In light of the recent Supreme Court decision regarding college admission practices it would seem a natural extension to apply this to legacy admissions.
Student admissions should be based on their scholastic achievement and not on past attendance of their parents.
I totally agree. Unfortunately, unlike affirmative action, it’s a much harder path to demonstrate that legacy admissions are unconstitutional. Unsavory, yes, but not unconstitutional.
Considering this Supreme Court was perfectly happy to fulfill a political objective by issuing a decision a few days ago based on a totally fabricated and completely fictional case, I would expect them to firmly reject a claim about legacy admissions being unlawfully discriminatory by concocting a brand-new legal principle about longstanding American traditions in higher education and pretending that it has always existed in the penumbra of established caselaw or some equivalent bullshit.
As I said in one of the parallel threads, I think AA should have been about giving extra credit to students who have come from a disadvantaged background, which is often but not necessarily, minorities.
With such a reformulated AA it would be hard to see how they could thread the needle between that being unconstitutional and legacy admissions being OK (though I’m sure they would try).
Some alumni do not donate because of disgust with current practices. And so long as their children aren’t put at a disadvantage, I think current contributors will keep on sending in the $100 a year or whatever.
However, there’s a weakness I see in my own last paragraph. I suspect eliminating athletic skill preference would have a negative effect on donations to sports powerhouse state universities, as It may be that a large proportion of their contributors are big-time sports fans. Objective measures of sporting achievement, like making an all-state team, could be applied and may have some stick-to-it-tiveness justification.
The way the courts should have looked at is that the current system of preferences is so corrupt, with politician child preferences and outrageous gamified practices like essays written by rich teenagers with help of expensive consultants, that race can’t be taken out of the mix without a completely transparent system. I don’t see real benefit to giving points for having been on a winning debate team, or won part-time Employee of the Month at a fast food joint. But so long as the rules are published, that could remain legal,
Unless the rules are transparent, invidious racial and class discrimination, on the part of corrupt admissions officials sure of their virtue, will continue.
This has struck me as the practical problem with going after legacy admission preferences.
Presumably, at least to the OP, it is a “natural extension” of banning race-based admissions practices because “legacy” preferences are a facially race-neutral policy (with no racially discriminatory intent) that result in disparate racial outcomes.
Such things do not generally violate the equal protection clause. See, e.g.Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development (1977). And even recently, courts have held that such race neutral policies (with disparate impact) are permissible. See, e.g.,Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board (4th Cir. 2023). (While I tend to agree with the district court the TJ policy was enact with a discriminatory intent, I accept that the appeals court reversed in part because it concluded that there was no such intent).
All of which it to say that now that they are not able to explicitly discriminate on the basis of race, it’s fairly clear that colleges are going to start adopting racially neutral policies that have a disparate impact. And they are going to do it, at least in part, in order to affect the racial composition of the student body (i.e., with a discriminatory intent).
A court ruling against “legacy” preferences would be (or ought to be) a real problem for new “affirmative action” models.
Right, I agree. I think that race-based policies are quite difficult to defend, and the policy should have gradually moved towards just trying to make the field more level by helping disadvantaged groups, which is what helping minorities was really about.
To me it was inevitable that race would be taken out eventually; who is to even say what a person’s race is? And why should a child of wealthy black parents be given assistance* versus a trailer park white kid?
But of course, banning AA overnight, based on an astroturfed campaign, and without any proposals for reform of the system beyond this, was absolutely the wrong way to go about it. It was just stick it to the libs blacks.
* I know “assistance” is misleading, I’m struggling for the right noun.
Any half-decent school guidance counselor will instruct minority applicants to mention how being of color has inspired them and/or that they faced discrimination. I find the idea that the applicant now has to come up with a racial story line, if only to overcome the upper class preference categories, utterly depressing.
I suspect that most people who opposed affirmative action in college admissions would be just fine with doing away with “legacy” admissions too. There would also be substantial support for eliminating the practice of hiring job candidates based on family connections.
How that gets done on the basis that it represents “discrimination” might be tricky.
There are certainly going to be efforts to continue to covertly engage in race-based discrimination and I think that various segments of society have been pretty clear on that plan.
But, let’s assume it’s genuine (let’s assume it’s really about diversity of background and experience). A school has an admission preference for children from single parent homes; first generation college students; English as second language speakers; poverty; athletes; people who experienced discrimination. I think that’s all probably fine under the current law-- it’s racially-neutral with a disparate impact (although, as you realize, adopted for a racially discriminatory purpose).
But, imagine the future where legacy admissions are impermissibly “discriminatory” because they are racially-neutral with a disparate racial impact. How does that opinion continue to permit the above?
In the Deppartment of Education complaint filed yesterday about Harvard, they established that over 30% of the incoming class was “legacy” and that over 70% of legacy applicants were white. I don’t know if that’s enough to cross a line. I guess we’ll find out
If I were in charge at Harvard, I’d just end legacy admissions voluntarily. Heck, their endowment is over $30 billion. They can afford to piss off a few disgruntled alums.
There seems to be a disconnect here regarding discrimination and race. You can be discriminated against and not have it be based on race. In the case of legacy admissions it’s a discrimination against someone based on familiar association and not on scholastic achievement.
A lot of the Jim Crow laws were based on familial association, too. “Anyone is allowed to vote, regardless of skin color, as long as their grandfather voted!”
It’s actually far worse than that. Because, as you note, current legacy admissions policies are, arguably, not in place with a discriminatory intent. Which means they will almost certainly withstand constitutional challenge for the reasons you stated.
But the reverse will not hold true for facially race-neutral policies that are intended to advantage minority students, such as by giving preference to people from low-income households. Because discriminatory intent is fatal on its own.
So my prediction is this: for all the #bothsideswhataboutism#centrist nonsense being thrown about by various talking heads purporting to hate legacy admissions just as much as affirmative action, nothing will be done on a national level to eliminate legacy admissions preferences. Maybe some colleges will do away with or at least substantially diminish legacy preference on their own (I mean, I’m sure they’ll always reserve a back door for the mega donors’ kids), but that will be the extent of it.
Whether or not the various pundits decrying legacy admissions are doing so in good faith (although I suspect many of them are doing it in bad faith, just so they don’t appear too hypocritical for denouncing race-based affirmative action), it doesn’t really matter: there really is no basis (not one that any US Supreme Court of the last 50 years would entertain, anyway) to prohibit legacy preference on constitutional grounds. As to whether Congress could craft a statute to accomplish the same goal, of eliminating legacy preferences for schools receiving federally subsidized student loans, for example… honestly, I haven’t though that far ahead, because there is no way in hell Congress will actually take action on this.
It’s $53 billion–or at least was at the end of FY 2021. It may be a little lower now. Harvard is more an endowment running a university than the other way around. And like all institutions, its main purpose is to perpetuate itself.
Which brings up an interesting point–being a legacy doesn’t give you much advantage at top schools if you aren’t super-wealthy. I had a cardiologist tell me that when he went to the parent’s information session at Duke, it was clear to him that he was not rich enough for his legacy status to help his kids much. I bet those 30% legacy kids come 90% from households with incomes over $500k, and that is far above the average legacy applicant household income. The legacy kid whose legacy parent is merely affluent has no special help.
If they more nakedly preferred ‘development’ kids–that’s an actual term of art in the business–would that be better or worse?
I think that most of the people who set admissions policies at elite schools are actual progressives and have a sense of shame. If, maybe ten years from now, the Supreme Court really issues a no-loopholes ruling against AA , I think it will be the death of legacy and donor preference.