Legacy preferences in faculty admissions have come beneath growing criticism in recent times, particularly within the wake of the Supreme Court docket’s choice curbing using racial preferences in SFFA v. Harvard, final yr. Sociologist Roderick Graham and I lately debated this difficulty on the Divided We Fall web site, which hosts debates on varied public coverage points.
I opposed legacy preferences, whereas Prof. Graham defended them. I respect Graham’s willingness to tackle the troublesome activity of defending this more and more unpopular coverage. I maintain varied unpopular views, myself, and realize it is not all the time straightforward for communicate out for such issues. Nonetheless, I wasn’t persuaded by his factors.
This is an excerpt from my intro assertion:
I hardly ever agree with Democratic Consultant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, however she was proper to denounce legacy preferences in faculty admissions as “affirmative motion for the privileged.” They’re unjust for a lot the identical causes as racial and ethnic preferences are. In each instances, some candidates are rewarded, whereas others are punished for arbitrary circumstances of ancestry that they don’t have any management over. These preferences don’t have any connection to tutorial skill or different expertise that may make them higher college students or higher members of the college group. The truth that your dad and mom are Black, White, or Hispanic says nothing about how good an applicant you’re. And the identical goes for whether or not or not your dad and mom went to Harvard….
In some methods, legacy preferences are worse than racial preferences for traditionally deprived minority teams. The previous can’t be defended on the rationale that they’re one way or the other making up for historic injustices. Additionally they can’t be justified on the grounds that they promote “range”–the rationale the U.S. Supreme Court docket rightly rejected final yr as justification for racial preferences. Scions of elite-college graduates are neither a traditionally oppressed minority nor a supply of educationally-valuable range….
The standard rationale for legacy preferences is that they enhance alumni donations. This is likely to be a defensible argument for profit-making establishments whose main purpose is to earn a living. However most universities are public or nonprofit establishments that—at the very least in precept—are purported to prioritize different goals, equivalent to selling schooling and analysis. Legacy preferences are clearly inimical to these objectives. Furthermore, it is not even clear that legacy standing really will increase donations considerably. A number of elite colleges, equivalent to Johns Hopkins, MIT, and my undergrad alma mater Amherst School, have lately abolished legacy preferences with few, if any, unwell results.
And here is an excerpt from my response to Graham:
Graham is unsuitable to analogize legacy preferences to “preferences for college kids with robust athletic or creative skills.” Athletic and creative skills are beneficial expertise. Against this, legacy standing is an arbitrary circumstance of beginning, like race or ethnicity. Being the scion of an alum doesn’t point out that you’re a good pupil or have a beneficial talent to contribute to the college group. Being the kid of an elite-college graduate could also be correlated with tutorial skill, simply as being the son of an NBA participant could also be correlated with basketball skill. However colleges needn’t depend on such crude correlations primarily based on ancestry after they have entry to direct measurements of the related expertise, equivalent to grades and check scores for educational skill and highschool sports activities information for athletic expertise….
Legacy preferences are even much less defensible than racial and ethnic preferences for traditionally deprived teams, equivalent to Black or Native American individuals. The previous may be defended on the grounds that they compensate for historic injustices or promote “range.” These rationales have severe flaws, and I reject them, however they’re at the very least believable. Against this, nobody can argue that the youngsters of elite-college alumni are an oppressed minority. Nor are colleges more likely to undergo from a scarcity of the “various” views offered by such college students. Selective schools may have loads of legacies within the pupil physique, even with out preferences.
There may be additionally a rejoinder by Prof. Graham, which follows my response.
Curiously, Graham’s argument for legacy preferences is not actually an argument for legacy preferences, in any respect. He would not even make the usual argument that they enhance alumni donations.
Graham’s arguments are literally defenses of different nonacademic admissions standards. For instance, in his rejoinder, he argues that colleges ought to use admissions preferences to advertise ideological range (growing the share of conservative college students) and socioeconomic range (growing the share of scholars from comparatively poor households). I’ve nice skepticism in regards to the desirability of ideological preferences in admissions, and would use socioeconomic ones solely to a really restricted diploma, as a way to keep away from “mismatch” issues of the sort that additionally bedevil preferences. However even when these kind of preferences are justified, they don’t seem to be the identical factor as legacy preferences. The latter do not assist comparatively poor candidates (fairly the alternative, in reality!) and there may be little purpose to assume they may contribute to ideological range.
I’ve beforehand written about legacy preferences and the problems they increase right here and right here.