Equity and Predictive Analytics in Enrollment Management

It is back-to-school season and college campuses are welcoming their cohort of first-year students. However, the selection of the Class of 2025 was not solely based on academic merit. Since the turn of the millennium, four-year colleges and universities are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to determine who gets an acceptance or a rejection letter.

Unfortunately, the automation of college admissions relies heavily on algorithms fed by data points that are highly correlated to race and economic status, which disproportionately disadvantages Black and brown students.

New America's body of work on the use of predictive analytics in enrollment management raises awareness of how algorithmic biases decrease access for Black and brown students. In the blog series below, we demystify the process of college admissions and provide recommendations for institutions. We also produced a short video to highlight some of the equity concerns we raise in our blogs to show how the automation of admissions perpetuates racial inequities to college access.