The Effect of Affirmative Action on College Admissions

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Racial preferences are largest for African Americans and then they're about path the size for Hispanics. Two thirds to three quarters of African American admits at Harvard would not get in absent the racial preferences. So it's really a stunning number. But you know this idea of it being a band-aid of telling you all these huge numbers is operating at the elite schools. Most students actually go to not select the schools and affirmative action fundamentally affects where people go to college not whether they go to college.

Peter Arcidiacono is an economist at Duke University and an expert on affirmative action. Arcidiacono served as an expert witness for Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. (SFFA) in SFFA v. Harvard.

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Peter Arcidiacono discuss the role that racial preferences have played in the admissions processes of elite American universities in recent decades; the workarounds that universities are likely to use in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision; and why real progress for less privileged students will require fundamental changes that look beyond the admissions practices of a few elite universities.

This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

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