The Wharton School removed demographic information from its undergraduate class profiles, citing inconsistencies in methodology between the Class of 2027 and Class of 2028.
In a statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian, a Wharton spokesperson cited differences in how the percentages of students of color and students from underrepresented groups were calculated for each class. The removal comes after the DP reported on an apparent steep decline in students of color and students from races and ethnicities historically underrepresented in higher education.
The data previously listed on Wharton's undergraduate class profiles and website archives for the Classes of 2027 and 2028 showed a sharp decline in the percentage of students of color — from 68% to 55% — and students from underrepresented groups — from 31% to 22%.
The Class of 2028 data specified that the data corresponds to undergraduates pursuing a single degree, while the Class of 2027 data did not make this specification. However, Penn never clarified the criteria used to define historically underrepresented groups for the Class of 2028.
“The Class of 2028 includes non-U.S. citizens in its calculations, whereas the Class of 2027 did not, making direct comparisons between the two years inaccurate,” the Wharton spokesperson wrote to the DP.
Wharton did not release the recalculated admissions data for the Class of 2028 on its website. The spokesperson declined to provide the corrected demographic information for Wharton's Class of 2028, instead directing the DP to Penn's overall incoming class profile. The spokesperson said that future data would be shared through the annually released University-wide class profile — which contains significantly less information than the data previously publicly available on Wharton's website.
Penn used the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System — which consists of 12 survey components used to gather data from participating institutions — to calculate data for the Wharton Class of 2027. The surveys are conducted annually by the National Center for Education Statistics of the United States Department of Education.
According to the IPEDS, a Domestic Underrepresented Minority is based on ethnicity categories that include Black, Hispanic, Native American Indian, Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, and Two or More Races.
Wharton is not the only school which recently changes its methodology for calculating demographic data. Harvard changed its scale for reporting racial breakdowns this year — a change which made it more difficult to compare figures to previous years, three experts told The Harvard Crimson.
Following the United States Supreme Court's ruling against affirmative action in June 2023, in which the Court deemed race-conscious admissions practices unconstitutional, higher education institutions nationwide have reexamined their admissions processes, and there has been greater scrutiny on recent demographic data. While Penn emphasized its commitment to diversity and inclusion in a statement after the ruling, its released demographic data for the Class of 2028 showed a decline in first years from underrepresented minorities.
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