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Legacy Admissions Are Defensible, Because the Process Can't Be 'Fair'
By DEBRA THOMAS and TERRY SHEPARDIt was inevitable that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to hear two lawsuits
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Colloquy: Join an online discussion on whether colleges should give admissions preferences to the children of alumni.
involving affirmative action in admissions at the University of Michigan would prompt discussion of other types of admissions preferences. The policies of most colleges to grant preference to children of alumni --so-called legacies --have suddenly become a hot topic.
Meanwhile, who is discussing issues with far greater impact and importance --like the sorry state of government support for elementary and secondary education? In his book Savage Inequalities (Crown, 1991), Jonathan Kozol described the horrors of districts so poor that they could do no more than cover gaping holes in roofs with canvas; schools with no working restrooms; and a classroom consisting of an abandoned swimming pool. That was a decade ago, and, if anything, support for public schools in areas outside prosperous suburbs has deteriorated.
But instead of focusing on that crucial issue, politicians like Senator John Edwards, a Democrat from North Carolina, along with newspapers and magazines like The Wall Street Journal,The New York Times, and Time, are talking about how legacy admissions should be impermissible. State universities in Georgia and California already have eliminated legacy consideration in the face of such challenges.
Let's clear the smoke screen that obscures the real issues. Simply put, legacy admissions are defensible and, in any event, affect such a tiny portion of the nation's college applicants as to be negligible.
That view results from our decades of collective experience at many different kinds of institutions --including a large public university and four highly selective private colleges --and our evaluations, as outside consultants, of the admissions programs of more than 20 other institutions. We have seen firsthand numerous admissions staffs agonize over choosing from an excess of highly qualified applicants.
What we have learned is that objective merit and fairness are attractive concepts with no basis in reality. Admissions decisions cannot be "fair" when there are fewer spots in a class than qualified applicants. Moreover, there exists no single standard of "merit" that can be objectively applied. Rather, admission to any institution that has more qualified applicants than it has spaces is based on an array of attributes that lead an institution to prefer the students it selects.
It may be useful, therefore, to ask: Is there a preference that most people would agree is permissible?
Should a state university give preference to in-state students? We would suggest yes, since the taxes paid by state residents support the institution. If one agrees, then that establishes that preference is permissible for those who financially support the university --especially if their support contributes to a better education for all of the students enrolled.
Alumni support their colleges and universities, public and private alike, in many ways, including financially. In 2001, alumni provided 28 percent of the private donations to higher education, or almost $7-billion. The major donors contribute far more than the cost of their children's education. Thus, having agreed that state universities may give preference to students whose families support them through their tax dollars, should we not agree that institutions also may give preference to those whose families voluntarily support them and all other students as well? (And it is all other students: Since even full tuition at most private institutions pays for only about 60 percent of the cost of an undergraduate education, the only reason any student gets a high-quality education is the generosity of donors.)
Moreover, any development professional will testify that a family's financial commitment is likely to grow with additional members' and generations' common affiliation. Witness the multimillion-dollar gifts that the Packard family has given Stanford.
In the most practical terms, honoring alumni commitment is a way to maintain quality. If states fully supported their public universities, they would have at least some justification to consider barring any preference for the children of alumni or, indeed, anyone from out of state. However, many "state" universities receive far less than half the support they need from their state --and the portion is declining. With inadequate government support, public universities face a choice: Allow the quality of education to drop to the level of support; raise tuition to levels that the public would reject; or cultivate supporters among their alumni. Which makes the most sense?
Because the tuition at private institutions, too, covers only a portion of the cost of instruction, they face a similar choice: Drop the quality of education to the level that net tuition income can support; virtually double tuition and cut back on financial aid; or cultivate alumni support. Again, which makes the most sense for all of the students of an institution?
Apart from those logical rationales, legacy preference is simply not the major issue that the news media, through dominant play and dire tone, suggest. Let's review a few facts:
* Legacy preference is a nonissue for the vast majority of college applicants. At no more than 100 of the nation's 3,500 colleges and universities are admissions competitive enough for such a status to matter. At that handful of institutions, legacies are only a small fraction of the applicants. And only a portion of those legacy applicants are admitted. Many of those admitted are top students who would have been accepted in any event. (For example, The New York Times reported in February that the average SAT of 30 legacies in the current freshman class at Middlebury College was 1389 --33 points higher than that of the class as a whole.) Thus, the legacy issue involves a fraction of a portion of a fraction of applicants at 3 percent of all institutions.
* Legacy status does not guarantee admission. Many legacies are turned down. There is one universally relevant standard for admission: Does the student have the ability to complete the course of study at the institution? A college would be foolish to admit a legacy who could not meet that standard, for the student would fail and the family would be alienated.
* Upward mobility does not depend on admission to the handful of institutions where admission is competitive enough for legacy status to matter. On the contrary, a study of Fortune 500 CEO's showed a vast array of alma maters --liberal-arts colleges and nonflagship state universities greatly outnumbering Ivy League institutions or big-name publics. One can get a top education, and a great start in life, at hundreds of institutions. Alas, that seemed better understood when high-school counselors, a good education, and a good fit --not status and magazine rankings --guided college decisions.
* Legacy preference will increasingly include minority students. It was only one generation ago that most colleges began enrolling and graduating significant numbers of minority students. In coming years, those graduates' children will increasingly show up as second-generation applicants.
Those who call for admissions to be based only on "merit" have yet to provide a rational definition. Which shows more merit --an A in an easy course or a B in a much tougher course? Does a brilliant student who suffers from test anxiety have less merit than a student with a natural aptitude for multiple-choice questions? Besides grades and test scores, are other attributes nonmeritorious? A university with a school of music lacks a bassoon in its student orchestra. Who has more merit for admission: a talented bassoonist or a nonmusician with slightly higher grades and test scores?
We have been led to believe that merit can be defined and measured, and that prospective students can be ranked by it. All an institution must do is start at the top of such a list and work its way down. But can the value and potential of human beings be strictly ranked? Could any of us rank our friends by merit? Yes, our best friends might be fairly easy to name; likewise, admissions offices have little trouble identifying the students they most desire. But how would we distinguish between our No. 7 friend and our No. 8 friend? How do we compare their different kinds of merit --one is more thoughtful, another has a better sense of humor, a third is particularly generous, a fourth a great conversationalist? And how could one possibly, as some expect of an admissions office, distinguish between the 649th and 650th friends, or the 5,296th and 5,297th?
Colleges and universities have done themselves a disservice by trying to portray their admissions decisions as "fair." Those decisions, like most other conclusions about the potential of human beings, involve experience, judgment, perception, and intuition. In other words, they are an art. And "fair" has no meaning in art.
We should strive to describe our admissions processes as what they are: not fair, but rational. Rational because they seek a rounded class of students who can learn from each other. Rational because they contribute to our institutions' specific and clearly stated goals and missions. Rational because they exercise the First Amendment rights that Justice Felix Frankfurter referred to as the "four essential freedoms" of a university to determine for itself, on academic grounds, who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study.
Let us be rational in another way. Let us not allow the negligible matter of legacies to obscure issues that have vastly greater impact on vastly greater numbers of students. Let's start with the need for government support of primary and secondary public education, especially in poor school districts. Let's see some headlines about preparing all of America's children for access to, and success in, college.
Debra Thomas is director of public relations at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management at Rice University. Terry Shepard is vice president for public affairs at Rice.