Traditional preferences in college admissions have come under increasing criticism in recent years, particularly in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to limit the use of racial preferences in college admissions. SFFA v. Harvard, last year.Sociologist Roderick Graham and I recently discussed Divide and perish website that hosts debates on various public policy issues.
I object to legacy preferences, and Professor Graham defends them. I applaud Graham for his willingness to take on the difficult task of defending this increasingly unpopular policy. I hold a variety of unpopular opinions myself, and know it’s not always easy to speak up for such things. Still, I’m not convinced by his argument.
Here is an excerpt from my introductory statement:
I rarely agree with Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but she’s right condemn legacy preferences It’s been called “affirmative action for the privileged” in college admissions. They are unfair for much the same reasons that racial and ethnic preferences are. In both cases, some applicants are rewarded, while others are penalized due to arbitrary ancestry circumstances beyond their control. These preferences have nothing to do with academic ability or other skills that might make them a better student or better member of the university community. The fact that your parents are black, white, or Hispanic doesn’t say anything about how good of an applicant you are. The same goes for whether your parents went to Harvard….
In some ways, heritage preferences are worse than racial preferences for historically disadvantaged minorities. The former cannot be defended on the grounds that it somehow compensates for historical injustice. Nor can they be justified on the grounds of promoting “diversity”—a rationale that the U.S. Supreme Court correctly rejected as a justification for racial preference last year. The descendants of elite college graduates are neither a historically oppressed minority nor a source of educationally valuable diversity….
A common justification for legacy preferences is that they increase alumni giving. This may be a valid argument for a for-profit organization whose primary goal is to make money. But most universities are public or not-for-profit institutions that should, at least in principle, prioritize other goals, such as promoting education and research. Traditional preferences clearly work against these goals. Furthermore, it’s not even clear whether legacy status actually significantly increases donations. Several elite schools, including Johns Hopkins, MIT, and my undergraduate alma mater, Amherst College, have recently abolished legacy preferences with virtually no ill effects.
Here is an excerpt from my response to Graham:
Graham’s analogy between traditional preferences and “preference for students with stronger athletic or artistic abilities” is wrong. Athletic and artistic abilities are valuable skills. In contrast, heritage status is an arbitrary circumstance of birth, such as race or ethnicity. Being a descendant of an alumnus does not mean you are a good student or have valuable skills to contribute to the university community. Being the child of an elite college graduate may be associated with academic ability, just as being the son of an NBA player may be associated with basketball ability. But when schools can directly measure relevant skills, such as grades and test scores for academic ability and high school sports records for athletic talent… schools don’t need to rely on such crude correlations based on ancestry.
Heritage preferences for historically disadvantaged groups, such as blacks or Native Americans, are even more untenable than racial and ethnic preferences. The former can be defended on the grounds that it compensates for historical injustice or promotes “diversity.” These reasons are seriously flawed and I don’t agree with them, but they are at least reasonable. In contrast, no one can argue that the children of elite college alumni are an oppressed minority. Nor do schools suffer from the lack of “diverse” perspectives these students provide. Even without preference, prestigious universities leave a substantial legacy among their student bodies.
After my answer, Professor Graham also rebutted.
Interestingly, Graham’s argument for legacy preference is not really an argument for legacy preference at all. He didn’t even make their standard argument for increasing alumni giving.
Graham’s argument is actually true other Non-Academic Admissions Criteria. For example, in his rebuttal, he argued that schools should use admissions preferences to promote ideological diversity (increase the share of conservative students) and socioeconomic diversity (increase the share of students from relatively poor families). I am highly skeptical of the desirability of ideological preferences in admissions, and would only use socioeconomic preferences to a very limited extent to avoid the same “mismatch” problem that plagues preferences. But even if these types of preferences are legitimate, they are not the same as legacy preferences. The latter do not help relatively poor applicants (quite the opposite, in fact!) and there is no reason to think that they will contribute to ideological diversity.
I’ve written before about legacy preferences and the questions they raise here and here .
