(NewsNation) — Colleges are reconsidering legacy admissions after the Supreme Court struck down the use of race-conscious admissions last year.
The overall impact of ending the practice in the name of diversity is likely small, according to one report. Still, many say it’s still a significant step toward fairness.
Virginia banned the use of legacy admission in public colleges last week, becoming the second state to do so after Colorado outlawed the practice in 2021.
Other states including Connecticut and Massachusetts are considering similar measures and several private colleges have also banned the practice, including New York University, Amherst College and Johns Hopkins University.
Last summer’s Supreme Court decision ended affirmative action policies that allowed for the limited use of race as a factor in college acceptance practices. Some considered the court’s decision a huge blow to efforts to close racial and socioeconomic barriers in colleges.
The ruling also renewed long-standing calls to end legacy admissions which have been criticized as unmeritocratic and have historically benefited white wealthy students.
What is legacy admission?
Legacy admissions is the practice of giving preferential treatment to applicants whose relatives attended the same institution.
In a study of about a dozen highly selective “elite” colleges, those with family ties were nearly four times as likely to be admitted as applicants with the same test scores, according to Opportunity Insights, a research group at Harvard. Legacy students from the richest one percent of families were five times as likely to be admitted, the study found.
The Department of Education opened an investigation into Harvard University’s legacy admissions last year after several groups alleged they discriminated against Black, Hispanic and Asian applicants in favor of white and wealthy students who are less qualified.
Those who support legacy admission say it contributes to a sense of community and that gutting legacy acceptance will not bring about a more diverse campus, adding that efforts to do so are misguided.
“No legacy is admitted at the expense of a first-generation student; they are admitted at the expense of other privileged students who have other excellent options,” wrote Steven B. Gerrard, a professor of philosophy at Williams College, in an opinion editorial last year defending the practice in the Washington Post. “Divesting from legacy admissions (and loudly proclaiming it to the world) is a lot easier than doing the real work of making admissions fair.”
Will banning legacy admissions lead to more diversity?
A Brookings Institute study released earlier this month found legacy considerations are a widespread practice among schools considered selective.
Forty percent of students attended institutions that practiced legacy admissions, with a much higher rate among private school students, it found.
The report concluded that while legacy acceptance is common, “ending the practice will likely have only small effects on racial and socioeconomic diversity and would be unlikely to offset the effects of ending affirmative action at most colleges.”
While the study shows that family relationships are counted, it’s unclear how heavily that’s weighed in acceptance decisions, Sarah Reber, one of its authors, told NewsNation.
Evidence suggests that racial diversity will decline at highly selective colleges due to the end of affirmative action, and removing legacy admissions could help a little, Reber said. However, in many cases, the legacy students who would have been admitted will probably be replaced by other white, relatively high-income students.
That doesn’t mean Reber believes legacy acceptance shouldn’t end.
Even if ending legacy preferences won’t have huge effects on access for lower-income or under-represented minority students, she says it is still a good idea because it’s fairer and will improve opportunities for some.
But Dr. Amanda J. Calhoun, a psychiatry resident at Yale School of Medicine, argued in a 2022 opinion editorial for Newsweek that banning legacy admissions could also hurt students of color by cutting off the same intergenerational access that white students were afforded for generations.
“Banning legacy admissions is not going to stop Ivy League institutions from being white-dominated—but it would stop Black alumni from being able to give their descendants the leg-up long enjoyed by white applicants,” Calhoun wrote.
The optics of preferring legacy students could have an effect on applicants who don’t come from those families, Reber argued.
“What is the signal it sends to students whose parents didn’t go to college or whose parents didn’t go to that college? Does it make them feel like it’s not for them? Does it make them think they won’t have a chance to get in and so that they don’t apply? I don’t think we have good evidence on those questions, but that doesn’t mean they’re not things to worry about,” she said.
In the grand scheme of opportunity gaps, legacy admissions are not going to go that far in eliminating the deeper barriers and disparities to access, she said, but getting rid of it still could send signals of inclusiveness and transparency in schools especially as the nation is losing faith in its higher education institutions as places that are fair.
What does banning legacy admissions accomplish?
Wil Del Pilar, senior vice president of the Education Trust, which advocates for students especially those of color or with low incomes, shares the sentiment.
Del Pilar believes that even though ending legacy may not level the playing field, it’s still unfair and contrary to merit-based acceptance.
“If we’re trying to design fair processes, then we should remove those preferences that students didn’t really do anything to earn and they just simply were born into it,” he said.
Banning the practice is “a start to necessary change,” he said, a change that is already brewing as schools grapple with these policies.
“We have a system in place that continues to reproduce inequity and legacy admissions is one of those things,” he said. “It’s a mechanism of social reproduction not of social or economic mobility.”