Legacy preferences: the blight of the academic institutions of the Republic! That dammed practice of letting people in based on who their parents are. That elitism is shameful and un-American. Why are we still doing this?
So wonder many progressives, in a more or less annual rant that comes around at admissions time. According to an editorial in The New Republic:
The country's most selective schools continue the deeply unfair practice of favoring legacies in their admissions process. According to journalist Daniel Golden, 33.9 percent of legacy applicants to the University of Pennsylvania were admitted in 2008, compared with just 16.4 percent of the overall pool. The numbers are even more dramatic elsewhere: At Princeton, in 2009, 41.7 percent of legacies were admitted, compared with 9.2 percent of overall applicants. What sort of institution devoted to meritocracy more than quadruples its admission rate for the children of the well-connected?
What sort of institution? Well this isn’t much of a mystery: it’s an institution that relies on significant private funding. It makes sense for colleges to admit the relatives and children of alumni. That’s because if they don’t admit them the alumni might get mad and stop giving money.
But even if it’s practical, it does sound a little odd. America is one of the only places in the world where a parent’s alma mater has any bearing whether a student can be admitted to the university of his choice.
And with all the focus on test scores and grades, the college admissions process seems like a merit based slotting system, rewarding the most talented and assigning the untalented, or lazy, to America’s less selective schools. America seems to have no problem with that basic method of operation, believing as it does that the process essentially rewards people for doing a good job and working hard.
Even admissions preferences for athletes, which occasionally come under fire from pundits, is not terribly troublesome. Being a good basketball or field hockey player probably isn’t relevant to one’s academic career, but at least it’s a talent.
And then there are legacy preferences, the tendency of college to reward people for their genealogy. But is it really unfair?
If the practice is unjust, it seems to be so only in a very limited, and irrelevant “I’m mad because I didn’t get into Dartmouth” sense. The problem with the basic “down with legacies” argument is that it implies that the legacy preferences of selective colleges prevent otherwise deserving people from getting a great education. This is wrong; if someone doesn’t get into his top school only because he’s not a legacy he won’t be hurt; he will get into one of the other selective schools to which he applied.
The fact that a high school student didn't get into Princeton or Dartmouth despite straight A’s, perfect SAT’s, and impressive extracurricular activities is unfortunate, for sure, but it doesn’t matter. Such a student probably will get into Cornell or Williams, and almost certainly will be admitted to George Washington or BU. And all of those schools are pretty much the same, in terms of the demographics of the students who go there and the types of jobs they hold and lifestyles they lead once they graduate.
Legacy preferences don't make America dumber or poorer, or more even more unequal.
There so many applicants to America’s top schools that if Princeton eliminated legacy preferences it would merely admit more affluent, bright students whose parents didn’t go to Princeton. Removing legacy preferences wouldn’t actually put more poor students in; the number of low-income students otherwise capable of being admitted to selective schools is pretty limited.
Elite colleges often talk about the nature of meritocracy, how important it is for wealthy, selective schools to make it possible for students to succeed there. It's important to hold schools to this pledge, but let's keep this in perspective.
As the Supreme Court determined in Dartmouth College v. Woodward, the private American college does not exist for some ambiguous public improvement project; it exists to do as its trustees see fit. Part of the reason these schools can afford to be so generous is because they have devoted, generous alumni willing to give to make their school great. There's no evidence that any college will enroll legacy students who aren't otherwise prepared to succeed to college, but colleges have to keep the wishes of its generous graduates in mind.
That means the institutions can give out scholarships and build new buildings, it also means keeping alumni happy. An easy, and cheap, way to do this is to give legacy preferences. As long as no one gets hurt (and no one really does) the preference for such applicants makes a lot of sense. It's time to let this one go.
Cross-posted at the Washington Monthly.
Follow Daniel Luzer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/daniel_luzer
I had often read claims by legacy parents that their legacy children are qualified to do the work at Harvard. In that case so there are gazillions of other people who are also qualified to the work at Harvard. Harvard claims that 97 % of its undergraduates eventually earn a Harvard diploma. Google the Common Data Set of Cal State Long Beach. It says that between 700-800 students in the freshman class at CSULB have a score o between 600-700 in the Math portion of the SAT ( per 2010 entering freshman class.) . According to Harvard 1/4 or 400 of its freshman class have a score between 600-700 in the Math portion of the SAT. Si if those 700-800 students from Cal State Long Beach enrolled at Harvard, then 97% of them will graduate from Harvard and no doubt are qualified to do the work at Harvard.
I have nothing against legacy admissions to be honest. However, arguing that an institution is intellectually legitimate or better yet - elite, while the statistics create a strong case to the contrary, is morally bankrupt. Hypothetically the legacy students already have the upper hand after all. Their mothers and fathers certainly earn enough money (statistically) to provide the best and most comprehensive education while cultivating a love for intellectualism in the household, do they not?
Such students are primed and prepped for the best of the best schools and should be applying to other selective institutions just as they are to the one attended by mom and dad. Surely they can get into such schools easily, or at least above the natural admission rates.
Or can they?
If all that legacy admissions achieve in the context of our intellectual gradient is the propagation of a bourgeois class whose members view other Americans, regardless of intellect and potential, as a bunch of sub-humans to be preyed upon - then we have a vested interest, as a nation to remove the practice.
Why you ask? Because when the first thing which comes to mind in making decisions which affect the economy is whether or not they upset the corrupt, the inept, and the incompetent members of our Alma matter then we as a country lose.
The way we are testing right now it seems that memorization and articulation are the only things which matter - taught skills. I believe that we should instead be testing for intelligence and problem solving capabilities - something that IQ tests marginally measure.
That is not the interest of academia though. They are happy to validate the intellectual discrimination which makes them money as long as the SAT's say that the people originally intended to enter the hallowed halls are qualified to do so. Never mind the fact they basically paid their entire way through that test and have little intellect to speak of.
Far as costs - they are irrelevant. We destroyed our manufacturing decades ago. College is the new agoge, we need to go there to even have a chance at fruitful employment and while we attend, its might-makes-right.
If it's "no big deal", shout it to the stars.
I do not agree. All 4 are good schools, but they are not the same at all.
The argument that alumni donations (bribes ) help more poor people attend the Ivies is simply nonsense. Berkeley does not practice legacies yet 28% of the attendees are poor (eligible for a Pell grant ), In fact Birgeneau (Berkeley chancellor ) recently said that there are more poor undergrads attending Berkeley compared to the entire Ivy League. There are historically black public universities in the South where more than half of the undergrads are poor and they do not practice legacy preferences like the Ivies or black private schools like Morehouse or Spelman or Howard.Therefore this argument that you need legacy preferences to provide education for the poor is bogus. Of course the vast system of preferences in the Ivies and private schools is nothing but an attempt by the wealthy for an intergenerational transfer of wealth for their children. The definition of " merit " among legacy supporters is being the progeny of some lucky sperm and of one having the right pedigree .In other words Harvard is something sort of a kennel. What this legacy parents and students are really interested in is the exchange value of their diploma in the real world.
Legacy admissions and nepotism undermine our meritocracy. The cost is that the wrong people receive an education and then get jobs that they aren't qualified for by virtue of the fact that there's someone better who was passed over because they don't have the right degree or connections. McKinsey estimated that GDP is 9% lower as a result of sex discrimination. I'd have to guess that legacy admissions and nepotism hurt the economy just as much. That is a cost we cannot afford.
Wrong arguments Daniel, your claim that there is a limited supply of poor people with low SAT scores who will apply to these schools is simply wrong. Eshpenshade and his colleagues made a study of the SAT data of all SAT testakers from the 90's. They found out that 14 % of SAT testakers from the lowest social class ( presumably with household incomes less than 40k) scored above 1400 in the old SAT (200-1600 scale) compared to 29 % of SAT testakers in the highest social class ( presumably coming from household incomes above 200k). Obviously there is a far,far greater number of poor people who take the SAT than the wealthiest Americans. What that means is simple Daniel, in terms of absolute numbers there are more poor people who have high SAT scores than wealthy Americans. What is even more important according to the Eshpenshade study is that a higher percentage of poor people have higher GPA's compared to the percentage among the wealthiest Americans. So getting rid of legacies does not mean they will be replaced necessarily by non-legacy wealthy applicants. Legacy preferences is a widespread and common practice in private universities and it has been like that for a long, long time, after all private colleges are nothing but a business.They are like your Mcdonald's and Starbucks around the corner and hence deserve no tax exemption from the IRS.
Leo cruz aka biaknabato
ako ay Pilipino (I am a Pilipino )
Also, while I am sure you can find a handful of examples to the contrary, I doubt that the Harvard legacy admits are *that* much less qualified than the rest.
1. The argument is made that affirmative action is evil because the available slots don't go the best candidates. Aren't legacies affirmative action based on wealth?
2. It perpetuates a hereditary wealthy class who then go one to get hired by their parent's friends into overpaying jobs which they would not even have been considered for if they weren't the spawn of someone with wealth.
If that's not how they REALLY feel, then they should be required to give back all those federal grants, because they lied on their grant applications.
Those schools would go broke without that taxpayer money, however, because the alumni are not SO pleased by legacy admissions that they'd be willing to fill in that gap with their own private cash.