Legacy admissions are, once again, in the limelight. After the fall of affirmative action, colleges are facing renewed pressure to eliminate preferences for the children of alumni and donors. Last month, the Department of Education opened an investigation into legacy preferences at Harvard following a formal complaint from local civil rights groups. In the past few weeks, Wesleyan University and Occidental College have formally ended all preferences for legacy candidates.

As public support dwindles, the walls protecting legacy admissions are starting to cave inwards.

Legacy admissions began at Ivy League schools in the 1920s as a response to the growing number of immigrants—namely, Jews from Eastern Europe—entering elite Protestant institutions. Until the 1960s, legacy status essentially guaranteed admission into many of the top private schools in the country. In 1925, Yale admitted legacies “regardless of the number of applicants and the superiority of outside competitors.” 

Legacy preferences were most common at schools in immigrant-dense cities, and were usually implemented in the year following a rise in applications from Jews and Catholics.

While legacy candidates no longer bypass the process entirely, the boost their applications receive remains significant. One study found that at the 30 most selective colleges in the country, having at least one alumni parent is associated with a 45 percent increase in the admissions rate. Another, focused on Harvard admissions between 2014 and 2019, found that the acceptance rate for legacy students was 33 percent, over five times the rate for other applicants. 

Beginning in the 1970s, legacy admissions had to coexist with affirmative action in admissions offices. This dynamic allowed colleges to prioritize the representation of racial minorities while simultaneously pleasing alumni. Affirmative action, in a lot of ways, yielded moral cover to legacy and donor admissions.

The seeds of race-conscious admissions relied on the principles of reparations and intergenerational justice. However, the 1978 Supreme Court case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke found that reparation for historical injustice cannot be the constitutional basis for race-based affirmative action. 

As such, broad affirmative action programs failed to target individuals with direct connections to past discrimination. A 2007 study found that 41 percent of incoming Black students at Ivy League schools were first or second-generation Americans. Even more striking, some members of the Harvard community claim that only 10 percent of Black students are generational African American, descendants of enslaved Africans in the United States. 

Racial diversity as an educational ideal has ended up holding all the legal weight since the 1978 California v. Bakke decision. The educational benefits of racial diversity, colleges said, were large enough to justify admissions boosts to minority students.

While there are obvious pedagogical and social gains from racial diversity, it is unclear why they would eclipse the benefits of other forms of diversity on campus. For example, socioeconomic diversity has been completely overlooked by elite colleges.

At “Ivy-plus” colleges, more than two-thirds of students come from wealthy households. Even affirmative action programs favor the wealthy, rather than the economically disadvantaged. At Harvard, 71 percent of Black and Hispanic students come from the top fifth of their respective income quintiles. 

Affirmative action was window dressing. It allowed colleges to costume themselves as diverse while excluding those who most directly face the harms of racial injustice, past and present. 

Now, with the old paradigm in pieces, we arrive at an important crossroads: If schools do not change their admissions practices, they will allow the affirmative action ruling to reverse decades of progress toward racial diversity. By doubling down on admissions preferences for economic disadvantage, colleges can avert this catastrophe while finally making good on the unfulfilled promises of affirmative action.

The first step is the removal of admissions preferences for the wealthy. In a world without affirmative action, legacy admissions become unconscionable. Because the wealth, connections, and knowledge that come with well-educated parents directly translate to success, legacies already have a sizable advantage. To give them an extra boost is nothing less than support of a hereditary ruling class in this country.

Proponents of legacy admissions claim that alumni donations, which help all students, would plummet if these preferences were removed. But 2010 research on the top 100 American universities has found that there is no “causal relationship between legacy preference policies and total alumni giving.”. Even so, the moral case against legacy preferences is strong enough in its own right.

The importance of removing admissions preferences for the wealthy is not just an abstract philosophical exercise. Rather, it is a necessary step for colleges to take if they wish to maintain racial diversity in a post-affirmative action world.

In 2014, a group of researchers studied the hypothetical outcomes of class-based affirmative action programs at the top 193 schools in the country. Notably, all simulations presumed the absence of preferential treatment for children of alumni, donors, and faculty. 

The exercise assumed 250,000 available spots for the incoming freshman class and used statistics from 2014 as the baseline for racial and socioeconomic diversity. A pure merit-based admissions scheme—one that only looks at standardized testing—led to a decrease in representation among every minority group. Even more discouraging, socioeconomic diversity remained unchanged. 

For their second simulation, the researchers estimated the effects of hardship on SAT scores. Disadvantage was quantified, then controlled for. In this model, white and Hispanic representation marginally increased while Black and Asian representation slightly decreased; racial diversity was functionally kept intact. Even more impressive, students from the bottom half of the income distribution made up about half of the admissions pool, compared to the baseline of just 14 percent. 

Controlling for familial and geographic hardships barely maintained racial diversity. Simply put, class-based affirmative action cannot be effective if affirmative action programs for the wealthy—such as legacy admissions—exist. 

In response to such simulations, Harvard stated that using socioeconomic indicators as a proxy for race would “yield a student body in which many of the non-White students would come from modest socioeconomic circumstances.” This change would hurt “other forms of diversity, undermining rather than advancing Harvard’s diversity-related educational objectives.” 

In other words, Harvard does not want to prioritize socioeconomic diversity if it means having more low-income minorities. This view is antithetical to the admissions system we should all want. Race-neutral affirmative action programs, as admitted by this 2018 report from Harvard University, could preserve racial diversity and accomplish what affirmative action should have—increased opportunity for poor minorities.

Many schools have taken the first step towards reaching this goal. Three weeks ago, Wesleyan University ended legacy admissions. President Michael Roth claimed that the alumni response has been almost “uniformly positive.” Occidental College, similarly, axed legacy preferences. These schools now join the ranks of MIT, John Hopkins, and Carnegie Mellon as elite institutions without legacy admissions.

In the aftermath of the supreme court’s decision to strike down race-conscious admissions at universities in June, progressive Democrats have turned their outrage into motivation. They are now using their fury to power an impassioned campaign against a different admissions practice that they consider unjust and outdated: legacy admissions.

The century-old practice gives an advantage to the family members of universities’ alumni, a group that tends to be whiter and wealthier than the general pool of college applicants. Critics argue that legacy applicants already enjoy an unfair leg up in the admissions process and that university’s preference toward those students exacerbates existing inequalities in higher education.

As the country adapts to a post-affirmative action world, progressives are ramping up the political and legal pressure on universities to scrap their use of legacy admissions. A Democratic bill, introduced by Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Congressman Jamaal Bowman of New York, and a civil rights inquiry at the Department of Education could represent a serious threat to legacy admissions.

“Though the supreme court gutted race-conscious college admissions, make no mistake, affirmative action is still alive and well for children of alumni and major donors, and taxpayers shouldn’t be funding it,” Merkley told the Guardian.

The origins of legacy admissions policies date back to the 1920s, when Jewish and immigrant students began attending America’s elite universities in larger numbers. Concerned over this growing trend, college leaders implemented a range of admissions preferences, such as legacy status, designed to benefit the white Protestant applicants who had populated university classrooms for centuries.

Despite the ignominious roots of legacy admissions, the practice persists at many of the country’s most prestigious universities, including every member of the Ivy League. Colleges defend the practice as beneficial for building strong alumni communities across generations and encouraging financial contributions, even though one analysis found “no statistically significant evidence that legacy preferences impact total alumni giving”.

Progressives have mocked legacy admissions as “affirmative action for the privileged”, and the supreme court’s decision against race-conscious admissions has reinvigorated their efforts to end the widely unpopular practice altogether. According to one Pew Research Center survey conducted last year found, 75% of Americans believe alumni relations should not be considered in the admissions process.

“Many of the legacy kids simply would not have gotten in had they not had legacy [preference],” said Rashad Robinson, president of the racial justice group Color of Change. “This is the result of a system that was designed to operate exactly the way it’s operating.”

Last month, Merkley and Bowman reintroduced their bill, the Fair College Admissions for Students Act, to prohibit universities participating in federal student aid programs from giving an admissions advantage to the relatives of alumni or donors. Noting the financial advantages legacy students often enjoy in the college admissions process, Merkley suggested those applicants do not require additional assistance to gain entry to elite universities.

“As the first in my family to go to college, I know the struggles facing students whose parents have never been through the process,” Merkley said.

According to an analysis conducted by the Harvard research group Opportunity Insights, legacy students were only slightly more qualified than the average applicant to elite private colleges, but were nearly four times more likely to be admitted than those with the same test scores. The boost appears to disproportionately harm students of color, as one study found that white students account for 40% of Harvard’s total applicant pool but nearly 70% of the university’s legacy applicants. Opportunity Insights’ research also concluded that legacy applicants are more likely to come from wealthy families, giving them more access to resources like private education and preparation courses for standardized tests.

“Children of donors and alumni may be excellent students, but they are the last people who should get reserved seats, enabling them to gain admission over more qualified students from more challenging backgrounds,” Merkley said.

The battle over legacy admissions has now also attracted the attention of the Department of Education. Last month, the department opened a civil rights investigation into Harvard’s use of legacy admissions following a complaint filed by the group Lawyers for Civil Rights on behalf of three racial justice organizations. The complaint accused Harvard of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by giving an admissions edge to the children of donors and wealthy alumni.

“We know that schools like [Harvard] set students up for success – and for great success – and introduce them to new innovative ideas and a great network,” said Michael Kippins, a litigation fellow with Lawyers for Civil Rights. “They should reflect the type of diversity that we see in our communities the same way that we would want fair access for anything else.”

Olatunde Johnson, a professor at Columbia Law School, viewed lawsuits against colleges’ legacy admissions policies as somewhat inevitable after the supreme court’s decision on affirmative action.

“The supreme court opened the door to that challenge by leaving legacy and donor preferences untouched while it got rid of race-conscious affirmative action, so it made it kind of an easy target,” Johnson said.

She predicted other universities would be closely watching the outcome of the civil rights inquiry into Harvard as they reconsider their own legacy admissions policies.

“People might wait to see how this challenge is resolved because some of the broad contours of this complaint are going to mirror what people would do in future cases,” Johnson said. “Whatever kind of ruling there is, it’s going to have implications more broadly for other institutions, even without separate complaints or lawsuits.”

Some colleges aren’t waiting on the federal government to make the change. The liberal arts college Wesleyan University announced last month that it would scrap its legacy admissions policy, joining other private institutions like Amherst College and Johns Hopkins University. The practice is already prohibited at a number of public colleges, including all schools in the University of California and the California State University systems.

The trend of abandoning legacy admissions policies may accelerate in the face of mounting criticism from political leaders, including some Republicans. After the supreme court’s decision in June, South Carolina senator and Republican presidential candidate Tim Scott praised the ruling and simultaneously suggested universities needed to revisit their legacy preferences.

“I think the question is, how do you continue to create a culture where education is the goal for every single part of our community?” Scott told Fox News. “One of the things that Harvard could do to make that even better is to eliminate any legacy programs.”

Robinson is somewhat skeptical that a bipartisan coalition will materialize to meaningfully challenge legacy admissions, and the Republicans in control of the House have so far shown little appetite to take up Merkley and Bowman’s bill.

But even if legacy preferences do come to an end, Robinson believes much more will need to be done to build a truly just college admissions process. After all, he said, the practice of legacy admissions is only one piece of a much broader system that disadvantages students of color.

“Racism is like water pouring over a floor with holes in it. It will always find the cracks. So, yes, we should deal with legacy admissions. But I want to make sure that we don’t think that this is some sort of silver bullet,” Robinson said.

“We shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that those who are working every day to shut the doors of opportunity and access to those who have been excluded are not going to find other ways to to hold the side door open for people who look like them.”