Nominally “private” colleges and universities get so much money from taxpayers that they are essentially part of the government. Taxpayers fund tuition grants that go straight into the colleges’ pockets. Taxpayers subsidize student loans that boost revenue by letting students pay more. Taxpayers fund research grants from which universities extract “overhead”.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
College admission isn’t exactly a “law”, but various cases have been decided in which this clause was applied to government programs generally, e.g., forcing states to allow same-sex marriage (and, eventually, throuples?). It wouldn’t be okay for the FAA to say “Your mom held a pilot certificate so therefore we’re going to let you have a pilot certificate at 35 hours instead of the usual minimum of 40.” Nor could the FAA say “We’re cutting you slack on the practical test because you paid $1 million in federal income tax last year.” Why is it okay for government-funded schools, such as Yale and Stanford, to say “We’re going to lower the bar for you because your parents attended and/or donated”?
Is the answer simply that no high-scoring-but-rejected-by-Yale applicant ever sued and obtained discovery showing that (1) second-rate legacy kids got admitted instead, and (2) Yale is firmly entrenched underneath a shower of government money?
Related:
- “Activists spurred by affirmative action ruling challenge legacy admissions at Harvard” (from state-sponsored NPR)
- “Elite Colleges’ Quiet Fight to Favor Alumni Children” (NYT 2022): Describing its incoming class of 2025, Yale boasted that its students hailed from 48 states, 68 countries and 1,221 high schools. What’s more, the university announced last year, 51 percent of the class identified as students of color. … 14 percent were the offspring of a Yale graduate, receiving the kind of admissions boost also used at other elite institutions.
- The Son Also Rises: economics history with everyday applications (work by UC Davis economists that suggests a rational basis for legacy admissions: success is heritable, independent of how much money a child receives from parents; i.e., the characteristics necessary to succeed are mostly genetic and a high-scoring applicant from an unsuccessful family will likely eventually revert to his/her/zir/their family mean)
This is an interesting legal question. I have to believe it fell into the murky area of “family discount.” A lot of cell phone companies offer friends and family discounts. Quite a few insurance and car companies also offer family discounts, e.g., https://www.gmfamilyfirst.com/family-legacy/
Since a college degree is viewed as a purchased service rather than a career opportunity, there is a bit more latitude around equal opportunity laws. That’s even though this purchased service is a career credential.
There’s also the political reality that equity rules offset legacy preferences in the “look” of the student body even though the victims are clearly upwardly mobile white people who can’t get into a top school. That’s by design. Without equity rules, legacy preferences become vulnerable.
I’m curious what will happen to wealthy preferences if legacy preference bite the dust.
Looking forward to other replies.
It seems to me that legacy applicants who are negros or some other in vogue minorities should still be admitted into prestigious universities. Clearly the jews, asians and whites should be excluded entirely. The supreme court clearly ruled that colleges can make applicant write an essay describing their race and continue to discriminate based on race as long as it’s based on an essay.
Did the UC Davis economists use money as a measure for success?
In classical music virtually no famous composer had famous children, same for performers of classical music.
The children of the discoveress of relativity (Mileva Maric) didn’t do well either. I also don’t recall other physicist dynasties.
There seems to be something like mathematician families, but modern math is more like a religion where no one understands proofs outside his/her/zir/their subfields and the long ones are contested.
Anon: Four of Bach’s children became reasonably successful composers (see https://www.classicfm.com/composers/bach/guides/bach-facts/carl-philippe-emmanuel-bach/ ). But are you sure that it makes sense to look at fields where there are just a handful of superstars and, therefore, there is necessarily a lot of randomness? With roughly 1 million doctors in the U.S., there are 100,000 in the top 10 percent! That’s a challenging club to get into, but nowhere near as improbable as becoming a pop star (the modern version of “famous composer”).
philg: It is a special group, but isn’t that precisely what Clark is doing? According to the summaries, he uses Darwin (an outlier), but omits many other famous people.
Tracking families seems suspect to me in general, even if we talk about “just” doctors. Families that care about their lineage will be more available than those that don’t. Ancestor trees that have a doctor in every second generation will not show up.
If I exaggerate grossly: Families that have high status and are traceable have high status, which approaches a tautology.
(Note that I still have to read the book itself, the summaries on the web may be inaccurate.)
There are dynasties in physics. Among Nobel laureates, far right tail of distribution of famous physicists in itself: 4 pairs https://www.wondersofphysics.com/2022/06/father-son-nobel-prize.html, also Hertz family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Hertz#Legacy_and_honors, also Curie family; there are many others children of Nobel laureates that attained high positions, including in physics.
But yes, I can not support it by anecdotal evidence
The elite colleges get a lot of money from alumni. Keeping them happy is just good business. If the FAA were dependent on voluntary donations by pilots, then it would try to make them happy somehow.
Indeed, surely Yale and Stanford have really rather a lot of their own $$$ stashed away, a tiny fraction of which would cover legacy admissions, so making those independent of any govt. funding?
[Speaking as someone who was introduced to a rich college at the other Cambridge by an alumnus.]
If you take “nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” to its logical limit, then I don’t see why discriminating on merit would be any more legal than discriminating on behalf of legacies. Shouldn’t illiterate people with low intelligence and no interest in learning also enjoy equal protection in Harvard admissions?
Clearly, “the equal protection of the laws” has to have a more circumscribed meaning than you imply. Otherwise you outlaw any form of selecting people whatsoever.
The Equal Protection Clause is about treating freed slaves the same as other US citizens not treating all Americans equally in any circumstance. That it has been distorted to encompass same sex marriage is not a terrific argument that it should be further distorted. I mean, while we are at it, why not I should have the same right as Phil’s kids to ride shotgun in his plane or enjoy a luxury traverse of the national parks with Phil rather than his significant other? Otherwise it is just nepotism, no? And the 14th Amendment bars that, according to one legal scholar.
It is odd how legacy admissions has become the issue du jour (the envy du jour) given that if it were eliminated that would probably just mean that there would be even more high IQ, highly motivated Asians in the top schools.