WASHINGTON (AP) — The next big fight over college admissions has already taken place, and it revolves around a different kind of minority group getting a boost: kids of alumni.
In the wake of one Decision of the Supreme Court rejecting affirmative action in admissions, colleges are coming under renewed pressure to end legacy affiliations – the practice of favoring applicants with family ties to alumni. Long seen as a perk for whites and the wealthy, detractors say it is no longer defensible in a world with no countervailing affirmative action.
President Joe Biden suggested colleges should reconsider the practice after the court ruling, saying that legacy preferences “expand privilege rather than opportunity.” Several Democrats in Congress demanded an end to the policy in light of the court’s decision to remove race from the admissions process. So did Republicans, including South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, who is vying for the GOP presidential nomination.
“Let’s be clear: affirmative action still exists for white people. It’s called legacy admission,” Representative Barbara Lee, a California Democrat, said on Twitter.
For critics of legacy recordings, the renewed debate over fairness in recordings has provided an opportunity to swing public sentiment behind their cause.
As US colleges pledge their commitment to diversity following the court ruling, activists have a simple answer: prove it. If schools want to enroll more black, Hispanic and Indigenous students, activists say, removing outdated affiliations would be an easy first step.
“Now more than ever there is no justification for allowing this process to continue,” said Viet Nguyen, a Brown and Harvard graduate who leads Ed Mobilizer, a nonprofit that has been battling old preferences since 2018. “No other country in the world does that outdated preferences. This is an opportunity to catch up with the rest of the world.”
Using the Supreme Court’s decision as a catalyst, Nguyen’s group is calling on top college alumni to put pressure on their alma maters to end the practice. The goal is to get graduates from the 30 schools to withhold donations until the policy expires. The schools include Harvard and the University of North Carolina, which were at the center of the lawsuit, along with the rest of the Ivy League and the University of Southern California.
It builds on other efforts focused on practice. Colorado banned it to public universities in 2021, and lawmakers in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York have introduced similar bills. In Congress, New York Representative Jamaal Bowman and Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, both Democrats, are reviving legislation that would ban it at all universities that accept federal money.
Old affiliations have become an easy target in the wake of a Supreme Court decision that hinged on issues of merit in the college application process, said Julie Park, who studies college admissions and racial equality at the University of Maryland. Rather than getting in on their own merit, she said, legacy students simply “stand on the shoulders of their parents.”
“It’s just low-hanging fruit,” she says. “People want to do something, and there’s a strong reason to get rid of it.”
Secretary Miguel Cardona urged colleges to “ask themselves the tough questions,” adding that legacy admissions and other forms of special treatment “have long denied well-qualified students of all backgrounds a level playing field.”
“In the wake of this ruling, they could tip the scales even further against students who have already stacked the cards against them,” Cardona said in a statement to The Associated Press.
In the hazy world of college admissions, it’s unclear exactly which schools provide a legacy boost and how much it helps. In California, where state law requires schools to disclose the practice, USC reported that 14% of students admitted last year had family ties to alumni or donors. Stanford reported a similar percentage.
At Harvard, which released years of documents as part of the lawsuit that ended up in the Supreme Court, former students were eight times more likely to be admitted, and nearly 70% were white, researchers found.
An Associated Press survey of the nation’s most selective colleges last year found that freshman legacy college students ranged from 4% to 23%. Four schools — Notre Dame, USC, Cornell, and Dartmouth — had more legacy students than black students.
Proponents of the policy say it builds an alumni community and encourages donations. A 2022 study from a secretive university in the Northeast found that old college students were more likely to make donations, but at the cost of diversity—the vast majority were white.
Some prestigious colleges have abandoned the policy in recent years, including Amherst College and Johns Hopkins University. In the first year after dropping, Amherst saw the proportion of older students in the freshman class drop by about half, while 19% of freshmen were the first in their families to attend college, the highest number in the history of the college. school.
Some colleges argue that as their student populations become more racially diverse, the benefits of legacy status will extend to more students of color. Opponents argue that white families still have an advantage, with generations of relatives having access to every university.
Ivory Toldson went to college at Louisiana State University, but it wasn’t an option for his parents in Jim Crow South.
“My parents couldn’t legally go to LSU. Discrimination is much more recent in our history than many people seem to understand,” said Toldson, a Howard University professor and director of education, innovation, and research for the NAACP.
Toldson said there is a growing realization of the irony that preferences for athletes and older students are still allowed while race should be ignored.
In May, a AP-NORC Poll found that few Americans think that old admissions or donations should play a major role in college admissions. Only 9% think it should be very important for a family member to be present and 18% say it should be somewhat important. Similarly, only 10% say donations to the school should be very important and 17% say that should be somewhat important.
That same poll found that most Americans support affirmative action in higher education, but that race should play a small role. Sixty-three percent said the Supreme Court shouldn’t stop colleges from considering race in admissions, but 68% said it shouldn’t be a big factor.
Several colleges declined to say whether they will continue to boost legacy students next year, including Cornell and the University of Notre Dame.
Meanwhile, Nguyen said he is more optimistic than ever. In the past, colleges have been reluctant to be among the first to make the change, he said. Now he thinks that is changing.
“In the next few months, I think the hesitation will actually be who will be last,” he said. “No university wants to be last.”
The Associated Press education team is supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.