Democrats are focusing their attention on ending the practice of legacy admissions in response to the Supreme Court’s decision to eliminate affirmative action in college admissions. Influential congressional caucuses, including the Congressional Black Caucus, Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, have endorsed the idea, and lawmakers like Senator Jeff Merkley and Representative Jamaal Bowman plan to introduce legislation to eliminate legacy admissions.
However, research suggests that eliminating legacy preferences would have little impact on the demographic makeup of college enrollments. Therefore, Democrats and the White House are considering other ways to address the Supreme Court’s ruling. President Joe Biden, while not directly calling for the elimination of legacy admissions, argued that college admissions currently disadvantage the working class and called for a higher education system that benefits everyone.
The White House intends to work with the departments of Education and Justice to help colleges understand how they can still consider race in admissions. They will also host a summit for college leaders to discuss strategies for maintaining diverse student bodies.
Eliminating legacy and donor admissions is expected to generate controversy, as many universities rely on these practices to attract donations from alumni and wealthy parents. Nonetheless, lawmakers such as Representatives Judy Chu and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez argue that it is unfair to base a quarter of admissions on donations or parental connections. They believe it is necessary to question the continuation of this practice.
The impact of legacy admissions is significant, with some top universities admitting more legacy students than Black and Latino students combined. Studies have shown that having an alumni parent is equivalent to a 160-point increase on an applicant’s SAT score. For instance, a lawsuit against Harvard revealed that legacies, athletes, donors’ children, and faculty and staff children make up 43% of the student body, compared to just 16% for Black, Latino, and Asian American students combined.
However, a Duke University study found that eliminating legacy and donor admissions would not have as substantial an impact on diversity as racial preferences. The admissions policies in question at Harvard and UNC also considered factors beyond race, such as legacy and athlete status, which were unaffected by the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Representative Bobby Scott compared these practices to the racially discriminatory “grandfather clauses” used to prevent Black citizens from voting after the Civil War. He is calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate other racially biased admissions practices, including standardized testing.
Michael Dannenberg, a former education policy aide, supports other ideas to promote economic diversity in colleges, such as requiring wealthy institutions to fund historically black colleges or community colleges if they do not admit enough working-class students.
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