Without affirmative action, is it time to re-examine legacy preferences?

By Karl Stampfl on 2/6/08

In Justice Clarence Thomas' dissent from the 2003 Supreme Court decision that upheld the University of Michigan Law School's affirmative action policies, he wrote, "Were the court to have the courage to forbid the use of racial discrimination in admissions, legacy preferences (and similar practices) might quickly become less popular."

In other words, if there's no more affirmative action, then the practice of giving preferences to the children of alumni would get a lot more attention - most of it negative. That's what has happened elsewhere. Legacy preference have been eliminated at state institutions in Georgia, where racial preferences were banned by a court ruling in 2001, and in California, where a ballot initiative outlawed them in 1996. Why? Because administrators and oversight boards decided that if they couldn't give admissions preferences to underrepresented minorities, they should at least stop giving preferences to a group that is largely privileged and white: the children of alumni.

Texas A&M University - another public school that doesn't use affirmative action and, as a result, has cut its legacy preferences - is an especially interesting case. A 2004 Houston Chronicle investigation found that for the 2002 admissions year, the school accepted 324 students who would have been rejected without the benefit of legacy. Here's the unseemly statistic: Of those students, 321 were white and only three were black.

It makes sense that legacy is a pretty good proxy for being white. Even at the University of Michigan - which only ramped up its affirmative action programs a couple of decades ago - alumni are still largely members of racial and ethnic groups that are overrepresented in higher education. Having had a world-class education, they are also more likely to provide their children with expensive standardized test preparation courses, quality high schools in safe neighborhoods and the many other educational benefits that come from being born into an affluent family.

But legacy preferences - which are nearly unquestionably legal - also have at least two legitimate purposes. First, they cultivate a sense of community among alumni (translation: we take care of you and yours - even after you've left campus). Second, they increase alumni giving (translation: we take care of you and yours - if you take care of us and ours).

Mainly for the second reason, the presidents of Ivy League universities have openly defended legacy preferences as a necessary evil. Basically, universities trick alumni into believing that their generosity to the school will help their children or grandchildren, and this results in a boost to the endowment, which is in turn used to increase things like academic quality and financial aid for students from less affluent backgrounds (those who don't benefit from legacy preferences). Plus, it wouldn't be fair to cut legacy preferences just as alumni were getting more diverse.

So, perhaps because they were comfortably offset by affirmative action, legacy preferences have been allowed to exist without much public acrimony. This was the case at the University of Michigan, where the admissions boost for a largely underprivileged group (those who benefit from affirmative action) strongly outweighed the boost for a largely overprivileged group (those who benefit from legacy). It was a tenuous balance, but it seemed to work. Then the voters passed Proposal 2, banning affirmative action in state public institutions, including the University of Michigan. That was in November of 2006. Just over a year later, racial preferences are gone, but legacy preferences remain. Why?

When asked via e-mail whether University of Michigan administrators have considered eliminating legacy preferences in the wake of Proposal 2, spokeswoman Kelly Cunningham made the answer clear. "No," she said. Have they seriously considered doing so in the last five years? "No." Cunningham wasn't being impolite; she was being absolute.

At the University, legacy is a small consideration in the holistic application review process, which takes into account a large swath of factors. Cunningham said the effect is "negligible" and not a "critical factor."

In the world of college admissions, simple terms can carry a lot of complex meaning (see "critical mass" and "quota system"). "Negligible" and "critical" are two of those. It's unclear exactly what they mean because - unlike many of its peer universities - the University of Michigan doesn't compile data on the effects of legacy admissions.

In the Ivy League and at other private schools, legacy appears to play a large role. At Ivies, those with legacy generally make up between 10 and 15 percent of the student body. At the University of Notre Dame, about 25 percent of enrolled students are legacies. At Harvard University, about one-third of legacies are admitted, while the overall acceptance rate is only just over 10 percent.

Using those numbers to approximate the number of legacies at the University of Michigan likely isn't accurate, though. A better gauge is the admissions rubric used before the Supreme Court struck down the College of Literature, Science and the Arts' use of a point system in 2003.

Under the infamous point system, alumni parents or stepparents were worth four points and grandparents, siblings or spouses were worth one. Students couldn't be awarded both. Even if you had four generations of University of Michigan alumni in your family, they could still only yield up to four points.

To put that into context, the total number of possible points was 150. In most years, getting about 100 put you in good shape for admission to LSA and about 130 for the College of Engineering. GPA was the largest factor (a 4.0 was worth 80 points). Underrepresented minorities received 20 points, and Michigan residents received 10. The essay - those who labored over them in that era will be unhappy to read this - was worth only up to three.

Judging how important legacy was - and, by extension, is - depends on how you look at the rubric. For example, standardized test scores were worth up to 12 points. Let's say you scored in the 22-to-26 range on the ACT and received 10 points for it. Having an alumni parent would give you the equivalent of scoring between 31 and 36 and then some. That's a big jump. But a logical examination of the rubric shows that legacy was a relatively small edge.

So if it doesn't really make that much of a difference, why is it on the application at all? Could it be that although legacy doesn't play a big factor in admissions, a lot of alumni still think it does and thus are inspired to donate?

Cunningham claims that's not the case. While no telling data is compiled in this area either, Cunningham said legacy preferences don't really increase alumni giving.

"Generous giving and active involvement with the University is seen also among alumni whose children have been denied admission," she said. "There is no tacit or explicit quid pro quo."

But leaders at other institutions have admitted that the endowment boon is a big part of why they consider legacy. It's hard to see how the University of Michigan is different. A recent study of an anonymous college studied by Jonathan Meer, a Stanford University graduate economics student and Economics Prof. Harvey Rosen of Princeton University shows that alumni with children were 13 percentage points more likely to give. In the study, that percentage went up as the kids got closer to applying, took a hit around age 14 if they decided not to apply and went up by about 18 to 25 percentage points a few years later if they did decide to apply.

Cunningham said the University of Michigan uses legacy preferences to show graduates that they're supported even after they leave campus. "Legacy consideration in admissions acknowledges the intrinsic and ongoing relationship between the University and our alumni, a relationship that is respected and highly valued," she said, echoing the explanation written in the current admissions guidelines. Certainly that's part of it, but despite the official line, it's difficult to believe that the risk of losing donations is not a key reason.

And without data it's impossible to know for sure either way.

University officials say they don't collect the data because it would take a lot of time from an already stretched admissions staff - and because it's not a "pertinent" issue, as Cunningham said.

But since Proposal 2 ravaged affirmative action and left legacy alone (why the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, with all its talk of a meritocracy, made that choice is a subject for another article), it will soon become a hotter topic on campus. It already is in the political world. Former Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards criticized it as a "birthright out of 18th-century British aristocracy." Even President George Bush, one of the country's premiere benefactors of legacy preferences, has called for its end. Many others on both sides of the partisan divide have done the same.

The time for a good debate on campus is nigh. The current legacy practices certainly go against a public college's mission to act as an agent of public mobility. And, most important, it wouldn't be unreasonable to call legacy preferences racist on some level.

Why won't University of Michigan administrators examine them critically with all the facts in front of them? After all, this is a university, and a public one at that. One of its ideals is open discussion about what it does and why it does it. Any dialogue like that would include statistics from the admissions office as well as candor from top administrators.

Maybe it's because just having that serious discussion would endanger some level of alumni donations. It could anger deep-pocketed grads, and that's no small matter. As state funding has declined severely over the last decade, the University of Michigan has had to rely more and more on its endowment. University President Mary Sue Coleman has staked much of her reputation on fundraising, including the successful Michigan Difference campaign that raised $2.5 billion. It has paid off. The $7.1-billion endowment is stronger than ever, throwing off a 25-percent return last year.

So why endanger all of that? Unless forced in the court of public opinion, it doesn't look like the administration will.

http://media.www.michigandaily.com/media/storage/paper851/news/2008/02/06/TheStatement/Admissions.Nepotism-3190811.shtml

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=762110&forum_id=1#9289446)

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/13/opinion/13karabel.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=762110&forum_id=1#9289717)

(excerpt)

"The Wall Street Journal recently put a statistical face on alumni clout in admissions. Children of graduates make up 10 to 15 percent of incoming classes at most Ivy League schools, according to the Journal. Harvard accepts 40 percent and Princeton accepts 35 percent of legacies but only 11 percent of all applicants. The University of Pennsylvania rakes 41 percent of legacy applicants yet only 21 percent overall. At Notre Dame, nearly a quarter of students are children of graduates."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=762110&forum_id=1#9289826)

Higher admit rate for legacies

By Andrew Hendel

According to a newly published research paper by Thomas Loverro, Class of 2003, legacies are admitted to college at higher rates than other students — even if they are somewhat less qualified.

In the paper, which was published in the Stanford Undergraduate Research Journal, Loverro cited a Department of Education report that found that legacy students at Harvard averaged 35 points less on the SAT than non-legacies. According to Loverro, Harvard’s admit rate for legacies is 40 percent versus 11 percent for general applicants.

“Legacy admissions appears to be an injustice that is propagated and explained exclusively by the same forces that have allowed so many other inequalities, such as aristocracy, sexism and racism to persist: Those in power do not like relinquishing it,” Loverro said.

According to Dean of Admission Robin Mamlet, the admit rate for legacies at Stanford is a little over double the admit rate for the general pool. But Mamlet attributed this to the fact that the legacy admissions are as well qualified as the regular admissions pool.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=762110&forum_id=1#9289859)

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/03/29/news/17854.shtml

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=762110&forum_id=1#9289965)

http://www.columbiaspectator.com/node/26636

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=762110&forum_id=1#9290686)

Dartmouth: 57%

Columbia:51%

Yale:45%

Princeton:43%

Cornell:43%

Harvard:40%

Brown:35%

(Jan 22, 2008 article)

http://www.diverseeducation.com/artman/publish/article_10519.shtml

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=762110&forum_id=1#9290019)

"Please note that the authors personally called and emailed each of the Ivy League institutions; only two responded to our inquires: Penn and Brown, which have the lowest legacy admission rates. Harvard and Cornell declined to give out legacy information. Date are from personal phone calls, Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (1995), and Golden, D. (2006)."

Sorry, but I would give more credibility to the Wall Street Jounal (than phone calls and an article containing typos).

The Wall Street Journal

(excerpt)

"The Wall Street Journal recently put a statistical face on alumni clout in admissions. Children of graduates make up 10 to 15 percent of incoming classes at most Ivy League schools, according to the Journal. Harvard accepts 40 percent and Princeton accepts 35 percent of legacies but only 11 percent of all applicants. The University of Pennsylvania rakes 41 percent of legacy applicants yet only 21 percent overall. At Notre Dame, nearly a quarter of students are children of graduates."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=762110&forum_id=1#9290468)

I believe it was 2003, with 2002 stats. The article was by Dan Golden.

The 2006 stats for Princeton and others come from Dan Golden's 2006 book, "The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges -- and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates"

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=762110&forum_id=1#9290526)

See "Bursting the Bubble"

(excerpt)

"For instance, just last year the percentage of Harvard legacies who were admitted was 40%"

http://www.cape.k12.me.us/insight/200604/2.pdf

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=762110&forum_id=1#9290657)

What you are clearly unaware of is the fact that the legacy fraction of the class has been increasing at Princeton.

"The legacy figure is 15 percent for the incoming class (of 2011), up from 14 percent for the Class of 2010 and 12 percent for the Class of 2009."

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/05/18/news/18499.shtml

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=762110&forum_id=1#9290689)

http://www.columbiaspectator.com/node/11256

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=762110&forum_id=1#9290734)

You quote (without giving the date!) from a 5 year-old Columbia Spectator article (Jan. 2003) citing Golden's 2002 WSJ story.

For good or for ill, more recent data - as noted - indicates that while the legacy admit rate is 40% at Harvard, it is 43% at Princeton and 45% at Yale.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=762110&forum_id=1#9290755)

You make my point perfectly! You come here with a clear, biased agenda.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=762110&forum_id=1#9290886)

Five percent could translate into major dollars.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=762110&forum_id=1#9296667)

Harvard. Yale. Princeton. How Much Does a Name-Brand Education Amount To?

By MARTIN BASHIR

Nov. 2, 2006 —

Jian Li was the perfect student. Incredibly, he got a perfect score on his SATs.

He should also be a perfect example of how second-generation immigrants can transform their lives when they work hard in the land of meritocracy and opportunity.

But he doesn't see it that way.

Watch a special two-hour edition of "20/20" Tonight at 9 p.m. ET

"I was completely naive," said Li, now age 19.

He applied to Harvard, Princeton, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford, among other places and didn't get into any of those colleges.

Yet, he soon became aware that other high school students with lower SAT scores had sailed past him.

"There are lots of preferences given to academically unqualified individuals." he said. "For example, George Bush. I doubt he had the academic qualifications that would have gotten him into an elite university [Yale], but because of who his father was, he had the advantage over other applicants with better academic records."

A Tricky Process: Children of Prominent Alumni Versus Hardworking Students Versus 'Development Admits'

So why was Li shut out from some of the most prestigious colleges in the country?

For eight years, Keith Brodie was the president of Duke University in North Carolina and ultimately, in charge of admissions.

He still teaches part time, within the university's department of psychiatry. According to Brodie, sifting through applicants is an arduous process.

"You look at the last several years, they've seen over 15,000 applications a year [at Duke]," he said.

"You end up discarding about 5,000 as coming from folk you just wouldn't think could graduate. But that leaves you with 10,000 people, and you end up offering about 3,000, of those 10,000, admission. And so the question is how do you pick those 3,000 from that 10,000? And that's where it gets tricky," he said.

Tricky is one way of describing Duke's admissions, but Brodie also says it involves a carefully defined process. Applications are divided into three basic categories.

There's the ordinary hardworking 18-year-old who hopes that exceptional SAT scores will get them in -- students like Li.

Then there's the legacy applicant, whose parents are prominent alumni. One example would be Al Gore's four children -- all of whom went to Harvard, following in the former vice president's footsteps. Or Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist, whose son, Harrison, followed him to Princeton.

And finally there is the "development admit," a student recommended by the college's financial development office.

Brodie has no bones about explaining what a "development admit" is.

"A 'development admit' would come in perhaps with very low numbers but with high potential for donating money to the university through the family," Brodie said.

Schools as Businesses

Because all of these elite universities are also private businesses, there is a strong push to admit at least some students who will bring additional funds with them in the form of hefty donations.

Duke University's development department has found ever more creative ways of raising capital. Brodie recalls the genius of Joel Fleishman, former Duke vice chancellor.

"He was a consummate artist in basically bringing wealthy applicants to Duke," he said. "He had a Christmas card list that was a mile long. He gave very nice gifts to the families of some of these kids. Many of these families appreciated good wine. And so they would receive fairly expensive bottles of wine from him, and that endeared Duke and Joel to these families."

This way of cultivating development contributions was particularly effective. Author Daniel Golden, who went to Harvard and wrote "The Price of Admission," provided illuminating details with the story of fashion billionaire Ralph Lauren.

According to Golden, Dylan and David Lauren were good students but not outstanding. After the Lauren family reportedly sought consideration as a "development family," he said the Lauren offspring were admitted to Duke and that Fleishman wined and dined the Laurens at Parents' Weekend and other social events.

Golden said the fashion guru eventually pledged a six-figure sum to Duke.

The Power of Influence

According to Brodie, he cut down the number of development admits during his tenure, but it was difficult to stem the tide. He estimates that about 50 percent of Duke's student body is admitted on academic performance alone.

But affluence isn't the only advantage that will help win a place at an elite university.

Influence is also a powerful asset. Author Daniel Golden, who went to Harvard and is the author of "The Price of Admission," details the story of Christopher Ovitz, son of former Hollywood agent and president of Walt Disney, Michael Ovitz.

According to Golden, Christopher Ovitz applied to Brown University, but "was not even in the range of the normal stretch that Brown would make for children of the wealthy and powerful."

But he was granted a place at Brown. Although Christopher Ovitz lasted only a year, according to Golden, Brown has reaped the ongoing rewards from Ovitz and his extensive Hollywood contacts.

"He brought a number of his key clients. A-list people like Martin Scorsese for well-publicized events that gave the campus, you know, a lot of panache," Golden said.

In his book, Golden details strategies utilized by other universities to provide places for the children of privilege.

His analysis asks: Are Ivy League colleges putting places up for sale?

According to Brodie, there's little doubt.

"I believe that is the case that there are few slots in every entering class that are basically for sale," he said.

And as for Li, he was eventually accepted at Yale University, without a donation from his parents or a visit from a celebrity.

He's likely to graduate with honors.

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=2622286

But college admissions deans across the country also weigh wealth at the other end of the spectrum.

In The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys its Way into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates, Wall Street Journal education reporter Daniel Golden maligns the elite university system. He alleges unfair admissions practices admit children of the wealthy and leave little room for low-income candidates.

Golden skewers Duke University for propping up its endowment by bending admissions criteria to admit the academically subpar children of the upper-class. “Duke has enrolled thousands of privileged but under-qualified applicants…in the expectation of parental payback,” Golden writes. “This strategy has helped elevate Duke’s endowment…to 16th in 2005 ($3.8 billion).”

The strategy is not restricted to Duke, Golden claims. “Almost every university takes development admits, and the practice is increasingly prevalent, fueled by larger economic forces,” writes Golden. “Development admits” are students admitted because their parents—and one day, they themselves—will likely make contributions to a school.

Blackburn says that UVA, too, accepts such students. “We’re talking about a tiny number of people. …And [taking development admits is] true of every university. Of course fundraising is important, and for a small number of people, it may have an impact on admissions.”

The number of people admitted because of fundraising ties is about 15-20 students out of 3,100 who enroll per year, Blackburn estimates.

UVA, like other elite schools, also gives considerable preference to “legacies,” or the children of alumni.

The motivation for such admissions policies has always been fundraising. But, lately UVA may find more motivation to rake in the dollars. The Campaign for the University was officially kicked off in September 2006, and UVA has pledged to raise $3 billion by 2011. (With a current endowment of $3.6 billion, or $177,000 per student, UVA is already one of the nation’s wealthiest public schools.)

UVA has long paced itself against private universities like Stanford, Duke and Cornell and even the “Big Three” of the Ivy League: Harvard, Yale and Princeton. The capital campaign “holds the promise of propelling the university into the front ranks of all institutions of higher learning, public or private,” campaign chairman Gordon F. Rainey, Jr. said at the Board of Visitors campaign kickoff last fall.

UVA isn’t the only place where high-dollar campaigns intersect with ambitious financial aid programs for poor students.

“Financial aid, it is expensive to do,” Blackburn says, “so leading universities are getting into it.” UVA’s administration says the Campaign for the University can only help the plight of low-income applicants.

“Every institution has a pot of money and they have to decide how to use it,” Blackburn says. “I think the institutions have to recognize the importance of attracting low-income students. So I don’t see a conflict there. It seems to me it’s only going to get better.”

But a number of researchers have pointed out that though colleges profess equality, they must perform a balancing act.

“Colleges are part church and part car dealer,” writes Peter Sacks, citing Gordon C. Winston, Williams College economics professor and founder of the Williams Project on the Economics of Higher Education. “They often talk the talk of Martin Luther King, Jr., but as self-interested institutions focused on their own survival, they more often walk the walk of an investment banker.”

Sacks, a higher education author who reviewed Golden’s book for the Chronicle of Higher Education, writes, “Elite colleges will serve the public good only as long as it does not interfere with their financial survival.”

Such is the conflict that plays out each year in admissions. Acceptance letters for UVA’s new first year class will be mailed April 1.

http://www.c-ville.com/index.php?cat=121304062461064&ShowArticle_ID=11042602073425692

Golden’s own investigation shows that legacy preference and its close cousin “development admission” (favoritism towards applicants from rich non-alumni families) contributes considerably to colleges’ coffers. For instance, in 1996, Harvard admitted an applicant named Anne Chandler Bass “in the hope of favors yet to come” from her father, a Yale-educated oil magnate. When Anne Chandler Bass graduated in 2000, her father donated $7 million to Harvard—a gift that now pays the salary of Bass Professor of Government Michael J. Sandel. (The delicious irony—which goes unmentioned by Golden—is that this apparently-unjust admissions break is the source of the funding that facilitates Sandel’s wildly-popular course “Justice.”)

The Bass case is one of the less-flagrant examples of spots-for-sale in Golden’s book. After all, Bass anted up after his daughter graduated from Harvard. By contrast, real estate tycoon Charles Kushner pledged $2.5 million to Harvard just as his son Jared prepared to apply. Even though an official at Jared’s own high school acknowledged that the scion’s GPA and SATs didn’t merit Harvard admission, he nonetheless won a spot in the Class of ’03. In sum, the examples of admissions-for-donations quid-pro-quos in Golden’s book amount to many millions of dollars in revenue for Harvard. If the University did away with legacy preferences and development admits, it would watch a weighty wad of cash go away as well.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=514394

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=762110&forum_id=1#9296729)

And good genetics. They always forget that one.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=762110&forum_id=1#9335306)