The Supreme Court weighed in on affirmative action on college campuses Monday, keeping intact the notion that diversity is a government interest and ruling that courts should apply stricter scrutiny to how universities admit their students.

But justices didn’t make a hard ruling on the Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin case, deciding instead to send it back down to the lower court for review. The ruling was a bit of a surprise, as many experts expected the conservative-leaning court to do damage to affirmative action.

Now, we’ve heard a lot from the Supreme Court this week about a series of issues. And as we’ve had a chance to think about this ruling in particular, some have probably decided that the lower court might be right. After all, isn’t affirmative action an outdated practice? Do ethnic minorities still need a leg up in the college admissions process?

New York Times columnist David Brooks had this to say about the issue:  “By imposing stricter standards on how courts review affirmative action plans, the court did send another small signal that the era of explicitly race-based affirmative action is coming to an end…They are going away because underlying realities have changed.”

But the underlying realities have not changed, as minorites still lag far behind in degree attainment. This is particularly important to remember as the ‘Fisher’ ruling will likely cause more litigation on the issue, experts say.

Census data from 2009 shows that African Americans are less likely to have completed bachelor’s master’s professional, or doctorate degrees than those who are white. And in the same year, only 12.9 percent of Hispanic obtained at least a bachelor’s degree. The white population who have achieved at least a bachelor’s degree, on the other hand, is at least 31.1 percent.

And affirmative action is still an essential part of the way the college admissions process works in this country. And Brooks need only look to a study, produced by the very paper he works for, to learn how the absence of affirmative action programs holds down the number of black and Hispanic college students.

After voters in Michigan decided to eliminate affirmative action from their colleges, the proportion of black college-aged students increased, but their enrollment in college decreased, according to a New York Times interactive from June 24.

The same study shows that at University of California at Berkley, the gap between African-American enrollment and the actual college-aged population increased from four points to seven points after affirmative action was eliminated. And for Hispanics, the gap escalated from 32 points to 38 points.

Granted, the positive effects of affirmative action programs are not quite as obvious for some other states. The study outlines that, too. But across the board, we know that minorities attend college less than their white counterparts. And if affirmative action programs help bridge that gap, at least by a couple percentage points, then it’s worth maintaining.