Is African American Enrollment in Law School Down?:

One frequently hears that the enrollment of African American students in law school has “declined,” calling for desperate measures such as the ABA’s new “diversity” standard. [See, e.g., a statement from Marian M. Yim, Chairperson, Education Subcommittee, ABA Council on Racial and Ethnic Justice, stating that there is a “growing crising [sic] in declining enrollment of African-American and Latino students in law school.”] Putting aside the relevant legal and policies issues, is it true that African American enrollment has declined? Yes, but. Data on the ABA’s website (if someone can tell me how to reproduce the chart in this post, I will) shows that enrollment of African-American students leaped from 5,894 in 1986 to 9,681 in 1994, a better than 60% increase in just eight years. Enrollment then declined slightly, reaching a low of 9,271 in 1998, and then began to rise slowly again. In 2004, the last year for which data is available, the total reached 9,488.

In short, African-American enrollment has indeed “declined” if you use 1994 as the baseline. On the other hand, if you use 1986 as a baseline, African-American enrollment has risen by over 60%, but the increase essentially came in one large boom between 1986 and 1994. If that increase had happened gradually between 1986 and 2004, the trend line would show a steady increase in African-American students. So it’s correct to state that enrollment of African-American students has declined since 1994, but it’s a bit misleading if you don’t acknowledge that the 1994 statistics reflected a seemingly anomalous large increase (why the sudden increase at that time? I don’t have a clue) over a very short period of time.