Let me try to make a defense of Legacy Admissions (highly unpopular I know). I come from a country with a purely meritocratic examination based college admissions system. I even cracked the hard examination and attended a top college. But the fact is the exam world is the exam world and the real world is the real world. The real world doesn’t run on examinations and IQ tests. Real impact means connections, wealth, and then maybe intelligence if considering technology. If you remove the people born into privilege, from attending your college, all you succeed is in making your college irrelevant, not those people irrelevant. It’s better if rather than being a fully closed circle, they also interact with the smartest, most charismatic, most talented people in a country etc. Of course it would be ideal if those born into privilege also could clear the SAT etc, but then it would also be great if we were ruled by a benevolent philosopher king, that’s not the real world, in the real world concessions have to be made.
If you reduce the choice to public funding vs wealthy alumni stewardship, and there seems to be no meaningful pathway to circumventing the current assault on public funding, then why should you alienate your wealthy alumni?
Obviously the situation is much more complex and nuanced, but this framing (amongst others I’m sure) seems appropriate if you are thinking on a 25,50,100 year time scale in terms of impact of your decision. The country is littered with public and private universities who made poor moral choices across the 19th and 20th centuries but I’m not aware of any institutions suffering long-term reputational harm (or threat of insolvency) as a result of those choices. (Then again, maybe it’s because the harm was swift and final at the time)
The poor choices started in the early 90's when the SCOTUS decided that MIT didn't have to pay taxes as long as they gave enough charity discounts to students.
Everyone else jumped on it and abused the student loan system by jacking up tuition and then applying charity grants to basically all students. Leading to our current Student Loan crisis.
> Stanford has considered alumni and donor status for academically qualified students in the past
I have an argument to make in favor of allowing legacy status for admissions. I am basing this on personal experience and some analysis of data done at similar schools when they were forced to release it due to lawsuits.
The way admissions works in the US now it has basically become a lottery for qualified students. We have more qualified students than we have seats at the top schools. The idea that there are some unqualified students who make it in only because their parents are alumni, at least at Stanford I have never seen. The top schools are all so competitive that they are all pretty similar and they would not do things to jeopardize their reputation or standing. So I think it's just not the case that there are unqualified legacy admits. At Harvard for example the legacy admits had higher SAT scores than the average admitted student which makes sense when you think about it. Children of alumni are probably better prepared for admissions.
So when choosing, Stanford might have to make a choice between two students with the same GPA, the same SAT score, the same interests, etc. and legacy status could decide it and I am ok with that. Building a campus network of people is a huge competitive advantage a school can have. You would be surprised how many people who are non legacy admits have pretty well known parents anyway or have parents who went to an extremely similar school. Singling out legacy admissions is not extremely meaningful and I don't think it's used to let in unqualified students at all.
As I mentioned in another comment, the objective of elite schools is not to just admit 1600 SAT (or whatever the metric is these days). It's to admit "good" students and then to look at other factors. You have successful parents that went to the school isn't the only other factor but it's not a terrible one for both financial and other reasons. Neither is admitting students who didn't completely ace the SATs but also have other notable accomplishments.
> The way admissions works in the US now it has basically become a lottery for qualified students.
That's not the way I would phrase it. A lottery would mean the outcome is random. There is nothing random about it. They consider essays, extracurriculars, and income, and look for evidence of hardship, diversity, athletic ability, and leadership. 100% subjective, sure, but not random.
How about for schools that had racial segregation within living memory? Can't be an old legacy there if you are the wrong race. Even without formal segregation there was discrimination of some amount. Can argue it went both ways at different points with affirmative action programs but most schools with AA weighted legacy just as high.
I think it is best to do away with legacy admits especially because of racial history but also because it is a kind of nobility system, but that will make schools rely on government more right now which seems to be as bad for academic freedom and freedom to not fund genocide as the donor model.
This seems reasonable. California doesn't want to subsidize the education of the privileged few who qualify as "legacy admission". And Stanford doesn't want to give up the financial support from alumnus.
I'm okay with academia being an institution of the elite, as long as we stop pretending that their BS (or BA) will make everyone successful. We can't all be elite; that's not how that works.
Rich people are going to waste their time and money no matter what, but I didn't want them also wasting yours and mine. The man-hours and percent of the GDP (often paid for with taxes) we put into conflating cause and effect is absurd.
We dodn't need merit-base academia, we need merit-based employment that disregards elite and academic status.
When a Bachelor's degree became a proxy for "can show up and complete assigned work" for employers that was the start of its decline as an academic credential.
That's already happening with technical/trade/alternate school to career paths are rising up and some colleges are panicking with declining enrollment.
I am on a co-op board here in NY, pretty much all our young buyers the last 2 years are all gen-Z who went the non-college route and have saved up more than enough to put a downpayment on a home for themselves and have a mortgage instead of college debt.
> we need merit-based employment that disregards elite and academic status
We effectively already have middle management being used to school elites; they get tours in various companies in the network, which means they build impressive resumes that would "win" any competition based on merit/success history.
Indeed, this may be necessary: the baseline investors committed to a company keep all the free riders on board through growth volatility. Is it too much to show their people the ropes?
It may be necessary, but it's probably self-destructive: foreign investors are often most interested in new technologies, not to profit from them, but to learn enough to compete. So they'll out-bid investors without such strategic aims. They're very much aligned with open-source, because their people leave with knowledge and the company is left without IP protections.
So... it's complicated. Going all-"merit" helped with civil service in the 1870's - 1950's, but people learned any system can be gained, and we can no longer afford slack-maximizing.
When you are brokering deals with wealthy clients or executing trades with millions, the notion of trust is much more important than merit. And what better is a sign of trust that coming from the circles, and with nothing to stake but reputation?
I agree that participation in the middle class shouldn't depend on borrowing six figures as a teenager. I dream of the day where any worker has economic security
"It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit. It is the opposite when those who are judged to have merit of a particular kind harden into a new social class without room in it for others."
I always found it wildly fascinating how US schools have things like legacy admissions, athletic scholarships, standardized admission test, admission letter, letters of recommendation, extracurricular activities, and what have you.
Such a contrast to other systems where for example your HS grades will count 100% - and similar "ungameable" systems.
Right. It is called holistic review. Originally invented to limit the number of Jewish people in top universities (not kidding)! Now being used to limit the number of Asians.
Elite-College Admissions Were Built to Protect Privilege
I think a century from now, we'll look back on privatized higher education the way we look back on privatized health care: Something that evolved by a series of compromises, that society depends on, but that is perpetuating inequality while also gouging us and not making us healthier.
Ironically, the appeal of an "elite" university depends on the public image of the student body. The university has to manage that image through its admissions process. Any open criteria for "merit" will quickly turn the student body into a monocultural freak show. This would in turn diminish the public image of the university -- the exact thing that the students were hoping to benefit from.
> Any open criteria for "merit" will quickly turn the student body into a monocultural freak show.
So just to spell the quiet part out loud, what you're saying is that admissions based purely on merit would mean the student body would become entirely Asian, and this would be a "freak show" that's bad for the university's image?
I think that's the trick. These university admissions committees are essentially choosing the ruling class for the next generation. What makes a good ruling class depends on more than just test scores and grades, so admissions committees look at other things the applicant has done, and at least they used to also do an interview with an alumnus. All of this is fairly gameable though, and the kind of person who would excessively game these metrics might not be person who they want to choose. Knowing that someone is the child of someone who already was admitted and indoctrinated into the values of the university is a pretty good signal that this person is more likely to be the kind of person they want to admit.
Now all of this runs into the same fundamental issue that any decision like this does, namely, that ideally you want everyone to have an equal chance, but also, you want them to do a good job in their role. Unfortunately, people, through no fault of their own, are born into different circumstances, and some are prepared, in many different ways, better or worse than others, and this strongly affects how well they will perform.
For those who want to compare the HN comments here against the SCOTUS ruling that ended Affirmative Action, read and be amazed (or not) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36520658
Legacy admissions and holistic (discriminatory) admissions should be disallowed as long as these universities receive public fundings directly or indirectly.
Yep, I think these two things can be true at the same time:
1. Admitting a certain amount of students based on legacy status is not necessarily a bad thing
2. A University should not be eligible for taxpayer funds if they have admissions like (1) or similar holistic criteria.
In a society as diverse as America I think 2 is a fair line to draw. And the universities with large and powerful alumni networks where legacy admissions are most relevant have the least "need" for public funds. They have huge endowments.
Id be interested to read about some "holistic" admissions success stories. There must be by this point tons of examples of students admitted "holistically" who are now doing great things because of the opportunity they were given.
Seems reasonably. You and to discriminate? That's disappointing, but nobody is going to stop you, but the public tax dollars sure as hell shouldn't support your discrimination
Yes, perfectly reasonable to pull state funding for private enrichment. Now, all we have to do is get rid of the racism in “holistic admission” and use a demonstrably fair system like performance on standardized tests.
Also props to Stanford. It's not just completely reasonable but morally just to not take public funding you don't need. Only moderate props, because presumably they did the math and picked the more profitable of the two... but props none the less.
Let's say Harvard's admission were to become largely based on social status rather than merit. You could say "so be it", but let it be known that that is what Harvard is. Being one thing while advertising another is lying and the greatest offense.
A positive side effect is that perhaps we won't fetishize Harvard as much and keep insisting that one must get into Harvard. You don't. Harvard's brand depends on you thinking you do, of course.
The current model of academia in the US and elsewhere is wretched. Obscene tuition is one thing. The failure to educate is another. Universities got out of the education business a while ago. Universities are focused on jobs, that's the advertising pitch, which is not the historical and proper mission of the university. So you end up with institutions that are bad at both.
So if these "elite" schools lead to a disenchantment with merit, I see a silver lining. It could provide the needed impetus and motivation to distribute education more widely in smaller colleges with a greater clarity and focus on their proper mission (e.g., Thomas Aquinas College [0]) while creating a robust culture of trade schools. The majority of people do not need a college education! And frankly, it's not what they're looking for.
Germany does something like this. Fewer people go to university there, and they have a well-developed system of trade schools.
Furthermore, you could offer programs that allow students at colleges to take classes in these trade schools.
Let's stop trying to sustain a broken model. The time is ripe for educational reform.
This would sort of work except that Harvard already built an endowment of $50 billion based on all that lying. Unless you're going to claw back that money, you're just letting them pull the ladder up behind them.
Moving to a pure merit-based system would be a great idea IF universities were primarily designed to educate people. They are not—anyone with half a brain can get a world-class education from ChatGPT, Wikipedia, Khan Academy, and library books. Paying a university "for the education" is like paying $100,000 for tap water because it’s served in a fancy glass with a Latin motto printed on it.
Connections matter most in the oncoming era of dwindling opportunities (because each one is more valuable and leverages more resources). Legacy enables alumni to meet each other.
The question is whether universities can still play a role in establishing groundwork values for how people are treated. If they're not participating in public education initiatives, they have no incentive, and efficiency+competition will squish that out.
I think legacy admissions are bad and wrong. But I also don't think that removing legacy admissions will make a dent, not on the state of college admissions, and especially not on any broader socioeconomic context. Prestige schools doing bad things only highlights that it's a mistake to let prestige schools exist in the first place.
I think it might weaken the connection between 'elite' status and the particular university, to the point where the university actually becomes something academic, almost technical, again.
I think there’s a couple justifiable reasons to have legacy admissions. One, help the poor, smart kids meet the rich kids. Together, they can get more done than separately.
Second, I think the legacy folks see their relationship with the university as multigenerational and therefore they donate more. These donations benefit more than just themselves.
[+] [-] sashank_1509|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] thelock85|7 months ago|reply
Obviously the situation is much more complex and nuanced, but this framing (amongst others I’m sure) seems appropriate if you are thinking on a 25,50,100 year time scale in terms of impact of your decision. The country is littered with public and private universities who made poor moral choices across the 19th and 20th centuries but I’m not aware of any institutions suffering long-term reputational harm (or threat of insolvency) as a result of those choices. (Then again, maybe it’s because the harm was swift and final at the time)
[+] [-] itkovian_|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] downrightmike|7 months ago|reply
Everyone else jumped on it and abused the student loan system by jacking up tuition and then applying charity grants to basically all students. Leading to our current Student Loan crisis.
[+] [-] onetimeusename|7 months ago|reply
I have an argument to make in favor of allowing legacy status for admissions. I am basing this on personal experience and some analysis of data done at similar schools when they were forced to release it due to lawsuits.
The way admissions works in the US now it has basically become a lottery for qualified students. We have more qualified students than we have seats at the top schools. The idea that there are some unqualified students who make it in only because their parents are alumni, at least at Stanford I have never seen. The top schools are all so competitive that they are all pretty similar and they would not do things to jeopardize their reputation or standing. So I think it's just not the case that there are unqualified legacy admits. At Harvard for example the legacy admits had higher SAT scores than the average admitted student which makes sense when you think about it. Children of alumni are probably better prepared for admissions.
So when choosing, Stanford might have to make a choice between two students with the same GPA, the same SAT score, the same interests, etc. and legacy status could decide it and I am ok with that. Building a campus network of people is a huge competitive advantage a school can have. You would be surprised how many people who are non legacy admits have pretty well known parents anyway or have parents who went to an extremely similar school. Singling out legacy admissions is not extremely meaningful and I don't think it's used to let in unqualified students at all.
[+] [-] tyre|7 months ago|reply
This is known to be false. Development cases, where donor’s buy admission, are real. They’re limited, but universities do them regularly.
If you look at Jared Kushner’s case, for example, his parents weren’t even legacies!
If they keep this number small, like five per year, would it really dilute Harvard’s brand? I doubt it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_case
[+] [-] ghaff|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] bachmeier|7 months ago|reply
That's not the way I would phrase it. A lottery would mean the outcome is random. There is nothing random about it. They consider essays, extracurriculars, and income, and look for evidence of hardship, diversity, athletic ability, and leadership. 100% subjective, sure, but not random.
[+] [-] cma|7 months ago|reply
I think it is best to do away with legacy admits especially because of racial history but also because it is a kind of nobility system, but that will make schools rely on government more right now which seems to be as bad for academic freedom and freedom to not fund genocide as the donor model.
[+] [-] breadwinner|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] dlcarrier|7 months ago|reply
Rich people are going to waste their time and money no matter what, but I didn't want them also wasting yours and mine. The man-hours and percent of the GDP (often paid for with taxes) we put into conflating cause and effect is absurd.
We dodn't need merit-base academia, we need merit-based employment that disregards elite and academic status.
[+] [-] SoftTalker|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] delfinom|7 months ago|reply
I am on a co-op board here in NY, pretty much all our young buyers the last 2 years are all gen-Z who went the non-college route and have saved up more than enough to put a downpayment on a home for themselves and have a mortgage instead of college debt.
[+] [-] WalterBright|7 months ago|reply
You don't become rich by wasting time and money.
[+] [-] w10-1|7 months ago|reply
We effectively already have middle management being used to school elites; they get tours in various companies in the network, which means they build impressive resumes that would "win" any competition based on merit/success history.
Indeed, this may be necessary: the baseline investors committed to a company keep all the free riders on board through growth volatility. Is it too much to show their people the ropes?
It may be necessary, but it's probably self-destructive: foreign investors are often most interested in new technologies, not to profit from them, but to learn enough to compete. So they'll out-bid investors without such strategic aims. They're very much aligned with open-source, because their people leave with knowledge and the company is left without IP protections.
So... it's complicated. Going all-"merit" helped with civil service in the 1870's - 1950's, but people learned any system can be gained, and we can no longer afford slack-maximizing.
[+] [-] corimaith|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] JKCalhoun|7 months ago|reply
We'll have neither, of course. The wealthy will always be able to pay for what they want — merit be damned.
[+] [-] wnc3141|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] musicale|7 months ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy
[+] [-] TrackerFF|7 months ago|reply
Such a contrast to other systems where for example your HS grades will count 100% - and similar "ungameable" systems.
[+] [-] breadwinner|7 months ago|reply
Elite-College Admissions Were Built to Protect Privilege
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/histor...
The new holistic admissions policy worked as intended, successfully suppressing Jewish admissions.
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/06/23/a-lawsuit...
The 'holistic' admissions lie - The Daily Californian
https://www.dailycal.org/2012/10/01/the-holistic-admissions-...
The False Promise of 'Holistic' College Admissions - The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/the-fa...
Lifting the Veil on the Holistic Process at the University of California, Berkeley - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/education/edlife/lifting-...
[+] [-] rayiner|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] huevosabio|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] analog31|7 months ago|reply
Ironically, the appeal of an "elite" university depends on the public image of the student body. The university has to manage that image through its admissions process. Any open criteria for "merit" will quickly turn the student body into a monocultural freak show. This would in turn diminish the public image of the university -- the exact thing that the students were hoping to benefit from.
[+] [-] fn-mote|7 months ago|reply
Edit: Oh, you think in a century we won’t still be in this situation? Hmmmm.
[+] [-] decimalenough|7 months ago|reply
So just to spell the quiet part out loud, what you're saying is that admissions based purely on merit would mean the student body would become entirely Asian, and this would be a "freak show" that's bad for the university's image?
[+] [-] cameldrv|7 months ago|reply
Now all of this runs into the same fundamental issue that any decision like this does, namely, that ideally you want everyone to have an equal chance, but also, you want them to do a good job in their role. Unfortunately, people, through no fault of their own, are born into different circumstances, and some are prepared, in many different ways, better or worse than others, and this strongly affects how well they will perform.
[+] [-] tyre|7 months ago|reply
side note: “monoculture” and “freak show” seem incompatible. an entirely homogenous student body doesn’t sound too freaky
[+] [-] overfeed|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] SilverElfin|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] dgs_sgd|7 months ago|reply
1. Admitting a certain amount of students based on legacy status is not necessarily a bad thing
2. A University should not be eligible for taxpayer funds if they have admissions like (1) or similar holistic criteria.
In a society as diverse as America I think 2 is a fair line to draw. And the universities with large and powerful alumni networks where legacy admissions are most relevant have the least "need" for public funds. They have huge endowments.
[+] [-] gotoeleven|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] malfist|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rayiner|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] renewiltord|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] nullc|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] lo_zamoyski|7 months ago|reply
Let's say Harvard's admission were to become largely based on social status rather than merit. You could say "so be it", but let it be known that that is what Harvard is. Being one thing while advertising another is lying and the greatest offense.
A positive side effect is that perhaps we won't fetishize Harvard as much and keep insisting that one must get into Harvard. You don't. Harvard's brand depends on you thinking you do, of course.
The current model of academia in the US and elsewhere is wretched. Obscene tuition is one thing. The failure to educate is another. Universities got out of the education business a while ago. Universities are focused on jobs, that's the advertising pitch, which is not the historical and proper mission of the university. So you end up with institutions that are bad at both.
So if these "elite" schools lead to a disenchantment with merit, I see a silver lining. It could provide the needed impetus and motivation to distribute education more widely in smaller colleges with a greater clarity and focus on their proper mission (e.g., Thomas Aquinas College [0]) while creating a robust culture of trade schools. The majority of people do not need a college education! And frankly, it's not what they're looking for.
Germany does something like this. Fewer people go to university there, and they have a well-developed system of trade schools.
Furthermore, you could offer programs that allow students at colleges to take classes in these trade schools.
Let's stop trying to sustain a broken model. The time is ripe for educational reform.
[0] https://www.thomasaquinas.edu/
[+] [-] BrenBarn|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] PeterStuer|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] flappyeagle|7 months ago|reply
Have the basic grades and test scores? Ok welcome to CS1 where 2/3 of you will not make it thanks for playing
[+] [-] dudeinjapan|7 months ago|reply
Universities are cartels of prestige and access.
[+] [-] w10-1|7 months ago|reply
The question is whether universities can still play a role in establishing groundwork values for how people are treated. If they're not participating in public education initiatives, they have no incentive, and efficiency+competition will squish that out.
[+] [-] p1dda|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] RainyDayTmrw|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] impossiblefork|7 months ago|reply
I think it might weaken the connection between 'elite' status and the particular university, to the point where the university actually becomes something academic, almost technical, again.
[+] [-] dddgghhbbfblk|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ushtaritk421|7 months ago|reply
Second, I think the legacy folks see their relationship with the university as multigenerational and therefore they donate more. These donations benefit more than just themselves.
[+] [-] simianwords|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] genghisjahn|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Cornbilly|7 months ago|reply