There’s a new front for America’s heated battle over race in college admissions: Is it legal for schools to give preference to the children of alumni and wealthy donors?
The question took on urgency this past week for many of the country’s elite private universities, including Stanford and USC, after the U.S. Department of Education launched a civil rights investigation into Harvard’s legacy admissions policies following a complaint that the practice favors White and wealthy applicants.
While the investigation is focused on the Ivy League campus, the results are likely to impact other private universities that employ legacy policies, including Stanford and Santa Clara University. The twist comes a month after the Supreme Court jolted universities across the country by outlawing the use of affirmative action in choosing students in a ruling that critics say harmed Black and Latino applicants who for generations have been disadvantaged in the college admissions game.
Since the ruling, legacy admissions — where the children of wealthy donors or alumni are admitted ahead of other qualified applicants — have come under increasing scrutiny as it could be interpreted as favoring one race over another.
“The trend now is to get rid of the policy,” said Ivory Toldson, director of education innovation and research for the NAACP. “Because the Supreme Court has taken away college’s ability to use race in their admissions decisions, they have to look at all of the ways in which they decide, so there’s a level of scrutiny now that I think it’s taking a trend in the direction of doing away with legacy admissions.”
At Stanford, about 15% of students who enrolled last fall were either the children of alumni or donors. At Santa Clara University, the number is higher, sitting at 17.7%. For USC, 14% of admitted applicants for the 2022-23 school year had relationships to alumni or donors.
Eliminating that leg-up for applicants would upend generations of history among the country’s most coveted universities.
Laura Sun, a third-year Stanford student, believes that legacy admissions are “objectively” unfair since she thinks the policy doesn’t provide insight into an applicant’s capabilities or interests. Sun doesn’t benefit from legacy status herself, but she knows people at her school who do.
“I feel like a lot of them struggle with feeling like they don’t deserve to be at Stanford, which I think is stupid just because like legacy is not the only factor in admissions,” Sun said. “The people that I know absolutely deserve to be there and are very successful students.”
Stanford won’t say how it plans to address new restrictions on its admissions practices. When asked whether Stanford intends to revise its legacy admissions process, Dee Mostofi, assisstant vice president for external affairs at Stanford, pointed to a June 29 letter penned by President Marc Tessier-Lavigne after the Supreme Court ruling that said “faculty representatives, admissions offices, and legal counsel will be working to assess next steps under the ruling.”
But Samuel Sinyangwe, a racial justice activist and Stanford alum, feels that legacy admissions should be ended not just at his alma matter, but across the country.
“I think legacy admissions help to reinforce an inequitable system that privileges wealthy and disproportionately White students over a representative cross section of the country,” Sinyangwe said.
Santa Clara University director of media and internal communications Deborah Lohse didn’t say how the university would adjust its legacy policy. An applicant’s “legacy status is one of many factors that may emerge in our holistic review,” she said. “All admitted students must meet our rigorous academic and admission standards.”
Others who closely watched the Supreme Court ruling also wondered whether the preferential admissions would be included in the ruling, according to Lisa García Bedolla, political science and education professor at UC Berkeley.
“If you’re saying that you can’t consider race, why would you be able to consider whether your parent gave $10 million to the university?” García Bedolla said.
UC Berkeley Law dean Erwin Chemerinsky said the Department of Education investigation will determine whether, and to what extent, Harvard’s legacy preferences have a racially discriminatory effect. If they determine Harvard’s legacy policy is discriminatory, private schools like Stanford, USC and Santa Clara University will also have to determine whether their own legacy admissions policies have the same effect.
“The Department of Education at most will say ‘There can’t be legacy preferences when they have a racially discriminatory effect,’” Chemerinsky said. “It’s not going to say ‘There could never be legacy preferences.’”
Most other private universities in California, including CalTech, University of San Francisco and Mills College, say they do not use the criteria in deciding which students to admit to their schools.
“I applaud what the Department of Education is doing, but I think it’s going to be legally much harder to challenge legacy preferences,” Chemerinsky said.
The idea that legacy preferences are racially discriminatory is not new. In his concurring opinion on the Supreme Court’s affirmative action case, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that preferences for children of alumni and donors “undoubtedly benefit white and wealthy applicants the most.”
There appears to also be bipartisan support for ending legacy admissions, with Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York both calling for the practice to end. Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., along with Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, also both reintroduced legislation this week that would prohibit colleges and universities from considering legacy status in the admissions process.
“I think the positive outcome from the Supreme Court decision is it gives us an opportunity to really reflect on the policies and practices that universities engage in during admissions,” García Bedolla said.