Earlier today, MIT Admissions released demographic data about the undergraduate Class of 2028, the first class of students admitted after the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard that banned the consideration of race in undergraduate admissions.
MIT News spoke with Schmill about this change, why diversity matters for the MIT education, and what happens next; Schmill also wrote a personal reflection on the MIT Admissions blog.
A: Last June, the Supreme Court ruled that colleges and universities that receive federal funding may no longer consider race in undergraduate admissions decisions.
I emphasize this essential fact because many people have told me over the years that MIT ought to care only about academic excellence, not diversity.
But every student we admit, from any background, is already located at the far-right end of the distribution of academic excellence.
The evidence of our success in achieving both academic excellence and broad diversity is in our outcomes, both on and beyond our campus.
Q: Why does diversity matter in an MIT education?
A: I am convinced, from empirical data and personal experience, that the MIT education is strongest when our student body is, above a high bar of academic excellence, broadly diverse.
The university Class of 2028, the first group of applicants following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v., had its demographic information made public earlier today by MIT Admissions. Harvard was the first university to outlaw taking race into account when admitting undergraduates. The court’s ruling has led to a decrease in the percentage of first-year students who are enrolled who are from historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, as Dean of Admissions and Student Financial Services Stu Schmill ’86 predicted in a blog post last June.
The MIT Admissions blog featured a personal reflection by Schmill, who also talked with MIT News about this change, the importance of diversity for the MIT education, and what comes next.
What effect will the Supreme Court’s ruling have on the MIT class of 2028?
A: The Supreme Court decided in June of last year that educational institutions receiving federal funding are prohibited from taking race into account when selecting undergraduate applicants. We anticipated that as a result, fewer students from historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups would enroll at MIT, as I stated in a blog post at the time. That is what has taken place.
To give you a baseline, approximately 25% of our incoming undergraduate students have identified as Black, Hispanic, Native American, or Pacific Islander in recent years. That represents roughly 16 percent of the incoming Class of 2028. (In contrast, federal data indicate that 45 percent of K–12 students enrolled in public schools in the United States belong to these categories. ).
While the demographic makeup of the Class of 2028 has changed significantly from previous years, it should be noted that this does not, in and of itself, represent a change in the quantifiable traits that we use to predict academic success at MIT, such as test scores or high school performance. Compared to other recent classes that had a wider range of backgrounds, this cohort is equally prepared to succeed in our curriculum.
I highlight this crucial point because, over the years, I have been told by numerous people that MIT should be concerned only with academic excellence and not with diversity. However, every applicant that we accept, regardless of background, is already positioned at the extreme right of the academic skill distribution. During my tenure as dean, we have only taken into consideration candidates who fulfill our exceptionally high standards for academic preparedness. Understanding the significant advantages of diversity in education, we then set out to create a class from that highly qualified group that reflected both excellence and breadth in terms of its combined knowledge, skills, and experiences.
Our achievements, both on and off campus, are proof that we were successful in attaining both broad diversity and academic excellence. The diversity of MIT has led to improvements in academic performance overall, retention rates, and graduation rates, which are now at record highs for students from all backgrounds. However, over the past ten years, MIT has graduated more engineers from historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups than any other private college or university in the country (as well as practically all public universities). This is in addition to MIT being widely recognized as the top STEM institution in the world and a major driver of innovation. These statistics come from the American Society for Engineering Education. These concurrent accomplishments by our community show that diversity and excellence are not in conflict but rather work together.
Why is diversity important in an education at MIT?
A diverse student body surpassing a high standard of academic excellence is a sign that the MIT education is at its best, as evidenced by empirical data and my own experience.
Any MIT graduate will tell you that their peers taught them just as much as their instructors; at least, that was the case for me in the 1980s when I was a mechanical engineering major in Course 2, and it is still the case for my current advisees. Individual skills contribute to collective excellence when you bring together people with diverse perspectives and backgrounds who are matched for MIT’s mission and have similar interests and aptitudes.
Additionally, in order to draw in the top students, we require this diversity. The most gifted students in the nation from all backgrounds have chosen to enroll at MIT as it has grown more diverse, and they have made it clear in surveys that they value this aspect of their MIT experience and that attending a diverse institution is important to them.
Today’s students come from the most diverse, multiracial, and multicultural generation of Americans in history, so it should not be shocking that they value a diverse campus community. Therefore, diversity is important because it makes us the best place to attract talent for the next generation of engineers, scientists, and knowledge creators.
Why was racial diversity in the classroom necessary for MIT to achieve in the past?
Amicus brief: The advantages of diversity in education are well-established, as we contended in the SFFA case. Empirical research indicates that highly skilled individuals with a diverse range of experiences and backgrounds working collaboratively to develop novel solutions to challenging problems is crucial for creativity and innovation.
Regretfully, racial disparities in American K–12 education continue to be severe and persistent, with a particular emphasis on STEM fields. It is therefore challenging to continue the diversity of American public schools into higher education from the outset.
Let’s start with these troubling facts: According to federal data, among public high schools where 75 percent or more of students are Black and/or Hispanic:.
Calculus is not offered by nearly two thirds.
Over 50% of them don’t provide any kind of computer science education.
There is no physics offered by almost half of them.
According to research, there is a significantly lower chance for students who do not have the chance to establish a solid foundation in math and science during their high school years to graduate with a STEM degree. School segregation has been rising steadily since the early 1990s, according to research from Stanford University’s Educational Opportunity Project, and it is strongly linked to achievement gaps. School segregation is currently approaching levels not seen since Brown v. 70 years ago, the Board of Education was established.
We observe firsthand the shocking scope of persistent educational inequality in the United States in the course of our daily work at the MIT Admissions office. S. It is evident that opportunities vary from one state, district, school, and occasionally even within a single school when we read applications at home or while traveling.
Through the provision of free resources, we have attempted to bridge these gaps and assist prospective students in better preparing for STEM-related college coursework at MIT and other universities. My blog post today discusses MIT’s long history of providing students from diverse backgrounds with increased access to educational opportunities. In my opinion, MIT has more that it can, should, and will do to widen the doors of opportunity going forward.
What does this whole thing mean?
A: Alright, so prior to the SFFA ruling, we were able to identify talented students who left the inequitable K–12 educational system by using race as one variable among many. We could see that these students would succeed at MIT, that they matched our rigorous academic standards for excellence, and that they met our high expectations for academic performance.
Our ability to use race in the same way has changed in the wake of the SFFA ruling, and the results for the Class of 2028 reflect this. We don’t have any information on the applicant pool because we didn’t ask applicants about their race or ethnicity this year. However, I am confident that many highly qualified and well-matched applicants from historically underrepresented backgrounds were overlooked, and that they would have succeeded if they had been admitted in the past.
I want to be very clear that our reinstated testing requirement is not the reason for this shift in the makeup of our incoming class. Indeed, the class we admitted last year under the testing requirement included the largest percentage of students from historically underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds in MIT history. This was made possible by the identification of objectively well-qualified applicants who lacked alternative means of proving their preparation, thanks to universal testing. Standardized tests are undoubtedly flawed, as I stated at the time, but they are, significantly, less unequal than other factors to take into account.
Even so, the SFFA ruling restricts our ability to intentionally choose a class that is representative of a wide range of backgrounds from the highly qualified pool of applicants. We will still use the tests to help identify students who could not otherwise demonstrate their preparation for our education.
Where does MIT go from this point on?
A: We still take into account a variety of diversity factors, including potential fields of study and research, extracurricular activities and accomplishments, as well as economic, geographic, and educational backgrounds, but we do not take racial diversity into account. This is because education has such clear benefits.
Following the ruling, we improved access to MIT for students from all backgrounds by expanding recruitment and launching financial aid programs. Identifying and encouraging students in rural America to apply to MIT is one of these efforts, along with the launch of a new targeted outreach program. A new policy that offers free attendance to the majority of families making less than $75,000 annually is also included; this kind of unambiguous commitment has been demonstrated to reduce barriers. It also signifies MIT leadership’s ongoing commitment to keeping our education accessible for all students through the $165 million we spend each year on undergraduate financial aid. QuestBridge is a national talent search program for high-achieving, low-income students of all backgrounds. It also allowed us to quintuple the number of students we match.
It is obvious that more needs to be done to guarantee that MIT continues to attract the greatest talent from a variety of backgrounds. To get ideas for future initiatives, my team has been meeting with administrative, student, and faculty leaders. Additionally, as was the mandate of the Task Force on Educational Opportunity, which was presided over by former MIT president Paul Gray in 1968, President Kornbluth reaffirmed in her community address today her commitment to ensuring that an MIT education is available to those “whose talent and potential have been masked or limited” by structural and social factors. Our goal in this continuous work is to determine the best course of action for the Institute both now and in the future.
To be clear, racial inequality cannot be solved with a quick fix or simple “hack.”. However, MIT is not afraid to take on challenging scientific or societal issues, and we will do everything in our power—within the legal constraints—to maintain our reputation for providing exceptionally demanding and inclusive education that our present and past students, as well as those to come, can be proud of.
