After the U.S. Supreme Court found (to no one’s surprise) that colleges and universities could not use a race-based approach in their admissions process, the long-standing attack on legacy admissions at highly selective institutions of higher education ramped up.

Legacy admissions are what happens when a prospective student’s forebears such as parents or grandparents went to the school to which the applicant is applying. Many colleges and universities over the years have given a significant leg up to such students. In fact, prior to the Supreme Court decision, if you were a white or Asian American candidate for an Ivy League school, your chances of being admitted without being a so-called legacy applicant had become vanishingly slim.

On their face, legacy admissions appear indefensible, and they’re hated by many people on the left and the right.

Liberals see them as a manifestation of inherited privilege, an impediment to diversity and a palpable reminder of how the rich maintain their social and economic dominance. Conservatives, who have clucked that many quiet beneficiaries of this process have been members of the highly educated liberal elite, often argue that they have no place in what should be a pure meritocracy.

Until now, colleges and universities have defended the legacy status quo with a fuzzy argument about how they build community and long-term relationships, which is another way of saying that people who give vast sums of money to these institutions, often in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, sure as heck expect to get their adequately qualified kid through the door.

The schools well know that without that implied carrot, their biggest donations will suffer. There’s no shame in pointing that out: Scholarships are often reliant on donors and so are up-to-date labs, hospitals, and other research and learning facilities.

But schools have been left twisting in the court of public opinion. Last week, Wesleyan University, a liberal arts college in Connecticut, said it would end legacy admissions, very likely arranging for a prominent story in The New York Times signaling its virtue. Others who have made this call include Amherst College, Johns Hopkins University and Carnegie Mellon University. But the most exclusive schools are just hoping the tumult goes away.

Are the kids of donors and the kids of prior graduates treated the same? Absolutely not, as anyone who has looked at an admission file well knows. Donors always trump Grandma’s degree, but if there is one thing less politically correct than talking about legacy admissions, it’s talking about the children of donors. Not to mention the friends and kids of administrators, deans and faculty members.

One other wrinkle here is that many Black graduates of universities like Harvard and Yale are quietly grumbling that it was only after generations of exclusion that a substantial number of Black graduates finally found themselves in the place where they could pass on their success by giving a leg up to their kids. If you’re a Black Ivy League graduate, you now are facing a double whammy for your kid: the Supreme Court decision and the assault on legacy admissions.

In all matters involving the highly subjective business of college admissions, change invariably is exaggerated.

Just as colleges and universities will find a legal way to maintain the diversity of their class, Supreme Court or no Supreme Court, they will find a way to continue legacy admissions even if they say they are getting rid of them.

One possibility? At many schools, one admission consideration is “likelihood of attending.” If the admissions officers think their favorable decision will actually yield an acceptance, they are more likely to make the offer. This makes sense: Yield is one of the ways that colleges are judged by external entities. But guess which students are the most likely to attend? Those with multiple generations of family ties, previously known as legacies. No one will so much as breathe the word “legacy,” but discussions of an applicant’s commitment to a school soon will carry a lot of that freight.

We agreed with the Supreme Court’s reasoning that working hard to recruit diverse, well-qualified individuals is far preferable to blanket racial preferences. And we agree that where your parents did or did not go to school should not affect your acceptance to college: It should be about talent, grades, applications and records of service. We’d also note that this issue doesn’t directly affect most Americans, since most Americans don’t go to highly selective colleges, even though this is an endlessly debated topic among elites.

But anyone who thinks legacy admissions can be wiped away with a news release is deluding themselves. Powerful forces are at work here; most parents will do anything for the kids they love, and that includes parents who say they oppose legacy admissions until they need them for their own kids. And you’d better believe that after a $100 million donation, Junior still is getting a leg up. The same applies, of course, to the children of desirable celebrities and powerful politicians.

The existing code of silence around all this will only increase in intensity. But when both sides of the deal stand to benefit, the market incentivizes its continuance.

That’s what they teach in Economics 101 at all the best schools.

Editorial by the Chicago Tribune

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