The Academic Consequences of Affirmative Action Bans Combined with Diversity Targets

This paper examines the problem of a college affected by both a legal ban on affirmative action in admissions and pressure to raise enrollment of underrepresented minorities (URMs), as exemplified by UCLA, which adopted a holistic admissions process in 2006 in response to protests over low URM enrollment. The new process increased the URM share of admitted students by about 3 percentage points, but the primary effects of the changes were on admissions decisions within racial/ethnic groups. Within all groups, admission rates for applicants with high SAT scores and low income and parental education declined. Measured relative to UCLA’s pre-2006 revealed preferences, achieving the increase in URM admissions via holistic admissions was roughly 4-5 times as costly as doing so via a simple reallocation of slots between groups. Had UCLA complied with a stricter interpretation of the affirmative action ban, it would have been significantly more costly.