SFFA has not had an effect. The Supreme Court’s removal of any constitutional fig leaf from anti-white and anti-Asian discrimination has reduced (albeit not eliminated) discriminatory admissions policies. As the Left has begun to lament, the proportion of admitted black students therefore has fallen at most elite colleges, in complement to increases in white and Asian enrollment. What matters most is that elite colleges admit individual American students who are best prepared to achieve excellence, but we may hope that the proportion of black students at elite colleges will rebound as America strategically reforms an education culture infused with the soft bigotry of low expectations.
American institutions should not discriminate by race, full stop. But there are some race-neutral reform policies that probably would benefit black Americans disproportionately. Education reformers should consider making a priority of these policies, both for their own sake and so as to maintain a pro-reform political majority among Americans.
Above all, reformers should adopt policies that help the earnings prospects of American citizens without college degrees. Going to college can be a trap leading into debt slavery—but the wage gap between college graduates and Americans who don’t go to college is arguably wider than ever. Reformers should concentrate on policies such as removing a college degree as a requirement for middle-class jobs. They should do so not least by steady work to overturn Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971) and all other governmental requirements based on disparate-impact theory, since these have forced employers to turn the college degree into a litigation-proof, gold-plated substitute for the IQ test. Reformers also should make a priority of vocational education, to augment as much as possible the number of non-college-bound Americans prepared for high-earning, skilled careers. Reformers should focus on effective, market-aligned means to increase the wages of Americans who don’t go to college—which will disproportionately benefit black Americans.
Reformers also should concentrate on policies that ensure that American citizens receive priority both for jobs and for college admission. Strict enforcement of immigration laws would benefit all American citizens—and since this would especially aid the wages of all Americans without college degrees, it would disproportionately benefit black Americans. Reformers also could seek to lower the number of foreign students admitted to study in the United States; this policy would benefit all American citizens and likewise would disproportionately benefit black American admissions to college.
Reformers should redirect federal money away from the elite colleges that still seek to practice race discrimination and toward the colleges that the vast majority of Americans attend. The federal government should reduce or eliminate tuition grants and loans to institutions of higher education with endowments above $500 million or with an endowment per student of more than $500,000. These moneys should be redirected to non-elite colleges—which currently have a higher black enrollment than elite colleges do. Directing federal money toward colleges with greater need will redirect federal money to the greater benefit of most black students.
The colors we share are red, white, and blue—and that is the color consciousness that our education-reform policies can and should promote. Reformers should continue their traditional support for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). This support should not be used as a camouflage for individual race discrimination, which is antithetical to American principles. But America has a historic tradition of support for HBCUs as institutions, and education reformers should continue that tradition. It hardly need be said that this continuing support will disproportionately benefit black Americans!
Education reformers will be working with the grain of America. Education reformers should support these policies first and foremost because they benefit all Americans. They will particularly benefit black Americans—but the benefit will redound to blacks because they are American, not because of the color of their skin. The colors we share are red, white, and blue—and that is the color consciousness that our education-reform policies can and should promote.
Education reformers will be working with the grain of America. Kimberly Wilson’s Essence article, avowedly for a black audience, included words that every American family should recognize as sound advice that speaks to their own dreams, choices, and practical judgment. Read Wilson’s article, and you will know that the barriers of race already fell long ago in the minds of Americans of all colors. American life and the American dream are much the same for all of us, with differences that are barely skin deep. We already have become Americans, and so education policy can frame itself with quiet confidence to benefit all Americans, full stop.
Ralph Ellison wrote in “The World and the Jug” about why he preferred Ernest Hemingway’s work to Richard Wright’s:
Not because he was white, or more “accepted.” But because he appreciated the things of this earth which I love … weather, guns, dogs, horses, love and hate and impossible circumstances which to the courageous and dedicated could be turned into benefits and victories. Because he wrote with such precision about the processes and techniques of daily living that I could keep myself and my brother alive during the 1937 Recession by following his descriptions of wing-shooting; because he knew the difference between politics and art and something of their true relationship for the writer. […] Because Hemingway loved the American language and the joy of writing, making the flight of birds, the loping of lions across an African plain, the mysteries of drink and moonlight, the unique styles of diverse peoples and individuals come alive on the page.
Americans, black and white, are no longer in their “jugs” but in the world together. Oh, we need not be naïve: We are not blind as we look at one another, nor identical and interchangeable, and our politics will continue to draw on the particular experiences of our family histories. But the quarrels about who gets a particular spot in an elite college matter less than what most Americans share: the thoughtful consideration of whether to go to college at all and for what purpose. The realm of education policy can realize one version of Ralph Ellison’s vision for Americans: We think enough alike, we feel enough alike, we love enough alike, that we can simply try to do the best for one another, without regard for race, and trust that we will do well enough for all Americans.
David Randall is executive director of the Civics Alliance and director of research at the National Association of Scholars.
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David Randall
