With race-based affirmative action now barred by the U.S. Supreme Court, another form of preference in college-admissions decisions is under heightened assault.
Days after the Supreme Court released its controversial decision on affirmative action, a civil rights group in New England filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education asking that the federal agency find legacy admissions at Harvard University to be illegal.
The NAACP chimed in, asking more than 1,500 colleges and universities around the country to stop giving any additional weight to the applications of students whose parents or grandparents are graduates of or donors to the school.
These groups should be careful for what they wish. Ending legacy admissions could backfire, making it less likely, not more so, for students of color to attend Harvard and other highly selective American universities.
The main reason that a college gives any preference to the offspring of alumni is because it encourages families to keep giving to the school — money that builds the huge endowments these schools use in part to make themselves financially accessible to students of modest means, a significant portion of whom are racial minorities.
Getting into the Harvards of the world is hard, but even harder is being able to afford them without financial assistance. Most highly selective schools have a policy to offer enough financial aid for all admitted students so they can realistically afford to attend. The larger the schools’ endowments, the more likely they are to provide this assistance in the form of grants rather than loans.
Should legacy admissions be discontinued, whether voluntarily or by force of the government, there would most likely be a detrimental impact on giving. Parents whose children cannot get into their college alma mater are going to be less inclined to keep on giving to that school.
Less giving could eventually translate into students of modest means either not getting enough financial assistance or having it offered more in the form of loans — thus saddling them with an enormous debt when they leave the pricey school.
Defenders of race-based affirmative action made the argument that the practice benefited not only the students who were given the admissions edge but other students, too, by exposing them to peers from different backgrounds and life experiences.
Even though the conservative majority on the Supreme Court did not find that argument compelling, it is true that most preference policies have direct and indirect beneficiaries. The connection is particularly strong for legacy admissions.
Admittedly, the large majority of direct beneficiaries from legacy admissions are wealthy and, at least for now, white. The indirect beneficiaries, though, are not wealthy, and many of them are not white. It would be very difficult to eliminate the direct beneficiaries without negatively impacting the indirect ones as well.
Those who wish to end legacy admissions need to think about that.
— Tim Kalich, Greenwood Commonwealth
