Here's what happened when affirmative action ended at California public colleges

University at California Los Angeles is just starting to catch up to the diversity numbers it saw before an affirmative action ban took effect in 1998, according to a university official. Students walk past Royce Hall at the UCLA campus. (Jae C. Hong/AP)

For decades, the question of affirmative action — whether colleges should consider race when deciding which students to admit — has been the subject of national debate.

And as the nation's highest court has grown more conservative in recent years, court-watchers wondered if it would reverse decades-old precedents allowing affirmative action.