In 2023, the US Supreme Court banned the use of race in college admissions decisions around the same time that a wave of state and institutional actions also intensified scrutiny on who was enrolling in certain colleges and universities. In the wake of these actions, the higher education community has paid careful attention to how enrolling student demographics have changed at selective institutions. But a focus on enrollment data alone cannot give us a full picture.
Using 2018 to 2024 data, we found enrollment changes often obscured shifts in applications and admissions. For example, data collected from research universities showed a slight increase in the share of Black student enrollment in 2024, but a larger increase in the share of Black student applications and no increase in the share of Black admitted students. This suggests the small increase in Black enrollment should not be interpreted as evidence that Black students were being admitted at higher rates in 2024 than in previous years.
Providing application and admission data helps us see more of the picture, but even that fails to capture all the reasons enrollment demographics may change. Demographic shifts can result from changes in recruiting and advertising practices, student choices, or the underlying population.
For the 2025–26 academic year, the US Department of Education added a new reporting requirement, the Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS), which requires colleges to submit disaggregated data on applications, admissions, and enrollment. One of the stated purposes of the ACTS reporting, which is currently under a temporary restraining order for schools in 17 states, is “to capture information that could indicate whether institutions of higher education are using race-based preferencing in their admissions processes” (PDF). However, policymakers, college administrators, and researchers must keep in mind that shifts in these metrics may be explained by more than just state- or institution-level policies and decisions.
The college-age population is changing—and that drives enrollment trends
The composition of the underlying population, which is less affected by colleges’ legislative of institutional policies, is important context that can influence enrollment changes.
A demographic group could see an enrollment increase not because of any change in a college’s policy or practices, but because that group’s share of the population is growing in the same state or area where the college draws most of its students. In general, we might expect public colleges to be more affected by regional population changes than private institutions because public colleges tend to enroll more in-state students.
Using data from the American Community Survey, I find that nationally, the traditional college-age population (17- to 20-year-olds) has become less white in recent years, decreasing from 53 percent to 49 percent between 2020 and 2024. During the same period, the share of Hispanic people in this age group increased from 22 percent to 25 percent.
Aligned with these findings, colleges have enrolled a smaller share of white students in recent years and a larger share of Hispanic students. Population data suggest this trend would be likely with or without policies that consider race in admissions.
Application trends tend to track with general population trends over the 2018 to 2024 period, and both provide useful context for enrollment trends. My colleagues and I collected applicant, admit, and enrollee data from 27 research universities across 19 states, finding that the share of white students in the applicant pool decreased from 48 percent to 40 percent.
Over the same period, the share of college-age people who are white in the states where those institutions are located decreased from 53 percent to 46 percent. The share of white students enrolled was consistently higher than the share of applicants who are white but followed a similar downward trend, decreasing from 61 percent to 53 percent.
Population Trends by Race and Ethnicity Track Closely with Application Trends
Sources: Urban Institute analysis of American Community Survey data and data collected from 27 research universities.
Notes: Applicant, admit, and enrollee calculations are at the student level, meaning larger institutions carry more weight. Trends are similar when weighted at the institution level. Population analysis is limited to individuals ages 17–20 in the 19 states that include at least one university in our data collection.
At the same time, Hispanic student applications, admissions, and enrollment have all increased and at a similar rate as the share of these students in the underlying population.
Asian enrollment at these institutions increased slightly from 9 percent to 10 percent between 2018 and 2024, while their share of the population in these states increased from 6 percent to 7 percent. Overall, slight increases over time for Asian students follow the same pattern as their share of the underlying population in those states, though their share of the applicant pool has been larger than their share of enrollees.
Looking forward
As ACTS will likely make more college admissions and enrollment data available, it’ll be important to keep the population context and the potential lack of comparability and reliability in these data in mind before drawing any conclusions.
Changes in applicant, admit, and enrollee data do not necessarily reflect changes in colleges’ admissions criteria. In many places, populations are changing, which could lead to substantial changes in the demographic composition of student bodies, regardless of how colleges are making admissions decisions.
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