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Notes -
I recognize this is not the main point of your post, but I'll preregister that I do expect a SCOTUS ban on AA to have a very substantial and enduring impact. I pulled some very basic data below. In all, I found considerably less support than expected, but enough to not make me want to recant my prediction.
I start with the top 6 public universities ranked by US News (6 because #5 was tied between two schools).
School | School Black % | State Black % | School Asian % | State Asian %
UCB 3% 7% 43% 16%
UCLA 5% 7% 33% 16%
U-M 5% 14% 15% 3%
UVA 8% 20% 18% 7%
UF 6% 17% 10% 3%
UNC 10% 22% 22% 3%
I've bolded schools in states where public universities are prohibited from considering race (date of ban): California (1996), Washington (1998), Florida (1999), Michigan (2006), Nebraska (2008), Arizona (2010), New Hampshire (2012), Oklahoma (2012), and Idaho (2020).
All data exclude multi-race categories.
Inconveniently for me but tellingly, UCB's diversity page declines to have a consolidated Asian category in favor of one broken down by Pacific Islander, Chinese, Filipinx [sic], etc.
Next, three top private schools, including the main culprit that's part of one of the SCOTUS cases:
Harvard: 15% 9% 28% 8%
Yale: 9% 13% 22% 5%
Princeton: 10% 15% 27% 10%
Yale's page is frustratingly (and probably revealingly) ambiguous. It lists only university wide, which is predominantly graduate rather than undergraduate. It also excludes international from the one table, and likely those who don't report (rather than scaling up to 100%), meaning all the ethnicities add up to just 73%. So the above figures were scaled up to 100% (6.4% black -> 9%, 16.2% Asian -> 22%).
Also, I recognize it's imperfect to compare a top school to its state demographics considering it would draw talent from all over America and the world, and comparison to state demo also is less meaningful for huge states like CA where more local demo is more useful, but this is a basic analysis so...
Observations and thoughts:
Out of nine schools examined, only Harvard has a Black % higher than its state demographics, while also being higher than all the other schools, suggesting far higher boost from AA, or perhaps also superior recruiting ability considering its name. But it's so skewed relative to the rest that I don't know what the lawyers were thinking. Yale and Princeton are less egregious but generally hew closer to their state demographics than the public schools.
UVA and UNC, the two public schools that aren't banned from AA by state law, do have higher Black % relative to the other four in states where AA is prohibited, but they're also in states with higher Black %. When you compare ratios instead of absolute %, the two seems to boost AA more than the others, with the exception of UCLA which has a fairly high Black % as a ratio of its state demographics--perhaps UCLA has more zealous DEI staff who skirt around the law, so this does rain on my prediction a bit.
This superficial analysis doesn't really make it obvious that Asians are significantly discriminated against, whether by UVA and UNC or HYP. Perhaps whites are the main victims of AA, but it's politically convenient to say it's Asians instead.
At any rate, if and when AA is struck down, I expect risk-averse institutions like these top schools, which are sometimes labeled billion-dollar-endowment-with-a-school-attached, to substantially comply. If the Harvard class of 2030 retains the same racial makeup thanks to clever substitution of overt race-consciousness with class and DEI extracurriculars etc., Ed Blum will just sue again. By having already secured landmark victories at that future point, he'll attract even more donors and human talent support. It'll also be worse PR for Harvard the next time around because I believe the popular support for AA, like with gay marriage, will quickly catch up to the SCOTUS order.
Links for anyone who wants to dig in more robustly:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_the_United_States
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/NC,FL,VA,MI,CA,US/PST045221
https://opa.berkeley.edu/uc-berkeley-fall-enrollment-data-new-undergraduates
https://www.ucla.edu/about/facts-and-figures
https://diversity.umich.edu/data-reports/
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/universityofvirginiacdpvirginia
https://cdo.ufl.edu/strategy/metrics/
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/MA,CT,NJ/PST045221
https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics
https://www.yale.edu/about-yale/yale-facts
https://inclusive.princeton.edu/about/demographics
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