Editing Education in the United States (section)

===Affirmative action===
{{Further|Affirmative action in the United States}}
[[File:2021 College attendance, analyzed by race and schools' overall admission rates.svg|thumb|College attendance in the U.S. by race and schools' overall admission rates as of 2021<ref name=NYTimes_20230703>{{cite news |last1=Arum |first1=Richard |last2=Stevens |first2=Mitchell L. |title=For Most College Students, Affirmative Action Was Never Enough |url=https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/03/opinion/for-most-college-students-affirmative-action-was-not-enough.html |work=The New York Times |date=July 3, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230703120500/https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/03/opinion/for-most-college-students-affirmative-action-was-not-enough.html |archive-date=July 3, 2023 |url-status=live }} Data as of 2021. Data source: U.S. Department of Education.</ref> shown by comparative areas of upper four pie charts; elite schools make up a small fraction of all enrollment.]]

{|style="text-align:center; float:right; clear:right; margin-left:4em; margin:auto;" class="wikitable"
!colspan="4"|Acceptance rates at private universities (2005)<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://asianam.org/hall-of-shame/college-admission-officers/|title=College Admission Officers|date=April 5, 2015}}</ref>
|-
! !! Overall admit rate!! Black admit rate!! % difference
|-
! [[Harvard College|Harvard]]<!--All Harvard undergraduates are enrolled in Harvard College, a unit of Harvard University.-->
|10.0%||16.7%||+ 67.0%
|-
! [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT]]
|15.9%||31.6%||+ 98.7%
|-
! [[Brown University|Brown]]
|16.6%||26.3%||+ 58.4%
|-
! [[University of Pennsylvania|Penn]]
|21.2%||30.1%||+ 42.0%
|-
! [[Georgetown University|Georgetown]]
|22.0%||30.7%||+ 39.5%
|}
In 2023 the Supreme Court decision, ''[[Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard]]'', the Supreme Court ruled that considering race as a factor in admitting students was a violation of the [[Equal Protection Clause|Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment]]. This decision overturned previous rulings that allowed colleges to consider race when accepting students.

African American academics [[Henry Louis Gates]] and [[Lani Guinier]], while favoring affirmative action, have argued that in practice, it has led to [[African immigration to the United States#Recent Migration Trends and Factors|recent black immigrants]] and their children being greatly overrepresented at elite institutions, at the expense of the historic African American community made up of descendants of slaves.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/24/us/top-colleges-take-more-blacks-but-which-ones.html|title=Top Colleges Take More Blacks, But Which Ones?|first=Sara|last=Rimer|author2=Arenson, Karen W.|work=The New York Times|date=June 24, 2004|access-date=February 22, 2011}}</ref>