Many prestigious colleges defend legacy admissions, saying it helps build an alumni community and encourages donations.
Officials at Harvard and other schools argue that legacy status is just one of many factors considered in admissions, along with grades, test scores and pursuits outside school. At most, they say, it can provide a slight tip in a student’s favor.Amherst College in Massachusetts dropped the policy in October, saying it “inadvertently limits educational opportunity.” Johns Hopkins University announced in 2020 that it had phased out legacy preferences.
In a rare moment of bipartisan unity, the conservative strategist behind those suits voiced support for the Democrats’ bill against legacy benefits. In a statement, Edward Blum said too many colleges “lower the admissions bar for the children of their alumni.” Legacy students outnumbered Black students in freshman classes at four schools: Notre Dame, Cornell, Dartmouth and the University of Southern California. At Brown, the share of legacy and Black students was about even.
Historians have traced legacy preference to the 1920s as elite colleges sought to limit the number of Jewish students. It continued for decades at a time when the vast majority of college students in the U.S. were white men. On college campuses, student activists say they continue to face resistance from school leaders who defend the policy. But at a time of rising populism in the United States, colleges are unlikely to find allies in Congress and other halls of power, said Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank in Washington.
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