Business News <\/p>\n
Black and Latino enrollment in American medical schools has fallen sharply after the 2023 US Supreme Court decision effectively ending affirmative action in higher education, a new report finds.<\/p>\n
In the first class selected post-affirmative action, the numbers of Black and Latino individuals entering medical school in the 2024-2025 academic year dropped by 11.6% and 10.8%, respectively, compared with the previous year, according to annual data<\/a> compiled by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).<\/p>\n \u201cThese are pretty devasting numbers,\u201d Dan Ly, MD, PhD, University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), told Medscape Medical News<\/em>. \u201cWhen you compare to last year, it\u2019s as if we lost over 250 Black medical students and over 300 Hispanic medical students.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re losing a generation of doctors from these underrepresented groups,\u201d said Ly, who studies diversity in medicine.<\/p>\n The number of incoming American Indian or Alaska Native students declined even more sharply, by 22.1%. Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander student enrollment declined by 4.3%.<\/p>\n About half of the 23,156 1st-year enrollees described themselves as White individuals (50.7%; 11,738), followed by Asian (31.6%, 7323), Latino (11.2%, 2595), and Black (8.8%, 2036) individuals. Participants could describe themselves as being in more than one group.\u00a0<\/p>\n In contrast, the US Census reports<\/a> that the percentages of these groups among the general American population are 58.4% (non-Latino White), 6.4%, 19.5%, and 13.7%, respectively, and another 3.1% are multi-race.<\/p>\n In its ruling, the Supreme Court banned affirmative action programs<\/a> in both public and private colleges\/universities. \u201cMany universities have for too long…concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual\u2019s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin,\u201d wrote Chief Justice John Roberts for the majority. \u201cOur constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.\u201d<\/p>\n