At a seminar today, some colleagues and I discussed Senator John Edwards’
to eliminate the preference for "legacies" (children
of alumni) in college admissions. Some people are saying that legacy preferences
are on the same footing with affirmative action for racial minorities
and women. If we ban affirmative action as a form of discrimination that
undermines meritocracy, we should ban legacy admissions as well. If we
keep one, we may (or must) keep the other. A third problematic policy
is the preference that public universities often give to in-state students.
Isn’t it discriminatory for UC Berkeley to prefer Californians?
(It is worth noting that being denied admission to Harvard because one’s
place went to a "legacy" is not a tragedy—there are many
other fine schools. Being denied admission or financial aid at Michigan
because one lives in Kentucky is at least as unfair.)
I think this issue is fairly complicated. First, there are practical
considerations. Presumably a policy banning legacy preferences would cause
at least some rich alumni to curtail their contributions, thus removing
some financial support from scholarship and education. Likewise, a policy
banning in-state preferences could lead states to withdraw support from
their own colleges. However, either or both of these fears might turn
out to be unwarranted.
If one justifies legacy preferences mainly on practical, economic grounds,
then it doesn’t make sense to prefer the children of alumni who have never
contributed anything to a college. Yet most colleges deny that they prefer
donors’ children; that would be too crass. Implicitly, their argument
seems to rest on freedom of association and the value of preserving their
membership as a community over time.
Private universities probably have a right as associations to prefer
their own members (alumni, staff, and current students). That doesn’t
make a legacy policy morally admirable, however. It certainly has the
disadvantage of preserving a heriditary elite and undermining meritocratic
competition. Thus we might want to use the leverage of federal funding
to discourage such preferences. On the other hand, maybe it is admirable
to build community bonds within private associations. In that case, is
it equally acceptable for states to treat themselves as exclusive communities
that prefer their own citizens? Should federal policy allow or discourage
this?