Nonreporting has increased post-SFFA from 3.3 percent to 4 percent.
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | InspirationGP/iStock/Getty Images
In the three years since the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions, eagle-eyed admissions aficionados may have noticed a bump in the share of applicants declining to report their race. At some colleges, that number increased several times over. But it was hard to tell if this growth was truly meaningful, considering the relatively small number of students who chose not to report their race pre-2024.
At Wellesley College, for instance, the number of enrolled students who didn’t report race on their application increased 500 percent. But that jump represented growth from a total of exactly one student in the two-year period from 2022 to 2023 to three students in 2024.
Now, a new report from the higher ed nonprofit Class Action aims to illuminate how many students really are opting to withhold their race and why—although the latter question proved hard to get to the bottom of, said Class Action senior fellow James Murphy.
