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This discussion is closed. This is a transcript.
The legacy of legacy admissionsAuthor: Colloquy ModeratorDate: 01-23-04 10:20 Legacy admissions policies have come under increased scrutiny in the past year, as the affirmative-action debate has drawn attention to the broader question of whether colleges' admissions standards are fair. Are colleges -- especially public ones -- likely to abandon legacy policies in response to outside pressure? Will, and should, admissions policies that give an edge to the relatives of alumni become a thing of the past? Read more ... Let's keep them Author: Marty Viceroy, Univ. Georgia Date: 01-26-04 15:46 By all means legacy admissions should be kept. With the insane, racist affirmative action admission policies that are so ubiquitous nowadays, it is the only way a white student---particularly a white MALE student---can get admitted to a decent university. Those who advocate the racist AA policies should see no problem with legacy admissions. After all, legacy admissions only level the playing field... Re: The legacy of legacy admissions Author: anon Date: 01-26-04 15:50 Actually I don't see a whole lot of difference between legacy admissions and race based admissions like they have at the University of Michigan. Both types of admission give additional points for simply belonging to a group. What's good for the goose shold be good for the gander. If legacy admissions go, so should race based admissions. Fair is fair. Re: The legacy of legacy admissions Author: Prof. Rob't DeKoven, Cal West. Date: 01-27-04 01:14 Legacy admissions at public universities are unconstitutional. It is simply a blatant form of discrimination to favor a student for admission because his or her mother or father attended the public university. Obviously, the student whose parents did not attend the public college - or any college - is discriminated against in admissions. DeKoven/Viceroy Author: Plato Date: 01-27-04 09:49 Viceroy says that we should keep them because they essentially counter-balance affirmative action and give a white male extra points (although he/she ignores the sons and daughters of minority alums; they benefit, too). DeKoven says that they are blatant form of discrimination just like affirmative action. I sort of agree with both of them. Yes, it is a form of discrimination: extra points just for being part of a group. I disagree with affirmative action for that reason, but the Supreme Court seems to disagree with me. I guess as long as we have one form of discrimination, it would be unfair to not have another. So, while I disagree with legacy admissions in principle, I say we keep it any other form of discrimination as long we are forced to have one of them. Re: The legacy of legacy admissions Author: J. Bart Budetti Date: 01-27-04 10:09 I have a simple solution to the issue of legacy admissions being unfair to underrepresented minorities: give the underrepresented minorities the same preference as the legacy applicants. That way family ties and loyalty to a school can be rewarded without unfair discrimination against those who don't have a legacy because of prior discrimination. Re: The legacy of legacy admissions Author: Mr Gavin Moodie, Griffith Univ Date: 01-28-04 01:45 I was astounded to gather, when reading background on the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor case last year, that any university let alone a public university would give preference to children of alumni. Legacy admissions would be regarded as a serious breach of admissions policy and equal opportunity legislation in Australia. Giving preference to children of staff would also be considered nepotism and therefore proscribed. Re: The legacy of legacy admissions Author: AQ Date: 01-28-04 02:34 "What's good for the goose shold be good for the gander. If legacy admissions go, so should race based admissions. Fair is fair." This is quite true. The only way to prevent discrimination in the admissions process is to turn solely to merit-based admissions. Any form of admission that is based on group association is inherently discriminatory. I can already see the first disagreement: Merit-based admissions tend to favor affluent whites and Asians, therefore other minorities will not gain admission under these standards. In response, I have only a question: Would it not be better to eliminate the inequalities in the primary and secondary education systems? Think about it. Re: The legacy of legacy admissions Author: Roger G. Gonzalez, Barry U. Date: 01-28-04 09:30 Until there is equal funding of all secondary schools in the U.S., the college admissions field will never be leveled. How can ANY student from a school with little resources with a few honors courses and no college prep test class expect to do well on a high stakes college test? Legacy admissions compounds the admissions issue because: first, it promotes the CLASS gap-most legacies are from educated well-to-do families, second, it still promotes an ethnic divide-most legacies are white, and it promotes gender discrimination-most legacies are males. Legacy admissions have been around since the 19th century and have benefited thousands of students who would have probably been accepted at a good school anyway because of their paternal ties. In other words, legacy admissions only benefits the upper crust of society. Moreover, to compare legacy admissions with affirmative action is misleading. Legacy admissions was and is used today to ensure an institution's funding. Affirmative Action was established to recruit more female students and students of color who were/are consistently being left out of higher education. To state that both are discriminatory is to continue to believe that America is a full democracy where EVERYONE can enjoy freedom and the liberty to pursue happiness... Re: The legacy of legacy admissions Author: Lisa Date: 01-29-04 06:13 Roger G. Gonzalez, Barry U. wrote: "Legacy admissions compounds the admissions issue because: first, it promotes the CLASS gap-most legacies are from educated well-to-do families, second, it still promotes an ethnic divide-most legacies are white, and it promotes gender discrimination-most legacies are males." I understand your point about the ethnic divide, but why would legacies promote gender discrimination too? Last time I checked, white male alumni were just as capable of producing female offspring as the rest of the guys are - so wouldn't the applicant pool from educated well-to-do families have the same fraction of girls and women in it as the applicant pool from other families does? legacy admissions Author: Ajuan M. Mance, Mills College Date: 01-29-04 12:08 Legacy admissions policies amount to affirmative action on the basis of having at least one parent who graduated from college. If public universities insist on keeping such policies in place, then they must also institute policies that give special consideration to students whose parents do not hold college degrees. Legacy admissions has little to do with race or gender, and I agree with those respondents who remind us that people of color and women whose parents attended a particular college or university are also favored by such policies. More than an issue of race and gender, the legacy admissions question is an issue of class. Re: legacy admissions Author: Roger G. Gonzalez Date: 01-30-04 07:09 Lisa: About 90% of all legacies are white males...while you're right about women...unfortunately, males outnumber legacy females... Ajuan: We all should be wary when ethnicity is negated by class...Legacy admissions has always been about ethnicity: 90% white males are legacy admissions. Why aren't other ethnicities, especially blacks, American Indians, and Hispanics, in the high percentage of legacy admissions? Because historically, they've been denied admissions to elite colleges, pure and simple. To pretend and say that legacy admissions is based on class mollifies our colleges historical past of denying minorities admissions; today these colleges are trying to correct these egregious policies... Re: legacy admissions Author: Psychologist Date: 01-30-04 11:01 Roger, 90% of legacy admissions are white males? That is distressing. Do you have a citation for that? Re: legacy admissions Author: Lisa Date: 01-30-04 19:28 Psychologist wrote: "Roger, 90% of legacy admissions are white males? That is distressing. Do you have a citation for that?" Good question. I can understand the vast majority being white (if University of X was 99% white 1 or 2 generations ago then you're more likely to be a U of X legacy if you're white, because white parents have white kids more often than nonwhite parents do)... ...but the vast majority being male? I mean, "if University of X was 99% male 1 or 2 generations ago then you're more likely to be a U of X legacy if you're male, because male parents have male kids more often than female parents do" is utterly ridiculous. The only way I could see that happening is if far fewer daughters of U of X alums than sons of U of X alums apply to U of X in the first place. Seems like that would probably take more sexism on the part of the alums (either anti-female "Son, go to uni and learn a profession! Daughter, just keep a guy for a living!" or anti-male "Daughter, go to Harvard or MIT! Son, settle for U of X!") than on the part of the school. gonzalez is wrong Author: Univ. admissions officer Date: 01-31-04 12:02 I work in a university admissions office and my university does award points for legacy admissions. What Roger Gonzalez says simply is flat out wrong and he doesn't know what he's talking about. The majority of applicants who get points for legacy are women. (At my university its just under 60%). Besides, report after report indicates the number of men attending college is dropping. That means, left untouched, the number of legacy admissions for women is increasing! The notion that 90% of legacy admissions are white males is ridiculuous and cannot be substantiated. Roger Gonzalez has no proof of this. Like most on the left, he believes you can just repeat stuff you want to be true over and over and over. Repeat it often enough and people will begin to think its true. I also would like Roger to either 1. provide proof of his claims or 2. do the honest thing and withdraw his claim Roger, you're making stuff up... Re: gonzalez is wrong Author: USG English Chair Date: 02-02-04 13:23 Univ. admissions officer says: "Like most on the left, he believes you can just repeat stuff you want to be true over and over and over. Repeat it often enough and people will begin to think its true." Repeat after me: Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and is an imminent threat to U.S. security. Iraq and the Saddam regime have direct links to Al Queda. The Iraqi people will greet us as liberators and cheer us in the streets. The economy is growing and jobs are coming back. The left has no monopoly on the strategy of the big lie. And Gonzales's main point remains intact--if a university (say, the University of Georgia) didn't have ANY black students until 35 or 40 years ago, the great majority of legacies are going to be white. For schools in the segregated South, the current crop of first-year students is only JUST beginning to be from the third generation of African-Americans who had any access to such institutions at all. However, irresponsible tossing-out of fraudulent stats is always a bad idea (100% of the time).... Re: gonzalez is wrong Author: Roger G. Gonzalez Date: 02-03-04 17:02 Dear Admissions Officer: If legacy admissions have been around since the 1800s starting with white males, and females and minorities only started to be admitted in large numbers in the 1970s, then the aggregate amount of beneficiaries would STILL BE WHITE MALES and of course the aggregate total percentage would also be extremely high. Affirmative action has been enforced since ONLY the 1970s and of course the majority wants to eliminate that, but not legacy admissions...left, right, in between, you do the math... Re: gonzalez is wrong Author: Not a legacy Date: 02-04-04 09:18 Roger, That argument is preposterous and you know it. Your obvious bigotry towards white males undermines your position. I would remind those who fancy themselves crusaders for social justice that, like MLK, the high road is the only road to take. You've descended into the same self-serving lies and bigotry you accuse others of perpetrating. Pathetic. Social justice indeed.... Re: gonzalez is wrong Author: Roger G. Gonzalez Date: 02-04-04 14:15 First, I AM white and male and proud of it, except when it disenfrachises others. Second, I haven't accused anyone of lies or bigotry. I simply stated that one group supports legacies, but not affirmative action and this is not only ironic, but tragic. The justification of admitting students because of their parental background reminds me of the new book "War Against the Weak" by Black. Again, legacy admissions has been the longest running college admissions affirmative action program in the U.S... Re: gonzalez is wrong Author: Univ. admissions officer Date: 02-04-04 21:24 I see that Roger still has not done what I've previously asked---i.e., either substantiate your claims with proof, or withdraw your claims. Simply repeating the same bigotry is not an argument but an excuse. We can restore some civility if Roger will present the data to support his claims. If he cannot, then he should be ignored... Re: gonzalez is wrong Author: Dr. L Date: 02-04-04 23:43 well, I didn't see that Univ. admissions officer deny that the majority legacy candidates were White Re: The legacy of legacy admissions Author: Psychologist Date: 02-05-04 11:18 These personal attacks on Mr. Gonzalez have nothing to do with the issues allegedly being discussed here. I posted the original message asking for a reference to support the assertion that 90% of legacy admissions are white males. Mr. Gonzalez promptly sent me the article where he got the 90% figure and we had a pleasant, productive (and civil) e-mail discussion. The article states that 90% of legacy admissions at the University of Virginia are white. This is different from Mr. Gonzalez's original assertion, but doesn't substantially affect his arguments. Unfortunately, much of what gets posted here consists of name-calling, invective, and illogic. As I have argued before, affirmative action and legacy admissions are but two examples of how colleges and universities use admissions preferences. (Actually, they are examples of how a relatively small minority of colleges and universities use admissions preferences since the large majority of institutions have essentially open admissions.) Schools use admissions preferences for certain racial and ethnic groups, for athletes, for legacies, for those from certain geographical areas, for those who have demonstrated exceptional leadership, or for other factors. Institutions use these preferences to meet various institutional goals. It is simplistic and misleading to simply pit affirmative action admissions against legacy admissions. The discussion should focus on the goals for which admissions preferences are used and whether the preferences, as used, are reasonable methods for reaching those goals. Re: The legacy of legacy admissions Author: student affiars asistant Date: 02-05-04 14:53 I must agree with the above e-mail. Reading through this I saw more anger and focus on minor details then considering the issue at hand. While Afirmative Action is legal, not all schools choose to use race-based admissions. In these cases taking away legacy is a good faith effort to the under-represented population that extra steps are not being taken to exclude them, but even in schools that utilize afirmative action, the whole reason it is there and that our Supreme court passed it is because the "playing field" is no where near level. Legacy results in a double benefit that need not be there because, the vast majority of legacy students are from finacially stable white homes. There chances of being motivated and preped for college are much more likely than a first generation student, regardless of their race. This is a privlege in our country that gives that student an immediate advantage to gaining college admssion. Re: The legacy of legacy admissions Author: me Date: 02-05-04 15:35 I believe you're missing the point of legacy admissions. Affirmative action is designed specifically to rectify past injustices (specifically, racism and to a lesser extend sexism) that have limited collegiate opportunities. Legacy admissions are not designed to level the playing field. Nor, for that matter, are they designed to keep the playing field un-level. They're a financial device, pure and simple, to enhance alumni contributions, which go directly to the university's bottom line. According to The Chronicle's own numbers, in 2001, alumni contributed 28 percent of the total donations to private colleges -- $7 billion. According to the same source, even at private schools tuition tends to cover only about half of the cost of educating students, even before financial aid is taken into account. If you have another way to conjure $7 billion out of thin air, then I congratulate you. However, if all you want to do is to make it more difficult for colleges to raise funds from their alumni --- well, by reducing the amount of donations they get, colleges will have to raise tuition to secure the same amount of funding. This will have the effect of making universities even more elitist than they already are. In summary : keep your eye on the ball. If there's a problem with access to higher education, making higher education more difficult to get into will probably not fix the problem. Re: The legacy of legacy admissions Author: Psychologist Date: 02-05-04 16:21 Me makes some good points about legacy admissions, although s/he engages in hyperbole. It is highly unlikely that ending legacy admissions would result in the loss of all alumni giving, so we don't have to figure out how to replace $7 billion. However, I disagree with the assertion that affirmative action admissions are designed to rectify past injustices. Perhaps in the past, but most recent proponents of affirmative action (see "The Shape of the River") have taken a much different approach. They argue that a racially and culturally diverse student body is a worthy goal in and of itself, worthy enough to justify making admissions decisions based on race and ethnicity (at least in part). The reason I point this out is that we can understand admissions policies only if we understand the actual goals for those policies. Certainly, enhanced fundraising is one goal of legacy admissions. So the questions become: How much is fundraising enhanced by legacy admissions preferences? Is the amount of money raised enough to justify an admissions preference that seems unfair on the face of it to many people? Similarly, if we look at the current argument in favor of affirmative action, the questions become: How much is the educational experience of students enhanced by having a more diverse student body? Does that enhanced educational experience justify admissions preferences that seem unfair to many people? We could do the same with all sorts of preferences. Think athletes. Of course, what we come back to are values, which of course can be difficult to reconcile. Re: The legacy of legacy admissions Author: me Date: 02-05-04 17:13 Psychologist wrote: "The reason I point this out is that we can understand admissions policies only if we understand the actual goals for those policies. Certainly, enhanced fundraising is one goal of legacy admissions. So the questions become: How much is fundraising enhanced by legacy admissions preferences? Is the amount of money raised enough to justify an admissions preference that seems unfair on the face of it to many people?" The Chronicle article provides at least some numbers to answer the first question. According to the University of Virginia, the donation rates for legacy vs. non-legacy students is approximately 60-70% higher (65.4% vs. 41.1%), and the average donation amount is approximately 8 times higher ($34,800 vs. $4,100). Assuming these numbers are stable, replacing 100 legacy students per year with non-legacy students would result in a loss of approximately $2.5 million dollars for the University of Virginia. In context, this is about one-half a percent of the annual budget. It's also about five percent of the University's $50 milliion in gift income. (Budget numbers are taken from UVa's most recent budget report.) I would consider a 5% reduction in gift income to be quite significant. If you want the University of Virginia to eliminate legacy admissions, where do you suggest they find the money? Re: The legacy of legacy admissions Author: Psychologist Date: 02-05-04 18:02 Me wrote: "If you want the University of Virginia to eliminate legacy admissions, where do you suggest they find the money?" Although it is not exactly clear, it seems this line is addressed to me. If not, if the "you" is a generic "you," then I mistook me's meaning. I have not, in anything I've written, taken a position for or against legacy admissions or any other admissions preferences. In fact, all I have tried to do is cut through the silliness and nastiness and focus the discussion on real issues. I appreciate that me has responded to the first question I asked. Although s/he didn't explicitly answer the second one, I am assuming that s/he would say that the money gained as a result of legacy admissions is worth it despite some people's perceptions that such admissions are unfair. Others would not agree. As for me, (I mean myself, not me the author of posts:), I haven't actually formed an opinion about legacy admissions, which is one reason I'd like to see a decent discussion of the issues. And my wife works in development, so I know a bit about fundraising. Re: The legacy of legacy admissions Author: Lisa Date: 02-05-04 19:42 Psychologist wrote: "Me makes some good points about legacy admissions, although s/he engages in hyperbole. It is highly unlikely that ending legacy admissions would result in the loss of all alumni giving, so we don't have to figure out how to replace $7 billion." Excellent point. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if *some* of the alumni and alumnae who donate can only afford to do so because they don't have children and so spend none of their income on childrearing (and therefore *can't* say "hey Alma Mater, let my kid in or else I won't donate!"). Re: Psychologist Author: Plato Date: 02-06-04 10:32 Psychologist makes some good points regarding the true reason that affirmative action and legacy admissions exist. No longer is the purpose of affirmative action to rectify past discrimination; now it is to get a "critical mass" of cultural/racial minorities. Nevertheless, it is hard to find two people who can come to and identical purpose concerning affirmative action. The same holds true for legacy admissions. Some places may do it to insure steady alumni contributions, and some places may have other rationales. The bottom line is the the reasons for both admissions systems seems to be based upon vague, muddled, and incoherent logic. As I said before, if we are going to have one of these systems in place, we may as well have both. Re: The legacy of legacy admissions Author: Anon Staffer at U of Mich Date: 02-20-04 12:32 Coming from ground-zero of the affirmative action/legacy admissions/diversity wars, I believe that I have a few things to contribute to this debate. The first point is that in this forum and the one addressing affirmative action, I see a whole lot more *real* diversity (i.e., intellectual and viewpoint diversity) than I ever have here at the U of Mich. Our administration has been waging a rigorous and ongoing propaganda campaign, such that there's only one person on campus who's anti-affirmative action views are known, and that person is Carl Cohen, the professor who was key in implementing the 2 lawsuits against our university. I applaud him for his courage and integrity, and deride our administration for its shameless propaganda and heavy-handed racial gerrymandering. Our administration has *never* provided a venue for diverse perspectives on these issues, despite all of the self-righteous speeches and platitudes it presents to the public ad nauseum. I believe that The Chronicle's Colloquy is far-better at promoting diversity than our institution - Good show Chronicle! The other thing that I wanted to point out is that of all the responses I've seen here, none have addressed what to me is the core issue re. legacy admissions: The fact is, unlike discriminating on the basis of race and sex, discriminating on the basis of legacy status is *not* illegal. To put it simply, there is no mention in the Civil Rights act about "legacy," only race and sex. The reality is that because of the past history of the U.S. regarding racism and percieved sexism against women (I would argue that the issue of disproportionate disadvantage that women may have had in the past when compared to men is far more complex and less clear-cut than the feminists claim), those two forms of discrimination rise to a high enough level that they have been prohibited by Constitutional amendments. No such situation exists for discrimination on the basis of legacy status. So, while discrimination on the basis of legacy may be unsavory and unpopular, unlike discrimination on the basis of race and sex, it is not illegal. |
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