Legacy preferences in school admissions have come below growing criticism in recent times, particularly within the wake of the Supreme Courtroom’s determination curbing using racial preferences in SFFA v. Harvard, final 12 months. Sociologist Roderick Graham and I not too long ago 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 recognize 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 not often agree with Democratic Consultant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, however she was proper to denounce legacy preferences in school admissions as “affirmative motion for the privileged.” They’re unjust for a lot the identical causes as racial and ethnic preferences are. In each circumstances, some candidates are rewarded, whereas others are punished for arbitrary circumstances of ancestry that they haven’t any management over. These preferences haven’t any connection to tutorial capacity or different abilities which may make them higher college students or higher members of the college neighborhood. The truth that your mother and father are Black, White, or Hispanic says nothing about how good an applicant you might be. And the identical goes for whether or not or not your mother and father 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 in some way making up for historic injustices. In addition they can’t be justified on the grounds that they promote “range”–the rationale the U.S. Supreme Courtroom rightly rejected final 12 months 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 improve alumni donations. This may be a defensible argument for profit-making establishments whose major objective is to generate profits. However most universities are public or nonprofit establishments that—at the least in precept—are speculated to prioritize different goals, equivalent to selling training and analysis. Legacy preferences are clearly inimical to these objectives. Furthermore, it is not even clear that legacy standing truly will increase donations considerably. A number of elite faculties, equivalent to Johns Hopkins, MIT, and my undergrad alma mater Amherst Faculty, have not too long ago abolished legacy preferences with few, if any, in poor health results.
And this is an excerpt from my response to Graham:
Graham is flawed to analogize legacy preferences to “preferences for college kids with sturdy athletic or inventive talents.” Athletic and inventive talents are helpful abilities. 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 helpful ability to contribute to the college neighborhood. Being the kid of an elite-college graduate could also be correlated with tutorial capacity, simply as being the son of an NBA participant could also be correlated with basketball capacity. However faculties needn’t depend on such crude correlations based mostly on ancestry after they have entry to direct measurements of the related abilities, equivalent to grades and check scores for tutorial capacity 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 could 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 least believable. Against this, nobody can argue that the youngsters of elite-college alumni are an oppressed minority. Nor are faculties prone to undergo from a scarcity of the “various” views supplied by such college students. Selective faculties could have loads of legacies within the pupil physique, even with out preferences.
There’s additionally a rejoinder by Prof. Graham, which follows my response.
Apparently, Graham’s argument for legacy preferences is not actually an argument for legacy preferences, in any respect. He does not even make the usual argument that they improve alumni donations.
Graham’s arguments are literally defenses of different nonacademic admissions standards. For instance, in his rejoinder, he argues that faculties ought to use admissions preferences to advertise ideological range (growing the proportion of conservative college students) and socioeconomic range (growing the proportion 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, to be able to keep away from “mismatch” issues of the type that additionally bedevil preferences. However even when most of these preferences are justified, they aren’t the identical factor as legacy preferences. The latter do not assist comparatively poor candidates (fairly the other, in actual fact!) and there’s little purpose to suppose they may contribute to ideological range.
I’ve beforehand written about legacy preferences and the problems they increase right here and right here.