How do people know who and how many are legacy admits? Do they stamp their paperwork “Dumb but one of our own” or something? Or do people just assume that any student whose parent(s) attended that school is a legacy?
Because I can totally imagine some some student whose last three generations of ancestors all attended Yale, but who is smart and ambitious with a 4.0 GPA and extracurriculars out the wazoo who would have been eagerly admitted regardless.
That’s a good question. They can say “When deciding whom to admit, you’re not allowed to consider…” but how do they determine and enforce that?
The same way they enforce any requirement in any law that speaks to intent.
It’s a difficult standard to prosecute to, and subject to considerable variation in results. But it works after a fashion. And is probably about all we can expect from any of our intent-based laws and regulations until we have brain scanners that can directly extract the truth about your thoughts without your consciousness being able to interfere.
IF you look at the legislation in California, the punishment for schools that don’t abide by the new law, is that their name goes on a list on a State website. There are no civil penalties or criminal penalties for violating.
This is more of a PR legislation for the State so they can say they have taken a stance.
As far as I can tell from the drafting history of the bill, it was supposed to have some teeth but those got pulled in the course of horse trading to get it passed.
In theory, now that the law is in place, it could be amended later with meaningful enforcement provisions if the schools in question aren’t sufficiently susceptible to naming and shaming.
I don’t think legacies generally get financial aid. The whole point of legacies is to generate lots of donations.
A cousin of mine got into Wharton by having his father donate $10K to Penn. He was no legacy. This was around 1950; it would be like $100K today.
That’s a bargain; it cost Jared Kushner’s dad $3 million to get him into Harvard.
Penn ain’t Harvard. And Jared Kushner is a particularly unpromising anything.
Are you suggesting not all Ivy League schools are in the same league?
primer inter pares
He spelled “Harvard” with a 6.
Although it seems that is not the case here, the idea wouldn’t be to merely remove financial aid for the legacy admits themselves, but to remove all state financial aid for all students. Meaning that students who are reliant on state financial aid to attend college would chose to attend some other college.
Here in the United States, private clubs, where membership is not open to the general public, are free to discriminate. A business like Sam’s Club or Costo can’t discriminate because they’re open to the general public. i.e. Pretty much anyone can walk in and buy a membership. If I wanted to incorporate the the He-Man Woman-Haters club as a 501(c)7 social club and exclude women it’s perfectly legal just so long as the club isn’t open to the general public.
Even racist and sexist people have a right to freedom of association here in the USA. They just can’t extend that bigotry to places of public accommodation like a business or school without running into hot water.
Colleges don’t just rank students by gpa and take the top n, even ignoring legacy and sports admissions. And they generally shouldn’t.
Yup. Although not just directly, in tuition. It also fosters a sense of “belonging to a club” which makes alumni feel more generous to their alma mater.
Is there a lot of state financial aid for non-state universities? There are federal loans that are important. And there’s a surprising amount of private money. But it’s there a lot of state money to pay for private schools? I didn’t think there was.
I think that very much depends on the state - NY has a tuition grant for eligible NYS residents attending a college in NY. Since the eligibility requirements are different, it’s not uncommon to receive more in state grants that Federal.