MIT Sloan Management Review Article on How Outlawing Collegiate Affirmative Action Will Impact Corporate America

On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled 6-3 in favor of outlawing the use of race and ethnicity as factors in college admissions. This was a momentous decision that stands to have widespread societal and organizational implications. Although the scope of the ruling was limited to college admissions, we can draw upon existing data to forecast the impact on corporate America. The evidence clearly points to two key outcomes: First, collegiate patterns of racioethnic diversity will change fairly dramatically; and second, these changes will have considerable downstream consequences for workplace composition as well as patterns of racioethnic inequity across a host of other measures.

As tempting as it might be to view those conclusions as hyperbolic, research on three decades of state-level affirmative action bans strongly suggests otherwise. In fact, eradicating affirmative action has led to reductions in the proportions of underrepresented (Black and Hispanic) students in undergraduate and graduate programs, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and math; it has also led to fewer underrepresented students enrolled in and graduating from medical and law schools. These effects tend to be lasting — and, importantly, implementing alternative policies that don’t explicitly consider race and ethnicity has done little to counter them.

About the Author

Derek R. Avery is the C.T. Bauer Chair of Inclusive Leadership at the University of Houston’s Bauer College of Business.

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