As colleges and universities reconsider how they talk about diversity and equity, advocates warn that broadening the language can make Black students harder to see, and harder to serve.
For years, colleges have used programs and initiatives to help students overcome barriers to higher education. But as institutions face political pressure to reconsider how they address racial inequality, some are changing the language they use to describe that work. Programs once explicitly focused on Black students may now emphasize first-generation students, low-income students, or student success more broadly.
The shift can sound more inclusive. But advocates say it raises a critical question: What happens when institutions stop identifying the specific groups they intended to help?
Kyla Hurns, a higher education policy analyst at EdTrust, worries that institutions are increasingly using socioeconomic characteristics as proxies for race, even though those characteristics do not capture the full range of Black students’ experiences.
“Low-income and first generation can make up Black students, but that doesn’t mean that’s all Black students,” Hurns said.
A program serving first-generation students may benefit many Black students, she said, but it can miss Black students whose parents attended college or whose family income puts them outside the program’s eligibility requirements.
The problem extends beyond eligibility. Without race-specific measures, institutions may not know whether their programs are achieving their intended goals.
“If I’m no longer calling it Black student success program, if all student success goes up, that’s great, but that’s not what we’re targeting,” Hurns said. “I’m no longer caring if Black student success goes up.”
Without tracking outcomes for specific racial groups, institutions may be unable to determine whether Black students are benefiting from programs that have been broadened to serve everyone.
Hurns said the changes can also affect how students learn about available resources. At Ohio State University, where she studied, the Black Cultural Center provided a physical space where programs and information could reach Black students directly. Removing that infrastructure, she said, can make it harder to ensure those students receive the information intended for them.
The consequences may not be immediately apparent. Institutions can continue offering services while losing the ability to determine whom those services reach, and whether they address the original problem.
Kristin Hemingway, a scholar of equity and education, questions whether the language of diversity and equity ever guaranteed that Black communities received the benefits people assumed those initiatives provided.
“My argument is the term never really centered us, and it was still a way to siphon money from our community to other people,” Hemingway said.
She argues that programs understood as primarily benefiting Black students often served other groups, including white students from rural communities, who may not have realized they were eligible for or benefiting from the same initiatives.
As institutions change or dismantle those programs, Hemingway said, some of those students are discovering that the support they thought was intended for someone else also benefited them.
“They convinced you that you weren’t diverse,” she said. “They convinced you to set fire to the house, and you didn’t realize it was your house you were burning down.”
Her argument complicates the idea that broadening equity language necessarily means expanding access. If programs served multiple groups all along, their original labels may have obscured who benefited. Changing those labels, meanwhile, can make it more difficult to determine whether the people who faced the greatest barriers continue to receive support.
The evolution of diversity initiatives has a longer history. In a 2022 review of workplace diversity programs, researchers Sandra Portocarrero and James Carter traced how corporate affirmative action programs evolved into diversity initiatives. They identified “the omission of racial inequality” as a weakness in contemporary discussions of workplace diversity. They also noted that modern diversity initiatives grew out of affirmative action laws initially intended to address racial discrimination in employment.
In higher education, the distinction between addressing racial discrimination and pursuing diversity has also shaped debates over admissions. In a 2014 essay, Richard Rothstein argued that socioeconomic preferences cannot simply replace race-conscious policies.
“One approach is to favor low-income students regardless of race,” Rothstein wrote. But he cautioned that racial discrimination and economic disadvantage are not interchangeable problems. “The problems are different, and the remedies must also be different.”
The Supreme Court’s 2023 decision ending the use of race-conscious admissions at colleges has intensified the debate over how institutions can maintain access and representation. A 2026 analysis by Class Action, reported by The New York Times, found that Black freshman enrollment at the nation’s 50 most selective colleges declined 27% following the ruling, while Latino enrollment fell 10%. The figures illustrate the stakes of tracking outcomes by race, although they do not establish that changing program language caused those declines.
For Hurns, the larger concern is that institutions may be making changes preemptively, before anyone can fully assess their consequences. If programs change their names, missions, and eligibility criteria without preserving data about whom they serve, the losses may be difficult to document years later.
She said stories from students and communities will become increasingly important as researchers try to understand what has changed and whom those changes have affected.
That work will require more than tracking whether institutions continue to offer programs under different names. It will mean asking who participates, who feels a sense of belonging, and who persists through graduation.
Hurns noted that belonging is an important indicator of student success. Programs that help students navigate college are not simply about getting them through the door. They can also help students feel like members of the campus community and give them reasons to stay.
The danger, she said, is that institutions operating in a climate of political fear will make changes that affect more students than they intend.
The language may become broader, but the underlying inequities do not necessarily disappear. Without data and clear goals, institutions risk losing the ability to distinguish progress for all students from progress for the students their programs were designed to serve.
