photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

The Kansas Union on the University of Kansas campus is pictured on Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2022.

Story updated at 5:14 p.m. Thursday, June 29:

In a state like Kansas — where university classroom space often exceeds student demand — affirmative action can have a different meaning than it does elsewhere.

Higher education leaders in Kansas often are just hoping students will affirmatively decide to attend college.

Neither the University of Kansas nor the other five Regents universities in the state take race or ethnicity into account when deciding whether to admit students, according to the most recent filings the universities have made to the Common Data Set higher education statistics program.

That may mean Kansas schools will face fewer changes in the wake of Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that determined race-conscious admission programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina are unconstitutional.

“I haven’t fully read through the ruling, but our early read is that it is not going to be very disruptive in the state of Kansas,” Jon Rolph, chair of the Kansas Board of Regents, told the Journal-World in an interview.

University of Kansas leaders late Thursday afternoon all said they expect the Supreme Court’s ruling to have “minimal impact” on KU’s admission process.

That’s because KU and other public universities in the state are significantly different than Harvard and North Carolina when it comes to the college admission environment. North Carolina, a public university like KU, admitted just 19% of prospective freshmen who applied for the 2021-22 school year, according to data provided by UNC. Harvard, a notoriously selective Ivy League school, had an admission rate of just more than 3% in the most recent school year.

KU, on the other hand, had a freshman admission rate of more than 87%.

An admissions process that says yes to the vast majority of prospective students generally has schools putting less emphasis on affirmative action programs.

But that doesn’t mean issues of race and ethnicity aren’t on the minds of university leaders in Kansas. They are topics that get discussion — and worry.

Members of the Kansas Board of Regents — which oversees KU, Kansas State, Wichita State, Emporia State, Fort Hays State and Pittsburg State — received the latest worrisome enrollment report this spring.

The annual report that tracks enrollment trends and statistics delivered a one-two punch to those who are worried Kansas’ higher education system will suffer from declining enrollments in the future.

Punch No. 1 is that fewer Kansas high school students are going to college these days. From 2019 to 2021, the percentage of Kansas high school graduates who decided to attend a public college fell by nearly 5 percentage points to 43.7% of graduates.

Punch No. 2 is that key minority groups are posting the largest declines in college attendance. Members of the Hispanic community attended public universities at a 31.9% rate in 2021, down 6.5 percentage points from 2019. Black students attended at a 32.7% rate, down nearly 7 percentage points from 2019. American Indians, also at a 32.7% attendance rate, declined by more than 7 percentage points.

Punch No. 2 may sting even more than punch No. 1 because minority students offer Kansas universities the best chance of growing their enrollments. That’s because while the number of white high school graduates in Kansas has declined by about 1,700 students in the last 10 years, the number of minority high school graduates is increasing.

The number of Hispanic high school graduates has increased by more than 2,400 students during the time period, but that is the group least likely to attend a public university. Kansas Hispanics attend public universities at a rate that is nearly 12 percentage points less than white Kansans.

Fixing that issue likely will require more than tweaks to a university’s admissions process. The most recent enrollment report reviewed by Regents showed that high school minority students are scoring low in key college readiness scores. Just 9% of Hispanic graduating seniors met college ACT benchmarks in all four areas that are tested, which are English, math, reading and science. American Indian students were at 6% and Black students were at 5%. Twenty-five percent of white students met the benchmarks in all four subject areas.

Rolph, chair of the Regents, said state leaders know higher education needs to change as the demographics change. In the case of the growing Hispanic population, that is a community that often has many first-generation college students in it. Serving students who have no family that has had the college experience likely will require universities to do new things.

Rolph pointed to partnerships with the state’s Department of Education, which oversees K-12 schools, as a way to get at some of those issues. He said high schools and colleges are now working better together to provide college-credit courses in high school settings, which can help first-generation students get an early taste of the college experience.

Another partnership has high schools putting more emphasis on high school students completing the student financial aid forms that could qualify them for college tuition assistance.

Rolph, though, said one of the biggest needs is for higher education leaders to figure out how to better communicate the value of a college degree. While there are a lot of intangible benefits of a degree, Rolph said it is important for prospective students to understand how much more they are likely to earn with a degree than without one.

“There’s a lot of validated data out there that you make more money the more education you get beyond your high school degree,” Rolph said. “Whether that is going to tech school or community college or a university, you have the opportunity to create more opportunities for wealth for yourself.”

That’s a message that may not be resonating equally across the state, but there are some signs of success. KU has seen its share of minority undergraduate students increase over the last decade. In the 2012-13 school year, KU’s undergraduate population was 75% white. In the 2022-23 school year, it was 69% white. Hispanic students have posted the highest growth rates. Hispanics now make up 9.7% of KU’s undergraduate population, up from 5.9% a decade ago.

The Black undergraduate population has grown more slowly. The number of Black undergraduate students at KU increased by fewer than 100 over the last decade. KU counted 811 Black undergraduate students in the last school year, up from 717 a decade ago. Black students now make up 4.2% of the undergraduate population, up from 3.7% a decade ago. Those gains have come as the number of Black high school graduates in the state has fallen over the last 10 years.

The Asian population is the second-fastest growing population at KU. It represents 6.0% of the undergraduate totals at KU, up from 3.7% a decade ago. That growth is coming as Asian high school students in the state put up chart-topping numbers.

In Kansas, Asian students have the highest college attendance rate of any group at 53.5%. That’s more than 5 percentage points better than the rate for white students in the state. Asian students also are most frequently meeting the key college readiness benchmarks. Forty-two percent of all Asian students graduating from Kansas high schools met the college readiness benchmarks in all four subject areas. That was 17 percentage points higher than white students in the state.

KU Chancellor Douglas Girod, along with the provost and leader of the medical school, said in a written message to the university community that KU would continue to prepare students for “an increasingly diverse world.”

“We are writing today to reaffirm our commitment to cultivating a diverse community in which the dignity and rights of individuals are respected,” the trio said.

Rolph said those past gains are welcome, but that higher education leaders have to continue to work on creating new opportunities across the entire state and across all demographic sectors in order for the system to deliver on its full promise.

Rolph said those gains are welcome, but that higher education leaders have to continue to work on creating new opportunities across the entire state and across all demographic sectors in order for the system to deliver on its full promise.

“I feel like we are taking a hard look in the mirror and saying higher ed has been a certain way the past several decades and how do we need to reshape it so we can be a place where more people can see themselves succeeding and seeing their own path,” Rolph said.