Michigan, Affirmative Action and Enrollments

From Ian Millhiser:

Seven years after a Michigan ballot initiative prohibited the consideration of race in university admissions, African-American enrollment is way down at the state’s flagship university. Black enrollment declined 30 percent at the University of Michigan’s undergraduate and law schools in Ann Arbor. According to Bloomberg’s Greg Stohr, “[i]n 2006, the last full year in which race could be directly considered in admissions, blacks accounted for 6.4 percent of the freshman class, a number that excludes foreign students. Last year, black enrollment was 4.6 percent. Hispanic enrollment fell from 5.3 percent in 2006 to 3.9 percent in 2012.”

Last March, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit struck down the ballot initiative blocking affirmative action, relying on two Supreme Court decisions that prohibit states from forcing minorities to jump through special hoops to enact a law which benefits them as a group. This decision is now before the conservative Roberts Court, however, which is unlikely to affirm the lower court’s decision.