The Harvard and Yale graduates on the Supreme Court are not particularly liberal, nor does the Harvard Business Review publish many articles on social and economic justice. So it’s not clear that “liberals” are in any way running these institutions.
Money runs them, and although money sometimes chooses to be liberal, it usually doesn’t.
130
This is a reckless article:
First, legacy admits rank very highly compared to any other admits, and
Second, without the generosity of legacies, there is zero money for the scholarships for the poor.
Kristoff is just bleating cliches. Legacy students in all Ivy schools are exceptionally talented and would be admitted anywhere.
48
It is quite amusing to we "deplorables" and/or more middle of the road independents,including Ivy League non legacies like me, who actually vote for candidates from both parties to read the elite intellectuals' sophistry used in various ways to justify their hypocrisy!!! Some kinds of discrimination are certainly justified seems to be their rationale....how egalitarian is that?
22
Of course.
Legacy admissions exist to keep the clique of “insiders” in place. There’s no secret. It’s not about race, it’s about the economic advantage of having a special relationship with other rich folks.
58
Kristof should have disclosed that all three of his children went on to attend Harvard College. His wife is also an alumna of Harvard Business School.
For that matter, his family lives in Scarsdale, NY, where all three children attended Scarsdale High School - one of, if not “the”, most elite public high schools in the nation (I.e the place where Kristof and his Manhattan-Cambridge-Davos peers send their children to get the boarding school experience and still maintain their liberal bone fides. A win-win!)
(I found this from less than five minutes of Googling by the way. Public knowledge).
I don’t mean to take anything away from Kristof’s success. If I had the opportunity to have a big family of Harvard graduates and a homestead in Scarsdale, you best believe I’d take it.
But Kristof didn’t have to stick his nose in this topic and, when he did, he should have given us all the relevant facts. He selectively introduces his personal life into his argument when he refers to his “country bumpkin” upbringing, but then omits the more compromising facts about the way he and his family have benefited from the legacy admissions system.
I like Kristof, but sometimes I think he really just can’t help himself ...
328
Affirmative action does not help if your course work is differential equations and quantum mechanics. Harvard only hurts itself in STEM by rejecting Asians with 800 scores.
For the fulffy majors, it makes no difference who you admit. Here, alumni donations talk.
34
The problem the author doesn't address: despite healthy endowments, Universities like Harvard necessarily depend upon donors - many giving substantial amounts annually. Legacy students come with that equation. And, in my experience years ago as a Kent State University undergrad, Harvard grad student, lecturer, Holmes Hall (Radcliffe) Sr. Resident and Winthrop House Sr. Tutor (now called assistant dean, as I understand it), among a couple of other assignments, the overwhelming majority of those students pulled their academic and related responsibilities quite well.
18
Mr. Kristof has supported many important, especially humanitarian, causes, and I admire him for that. Fair college admissions is no exception.
But so often he comes off sounding like a party hack when he blames liberals for problems not of their making.
23
Harvard's discrimination against Asians is repugnant from an academic, ethical, moral, political and legal point of view.
Harvard of course denies it because it is Harvard's achilles heel.
This resonates with its well known past antisemitism, its strong historic sense of white Christian supremacy, and Harvard's undeniable narcissism.
Who is a narcissist? Someone who is in love with his or her own reflection. Alumni preferences.
31
Liberal hypocrisy? I guess you haven’t been on a college campus in a while. You think all those donors who want their kids to go to the U are all liberals? Get a grip.
You and other mainstream liberals have done a terrible job dealing with this issue. Affirmative action is compensation for a tort. Qualified human beings of a darker shade or the wrong religion were denied a place at colleges across the spectrum for decades. Theu keptmthe, from better jobs and opportunities. It was a theft.
It isn’t a secret white people in the South sparked a civil war in order to deny black Americans all civil and human rights. Pr venting them from getting a college education was just a continuation of the long war the American Right has and is waging against treating African Americans as full citizens.
Talented students of all ethnicities and cultures are denied places at colleges not just by legacy admissions, but the previledge of athletes. Conservatives have worked assiduaously to,convince high achieving Asian students that affirmative action is hurting them when it more likely they will lose a seat to a linebacker for the football team.
Step back and look at what is happening. Can you not see the pattern of behavior on the right? They want to deny equal opportunity to everyone not like them.
15
@Steve O'Donoghue the judge already decided that the case was about discrimination and not affirmative action. And looking at all the numbers there is a strong case that this group is being discriminated against.
14
Harvard received >40,000 applications for the Class of 2022. Harvard will send admission letters to @2,000 applicants.
@38,000 applicants and their benefactors will have lots of injustices to blame for their failure to make it to the Yard.
The 2,000 may find their "luck" short-lived. No matter what their qualifications may have been, they will all be tarred with the legacy-white privilege-jock-affirmation action-sore loser broad brush.
A sense of entitlement is a dangerous thing in a world where the entitled eat their own.
14
“Legacy preferences give a leg up to applicants who have typically led privileged lives,” said Susan Dynarski, a (Harvard-trained) professor of economics, education and public policy at the University of Michigan. “It’s the polar opposite of affirmative action, which boosts applicants who have faced adversity...." Nicholas Kristof saved the most important point almost until last. But what I want to know is, why are we focusing on legacy preferences now, when it's affirmative action that's really on the table in the current court case? The legacy issue is a distraction the plaintiffs have raised to try to change the subject. It's a Trojan horse. Don't fall for it.
15
Here is how to fix this whole schlamozzle.
Scrap whole admissions empire, and just draw straws.
12
As an Ivy League alumnus myself, I agree with this article but take issue with the title. It should read “Conservative” rather than “Liberal” hypocrisy, as it has been conservatives who have been opposed to affirmative action yet all too willing to ignore the fact that legacy admissions were merely affirmative action for rich, white students. (I will refrain from naming famous academic underachievers, but you could easily fill in the blanks). Perhaps it would be impossible, given the volume of applicants, to have an admission system based solely on academic merit (however one may define merit). It may indeed be a “crap shoot” to select a class from such a large pool of equally qualified students, but let’s drop the pretense that those so chosen are necessarily better or more deserving than those who simply didn’t win the admissions lottery.
31
"“Legacy preferences give a leg up to applicants who have typically led privileged lives,” said Susan Dynarski"
If so, let us talk about athletics - the ultimate privileged, white child leg up. From an article in The Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/10/college-sports-ben... "...in 2002, James Schulman and former Princeton University President William Bowen looked at 30 selective colleges and found that athletes were given a 48 percent boost in admissions, compared with 25 percent for legacies and 18 percent for racial minorities."
21
“…how radical some professors can be when they look at the external world and how conservative when they look inwardly at themselves…” (Clark Kerr, from the 2001 Preface to “The Uses of the University”)
(Clark Kerr was a highly regarded sociologist and a Chancellor of the Univ. of Cal. system. He is the Chancellor of that system who built it into what it is today.)
6
Discrimination against Asian-American students is reality and dismissing it as a false flag operation is too 2018 and echo-chamber-y for me. Just because people I disagree with point something out doesn't make it wrong. I don't support dismantling affirmative action, but I also don't support giving a class of students low personality scores while euphemizing the excellence of others by giving them contrastingly higher personality scores. It is important to shine a light on these inconvenient facts and not dismiss them out of hand. They must be addressed more thoughtfully, and questioning legacies is not a sufficient response to the data the suit against Harvard has brought to light. And I'm a white Harvard alum too.
84
Universities are only as good as their students. If people are determined to get in on some criterion other than merit then Harvard will soon not be worth fighting for. Then "privileged" candidates and faculty will be accused of flight.
If a child is raised on the belief that its greatest merit is its membership of a disadvantaged group, I cannot imagine why such a child would strive for excellence in general and not just within the group.
If a child belonging to a disadvantaged group achieves excellence, such a child will be clubbed together with those who gained admission using quotas.
Then there is the issue of privileged minorities e.g. children of color born to high achieving parents or children of mixed race who ski in Switzerland in summer when they visit their grandparents and put down their minority status (from the other side of their family) on Ivy League applications.
If our society has to be financed by taxation (as it is now) then it is to everybody's advantage if a meritocratic society generates the biggest size national pie.
Finally imagine a work of music say a Beethoven sonata. Would you buy a recording by the best pianist (regardless of race) or would you buy the one because the pianist got admission to conservatory based on affirmative action?
14
So you ask "where is meritocracy"? It's OK to have affirmative action for minorities, but not for legacies! Is there really a difference? Also, legacy family admissions may encourage significant donations to the institution, thus allowing several disadvantaged students to attend with financial aid.
6
The key difference is that affirmative action tries to expand opportunity to the historically disadvantaged. Legacy admission expands opportunity to those who already have cross-generational advantage, by definition.
15
Yes. There is a difference, history matters.
7
“Liberals object to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision allowing tycoons to buy political influence ...”
Enlighten me. Of the CU plaintiffs, who, exactly, were tycoons?
3
The schools that don't discriminate against Asian-Americans simply have a much better student body: the UC system (Berkeley), the University of Washington, Cal Tech. The schools that don't do affirmative action for legacies simply have better student bodies, too: e.g., MIT. All other things the same, the students at those schools are just more qualified. At those schools, your classmates are sharper and the competition is keener. Grad schools know that the graduates of these schools are among the most qualified. Rich white students are the principal beneficiaries of the Asian-American discrimination. They are taking more seats than they deserve at the vast majority of the other so-called leading public and private schools. And they are manifestly unqualified. They have had an extraordinarily privileged upbringing, yet they are still not qualified on the merits. And their undergraduate educational experience is limited to a country club university where 60% of the students come from the richest 1% of families by wealth and income.
14
Private schools should have the ability to admit who they want -- unless of course they take guv money to fund their research etc. But let's face some facts that perhaps the lefties out there ignore, including Nick. We can pretend all we want that being in the top % of income earners v the bottom % (pick 1,5,10,20) is a matter of luck or white privilege,but it isn't. There's an element, but top earners tend to be smarter than bottom earners. They tend to accomplish more, produce more and contribute to society more than those in the bottom %. Therefore the offspring of upper income families are likely, on avg, to be smarter than avg.
Moreover, it is perhaps wrong to assume that legacy admissions are a bad idea. Let' s say I spend a zillion $$$ to go to Harvard and part of what I'm paying for isn't just the sterling education, it's the prestige it confers and the connections. Now, I may be excited that my roommate from the sticks got admitted on merit, but unless his family has huge connections, I might lament that he isn't a legacy with a CEO father or mother etc. so that as we become best buds for life, doors suddenly open for me. Sure, life is based on merit, but also connections.
Don't entirely disagree that legacy admissions are a bad idea, but given that 15% of Harvard's class of 2022 is Black and 24% is Asian, I'm betting that those getting edged out by legacy admissions are White.
8
@jRalphie
The whole premise of your argument - more income means greater intelligence is laughable elitism, and is further evidence why this bias should be eliminated. Your trickle down, " let them eat cake" ( the crumbs of your bribe donations) attitude further reinforces the tone deafness.
18
Nicholas wants us to know that he too is a Harvard man and proud of it.
3 cheers for Nicholas!!!
But as Nicholas is a white male, not of a minority race, color or religion, of European Caucasian extraction,
his claim to have been admitted under "affirmative action" is clearly false and not right to claim it.
Harvard has historically sought geographic diversity in its admissions in order to minimize the admissions of students from the big cities who are not "white". That historic policy is the opposite of affirmative action.
It is quite a twist of truth to call himself an affirmative action admission.
11
If legacy admissions keep the kids of affirmative action admissions being admitted after affirmative action admissions is blocked by conservatives, many legacy admissions themselves, thus continuing the impact of affirmative action, is that a problem?
Is the newest Obama at Harvard affirmative action second generation, or just catering to the rich.
After all, Justice Thomas surely sees Obama's admission to Harvard as not based on merit given he believes everyone sees his admission to Yale as not based on merit. But he must know his presence on the SCOTUS is not based on merit, right? Just as recent appointments are not based on merit, but on legacy, ie, being clerks of a previous Supreme Court Justice.
Perhaps all admissions should be based on lotteries? Pay $50 to put in your name, and hope you win the lottery to get into Harvard, Yale, MIT, etc.
3
Legacy works two ways. Many years ago my father was a senior manager at Yale University. A retired naval officer who had not gone to Yale himself, he fell in love with the place and eventually entertained fantasies about his son - me - going there. He was quietly told that while the children of professors were welcome, even preferred, the children of employees should not try to attend. Your son would fine, he was told, but we can’t have the sons of janitors and people like that. I was relieved - I didn’t want to go to Yale, and I hated being forced to apply - but also little resentful that I had not even a tiny chance to be chosen. There are some people who will always get into Yale, and there are some people who will never get into Yale, and merit has nothing to do with it.
30
The role of academic universities such as Harvard and the University of California is to do scholarly research and to train graduate students to be the next generation to contribute to the body of knowledge. Educating undergraduates is a secondary consideration. Any good academic university can educate undergraduates. An academic university might have 300 undergraduates in a single lecture hall.
On the other hand, there may be one faculty member for each graduate student doing academic research. The cost to do cutting edge academic research is enormous. Without substantial support from the government, public and private academic universities rely heavily from donations to make ends meet. These donations provide access to the university for bright students from poor families, and funds to do cutting edge research at these institutions. Without this money, the basic mission of the university is lost.
If you do not want donations from rich families to be a big deal, then have the federal government give a few hundred billion to our top academic universities each year. Since the current administration is not thinking along these lines, we are stuck with the current system.
9
I do support some degree of legacy admissions in private universities. Let me at the outset say that I have had all my higher education in state universities and hence my position is one based on pragmatism and objectivity rather than anything else. It is a fact that a top-class education costs a lot and someone has to pay for it. If a large number (or percentage) of financially “less-advantaged” but academically excellent students can attend as a result of donations from wealthy parents of a relatively small percentage of students (say 20%), it is a form of practical socialism that benefits everyone. To take a well-known example, it is widely known that Jared Kushner got admitted to Harvard after his father donated $2.5 million. The 4-year tuition at that time was about 150K. Hence you could say Mr. Kushner Sr. paid the equivalent of the 4-year tuition of more than 10 students. In other words, he enabled 10 or so bright minds, in addition to Jared, to get a Harvard education. I think this is a good thing and should continue.
11
I think that the math contained in the expert's report ("suggests" link, Table A.2, Classes of 2014-19) somewhat overstates Harvard's admit rates (legacy 33.6% & non-legacy 5.9%).
Based on IvyCoach (https://www.ivycoach.com/ivy-league-statistics-by-college/), the average admit rate for 2014-19 was 5.98% (12,342 admits / 206,347 applicants), an average of 2,057 admits and 34,391 applicants.
Based on these numbers, you can't have admit rates of 33.6% (legacy) and 5.9% (non-legacy) and still get to an overall rate of 5.98%.
https://features.thecrimson.com/2017/freshman-survey/makeup/
18.3% of the Harvard Class of 2021 consisted of true "legacy" students (12.1% had one parent attend Harvard College, 6.2% had both). Click on "Legacy" under "Demographics", then hover over those two bars to get these percentages.
For the classes of 2018-2022, the range of legacy students in the class was 14.5% to 18.3%. The average was 16%.
Based on an annual average of 2,057 admits from 34,391 applicants, 329 (16%) would be legacy admits (leaving 1.728 as non-legacy admits). Dividing 329 legacy by a 33.6% legacy admit rate gets you 980 legacy applicants. This leaves 33,411 non-legacy applicants. Divide 1,728 non-legacy admits by 33,411 non-legacy applicants, and you get a non-legacy admit rate of 5.17%.
If you freeze the legacy admit rate at 33.6% but use numbers for the Class of 2022 (42,749 applicants, 1,962 admits, 14.5% of them legacy), you get a non-legacy admit rate of 4.00%.
4
I was a middle class suburban kid who, back in the 80s, was lucky enough to be admitted to Yale based on good grades and a spark of something recognized by the admissions office. At Yale I found myself admitted to an elite segment of society. Kids whose parents were CEOs of investment banks (I didn’t know what an investment bank was at the time), senators, heirs to huge fortunes, people with buildings and monuments named after their families, and so forth. If admission to that social circle had not existed at Yale, then in retrospect I would have been better off attending UC Berkeley, UCLA, or the University of Michigan, which all offer an excellent education. But part of what Harvard and Yale offer is admission to high society and if that high society is itself now excluded from admission, then that diminishes social migration and integration. Your vision of absolute democracy is laudable and can be found at, for example, the University of California. But rich and well-placed families will always find or create new exclusive settings for themselves and we should consider that in our analysis of the admissions process.
22
The problematic thing in all these discussions of affirmative action, legacy preference, etc. is the false idea that any school can quantify what makes one well-qualified student more worthy of admission than another. To be sure, good grades and good standardized test scores show someone who works hard. But they can also be proxies for other things, such as who has money for SAT prep courses, whose parents had the money to buy a house in a well-funded school district, whose parents pressure them to achieve at whatever cost. Most of these factors favor the rich, and because of this country's history of systematic discrimination, the rich tend to be white, or descendants of immigrants who were already educated at the time they were allowed into the country. It is impossible, then, to be completely "fair," so what schools do is try to balance their financial needs and obtain a diverse class of students who will stay there the whole four years and hopefully contribute to society and to the school as alumni. No system will please everyone, and every system will be unfair to some. But the unfairness doesn't start at college admissions; it starts much further back.
13
Transparency -- Let's try that for a while. Just how many Legacy kids are we talking about? What number and who falls into Affirmative Action and Athletic admissions ... who gets financial aid .. and how much. All of this maters and is needed to make judgements.
Schools have to survive. The fact is that most foreign students and all Legacy students end up paying full freight if they have been given any slack on the academic front. Those funds are used for students that otherwise would not be able to attend. We also need to know the graduation rate and over how many years for those given special treatment -- that's often overlooked.
If a school can take more deserving students buy allowing higher paying legacy entrance at a reasonable ratio ... and they all graduate -- that's not a bad trade.
The problem is that schools have been hiding the numbers to protect those graduation rate figures ... now Harvard adds this obvious inequity with asian students w/o explanation. Transparency -- that's what is needed.
10
Why do you assume legacy preference is "liberal"? The people on the board of those institutions are not especially liberal.
And it isn't just "legacy". If 20% of the admits are from the nearly all white students on the special list of students that includes many students like Jared Kushner whose parents can donate a building, then the people in charge and ordering those kids to be admitted very likely vote for a Republican like the Massachusetts Governor who might be socially liberal but works to do the bidding of the rich.
9
The demand for admission at Harvard is high so Harvard needs to increase the supply of available seats and the same goes for medical schools. It's simple supply and demand and lowering doctors wages would be a greater good. It's simple, they won't do it, but its simple.
3
@Mr. JonesNothing is simple. Cambridge is crowded and colleges can’t increase admissions without building more housing.
4
Kristof fails to mention that many legacy admits are highly qualified academically. There is no doubt that legacies get an advantage (but only if they apply for early admission) but at least they can do the work. On the other hand, many affirmative action admits struggle to keep up. If one of the hallmarks of an elite university is the quality of the student body, AA has a negative impact. Aside from donations, many legacies pay full tuition, which subsidizes the cost for other students.
18
@Tim Lewis. Some legacies are dim bulbs. Some affirmative action admits are wealthy and well educated.
10
"but at least they can do the work"
At least *some* legacy admissions can do the work? OK, I'm thankful for that. But it has nothing to do with fair admissions.
7
Granted legacy preference is unfair, but without it these universities won't have multigenerational family loyalty and support and the private donations that generates. They are private universities. The European universities that are purely meritocratic rely on state funding. If you want pure meritocracy the state would have to step in. MIT may be meritocratic but it is essentially a state supported institution in the form of federal research grants.
12
a shade shabby mr k's shift from the discrminatory to the legacy in the harvard admission issue.
first, harvard is private institution and is entitled to admit or deny admssion to anyone it chooses.
second it clearly does not have the courage to exercise its right to stand up for its preferences and take the consequences, whatever they may be.
What's wrong at harvard is the "admissions process" a mask tailored to suit their preferences, one that discounts those not preferred for whatever reason...the "process" is a clever one, its form can be re-tailored as their biases change (reads jews instead of asians) with time.
the "process" gives, or gave, harvard cover, the law suit bids to strip it away and rightly leave harvard with telling it like it is and likely giving up lots of dollars from we the people and corporates not willing to send where they put their money...so if its legacy kids they want, why not? if its neo-kristofs, why not?
just drop the mask.
6
Sorry Nick, but Affirmative Action while assisting African American, Latino and Native American applicants, certainly hurts and Asian American's likelihood of acceptance into competitive universities.
Look at the California example. After Affirmative action was removed, UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC Irvine are at or near 40% Asian American student populations when going by grades, test scores and on-paper achievements alone such as leadership, volunteer and research experience. If they were to go back to Affirmative Action, many highly and maybe overqualified Asian Americans would unfairly be denied based on the color of their skin!! Sound familiar?
16
@Jean Sorry Jean. In my opinion, the current focus on "discrimination" against Asian-Americans is a smoke-screen. Asian-Americans simply don't face the same barriers that African-Americans and Latinos face - poorer school systems, lower-paid teachers with larger class sizes, textbook shortages, less extra-curricular opportunities, etc. The answer is NOT to do away with affirmative action. Furthermore, Nick did NOT say he was in favor of "discrimination" against Asian-Americans. You inferred that.
6
@Darlene Moak In New York City, Asians are the poorest ethnic group. NYC equalizes school spending across all its 5 boroughs, eliminating the financial discrepancies you cite. In fact, under Mayor Bloomberg, the City allocates disproportionately greater resources to schools in poor communities. To say that Asian kids don’t face the same barriers as African American and Latino kids is factually incorrect. Asian kids outperform every other ethnic group in NYC. Another (inconvenient?) fact: NYC spends about $2,000 LESS per student in its beacon schools (eg Stuyvesant) than the Citywide average. These schools are overwhelmingly Asian. They’re there because they have the grades and the motivation to perform at the rigorous level these schools demand.
2
White privilege has always permeated every bit of top-tier America.
This how things have worked and will continue to work.
So, don't hold your breath waiting or legacy preferences to disappear.
Though I am a Latino, I never received any affirmative action benefit.
I fought hard to get a college degree. My being Latino worked against me, not for me.
An English prof almost caused me to drop out during my first year. After receiving F's on my first two essays, I asked my prof what was the reason I was failing. "It's obvious. You can't write," she said, her disdain quite apparent.
End of conversation.
I walked out of the classroom demoralized and intent on dropping out.
But then, I got angry. I decided to learn how to write and not let a cruel prof crush me.
I went on to a 30-year career in journalism, and today I teach upper division writing at a highly regarded university.
10
Why was the prof “cruel”? You admit - by devoting yourself how to write - that you couldn’t. You learned and made a good career from this. Congratulations. But I’m concerned that you call this honest professor - who, in effect, helped your life and career - cruel.
15
Am I the only one who fails to see the connection between legacy admissions and liberalism?
17
@Eric In fact you would expect the opposite - the classical definition would imply egalitarianism.
3
1. Private institutions - they can do whatever they want.
2. Legacy does not equal undeserving.
3. White does not equal undeserving.
4. Why are you giving the finger to a culture of philanthropy that has made it possible for generations/thousands of students to attend academic institutions that were beyond their economic means?
5. Why are you giving the finger to a culture of philanthropy that has made these institutions the best in the world?
6. Why are you giving the finger to a culture of philanthropy that has enabled affirmative action policy to exist at all?!
7. It is this misplaced outrage that has pushed this life-long Democrat to the right.
16
The robust response and defence of the legacy system helps explain why US has so less social mobility than many European countries. The 10%, the gatekeepers for the 1%, are as jealous and unconscious of their privilege as the superelite.Interestingly, the few genuinely self-made billionaires, are the ones most willing to give their extraordinary wealth away or pay lip service to the notion. While seeing some benefits of rubbing elbows with the plutocracy-I was a scholarship boy at Georgetown, a second tier elite school-I would have liked to see more respondents use their gifts to see a way forward for those of us whose forebears were humble fishermen, soldiers, tailors and trolley conductors.
4
Why are you so defensive/angry about Nick's column ("give the finger")? Could it be that he's largely right? And if all this "misplaced outrage" has pushed you totally to the right, enjoy your stay over there in Crazytown.
11
The Ivy League and other elite universities have been graduating ethnically diverse classes for well more than a generation - so a good number of the legacy applicants Mr. Kristof complains about are now young people of color finally getting an advantage. It is typical of whites like Kristof, who imagine themselves the "good whites" to change the rules once again to the detriment of nonwhites.
7
It's still there but you may not find out until you apply. I am grateful as a Californian we have always had places like the UC which are every bit as good as places that are private. The older part of the nation DOES have a problem with all of it. Legacy? Why? At one point you could look to the careers of many who benefited from it and say yes, they ended up helping society. Not now.
2
The student journalists of The Harvard Crimson editorialized: “Legacy preference is, in the simplest terms, wrong. It takes opportunities from those with less and turns them over to those who have more.”
I’m curious - if you don’t mind: how many of these students benefited themselves from this obscene policy?
5
Although Ivy leaguers, particularly Harvard and Yale grads, are all assumed to be brillant, the truth is pretty much any moderately intelligent person could matriculate from an Ivy if they were fortunate enough to get in. Conversely a very small percentage of people can handle the course work at MIT.
19
This is a damned if you, damned if you don't situation for Harvard because of how much the demographics of the undergraduate student population have changed there since Kristof himself received his Harvard diploma in 1981.
Who now stands to benefit greatly from relaxed admissions standards for legacy applicants at Harvard? Asian-Americans, of course. I don't think Harvard had a sizable number of U.S. citizen undergraduates of Asian background (mostly Chinese, Indian, and Korean with smaller cohorts of Vietnamese and Filipino) until the 1980s. And this is because the Asian-American population was extremely small prior to liberalization policies in the 1960s that gave priority to highly educated and skills Asians who not surprisingly raised children who excelled academically. If your parent is a doctor or engineer or physics PhD, well yes no mystery why you do well in school.
People with family names like Kim, Wang, and Desai and who graduated from Harvard in 1989 or 1993 are now precisely the kinds of people looking to take advantage of the privileges that had previously been reserved for non-Asian (i.e. white) people with names like Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Rockefeller.
If Harvard ends preferential treatment for legacy applicants now, believe me more than a few Asian-American graduates of that school will feel embittered and think of the phrase "Pulling up the drawbridges" or "Kicking away the ladder" or "Do as I say for your children, not what I did for mine."
11
"And this is because the Asian-American population was extremely small prior to liberalization policies in the 1960s that gave priority to highly educated and skills Asians"
I should clarify here that I was referring to the liberalization of U.S. immigration policies that gave priority to highly educated and skilled migrants from Asian countries. U.S. immigration policy until the year 1965 was racially discriminatory.
1
“Those who have the gold, rule “ is a basic fact of capitalism. Now we see how certain w/m’s such as the author can still get a little love the Affirmative Action way. Interesting, and good for America!
1
I get the hypocrisy of admissions everywhere-ignoring that money talks, but I don’t see it as “liberal” when the people who most benefitted are conservative moneyed families. So maybe you need to de-trumpify your rhetoric. Actually let’s detrumpify the country and stop murderous nationalism.
8
In the end the Asian discrimination suit will allow for more Asians to attend at the expense of the other minorities and poor whites. The rich meanwhile, will sit above with their happy-fat privileged children and enjoy the spectacle down below.
3
So the obvious point is get rid of legacies and get rid of racial preferences. It's an abomination that a student should be punished because their skin color is not black or brown.
8
The headline is ridiculous --"Liberal hypocrisy"? Since when is legacy admissions a liberal idea? I'm certainly not much in favor of legacy admissions, but I can't even make out a cogent argument in this piece. He seems to be saying legacy admissions are bad because they are somehow bad. Maybe, but not much of an argument here. Finally, it's time for Mr. Kristof to stop billing himself as a "progressive". Declaring yourself progressive does not make you one.
5
You were a "farm boy" --- and according to Wikipedia both parents were "long-time professors at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon".
20
If you have what it takes to do well in college, you don't need affirmative action. If you don't, affirmative action will get you in but it won't keep you in.
2
There should have been enough time for legacy admissions to be coming into play for the first generation of non-white and/or non-Christian Harvard alumni. Is it working? Are successful Harvard alumni sending their kids back as legacy candidates? Is “legacy” itself diversifying? As it stands legacy is a piece of what Harvard is. As Harvard diversifies, so can legacy although that takes time and it takes a type of orientation to family wealth-building which isn’t openly encouraged in this country.
If Harvard should become a place which delivers only individual shots of opportunity, that’s one thing. Right now it is more than that. Potentially it should stop being more. Is Harvard really a liberal bastion? Legacy white liberals? Rich ones? What are they for (/sarc) Perhaps we should attack its continuity and self-perpetuation! That made sense, Mr. Kristof.
2
To Kristof: aren't all of your children legacies at Harvard?
14
@CT To Nick: Thanks for your "full disclosure" that you are a Harvard grad, served on the Board, and were a Fellow at the Kennedy School. It also seems like you might mention in an essay criticizing Harvard legacy preference that your three kids are legacies at Harvard?
16
I am not so worried about who gets in. I wonder why we think the education of say Yale or Harvard or MIT or Berkley is somehow superior to any number of state universities. I look at the skill and ability of the individual and believe I am capable of discerning the validity of their contentions and value of their output, particularly in the field which I myself am trained. I see no evidence of the superiority of any specific school or it's alumni. What I see from the so called top schools is spoiled and arrogant manipulators and "politicers" capable of fooling the simple minded. I know that people like good looking people even when they are stupid and I know that someone who talks a good talk also fools a lot of people but they seldom have the substance that the easily impressed assume they have because they went to Yale or Harvard or MIT or Berkley. Meritocracy is only possible if you know what is meritorious. And there in lies the problem. Most people don't know what is meritorious and so as not to appear dumb they instead assume it is an education from a school with a good PR department.
6
There is so much liberal hand-wringing these days it makes a body wonder how the liberals get their helping-out hands where their helping-out minds are.
The fact is, of course, that they don't and can't when it comes to college admissions and playing fields. The continued existence of private higher-ed institutions is secured mostly by alumni funding. Always has, and always will.
Public higher-ed suckles from the public troughs and from alumni too. Does more money make all this higher-ed actually higher or better? Well, it sure helped Nick the vaccinating hick.
We need to get our words dry-cleaned these days. Hypocrisy isn't being practiced, no matter what the libs think. Funding comes first.
Nick had to prove himself at Harvard. He must have had something going for himself or he wouldn't be where he is today. Let's focus on getting more higher-ed applicants who bring a work ethic and dedication to make the world better for their being there.
4
The big issue here, which hovers above issues of inherited wealth, race discrimination and what is a meritocracy is that our elite schools produce people who are unethical, arrogant, self serving, and blind to the greater good — this Ivy League elite is not fit for purpose — they are terrible at governing us because they either don't understand us or think that we the people just are not as important as their elite careers.
Examples: George W. Bush was such a dullard with such poor judgment that he enabled all the war mongers in his Cabinet and allowed the Banks to engage in grand larceny. Obama cleaned up his mess, but was such an aloof careerist that he didn't dirty his hands in any of the fights that needed to be waged for the common man (he had nothing at all to do with Obamacare), The Clintons were arrogant self serving careerists too, both, Bill betrayed Blacks and Gays with hate legislation and Hillary just couldn't understand why anyone would disapprove of her coronation, she promised nothing and thus raised no enthusiasm. And then there's Trump. Did I mention Xi, President of China and a Harvard man - he didn't pick up any ethical training there.
I'm all for a meritocracy, just not one that produces these kinds of personalities. Ethics has to be at the foundation of society,and an education, instead we simply train people to get ahead through a narcissistic cult of competition. I won't be voting for any politicians who went to Yale or Harvard again.
11
American Universities have a problem and all this riff-raff talk boils down to one thing: Money.
The idea of making money highjacked American education from the very beginning. You call it "legacy" I call it "Building up generation of influential clients" . Atheltes are potential free advertisers and students are nothing but debtors.
"Everybody feels the evil, but no one has the courage or energy enough to seek cure". Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America.
5
@Makh--And why do universities with gigantic endowments continue to beg for donations? Send your money directly to scholarship funds at local schools instead.
1
Ivy League “institutions associated with liberalism”?!
I spent four years at Harvard, whence I received my Ph.D., and it is by far the most conservative (and arrogant) institution I’ve ever known. That Harvard would discriminate on the basis of “race,” ethnicity, gender, parents’ gifts to the university, or any other category, is no surprise at all.
The surprise is that anyone would associate it with “liberalism.”
20
Hello Mr. Kristof,
Having been through the process four and two years ago, what an on-point article, thank you. However. So sad to report curiosity killed my cat: a fast Google search confirmed all three of your kids got into Harvard, your alma etc. Sir, as a middle-class-state-college-grad-all-caps-liberal-nothing-special dad, with my oldest having been the ne plus ultra overachiever--even given the Harvard Book Award!--Cambridge apparently craves, their rejection letter didn't surprise. What does is reading such justifiable outrage from, of all folks, you. Feeling so "yucky" here. How to defend your world-class hypocrisy to the finger-pointing conservatives in my midst?
Dad
P.S. Their loss: graduating early from another top college with a 3.8 in neuroscience after four nonstop years of: i) wrestling (Gregory knows that brutal time investment), ii) traumatic brain injury research in two separate medical schools' labs, iii) volunteering in the city's two busiest hospitals, iv) shadowing endless surgeons, v) mentoring an at-risk high schooler, and vi) two girlfriends.
26
Since when do "liberals" approve of legacy college admissions?
8
@GMB--it's just one instance, but a child of my liberal friend just got into an Ivy professional school as a third-generation legacy.
2
Calling the lawsuit against Harvard by Asian Americans a “false flag” operation is a strong accusation. Evidence?
7
“No, duh!!” observations coming from the son of two college professors who went to Harvard. News flash: all the fancy prep schools work the same way. Only the privileged think this country offers a level playing field, everybody else has known better for a long time. And liberal hypocrisy has been around ever since cave men first started talking about sharing fire with the other tribes.
6
After all is said and done
I just want to know why Harvard openly
discriminates against Asians
and calls that a form of
Affirmative Action.
4
@John Brown Does discrimination require evidence of intent? I might say the system Harvard uses seems to unfairly disadvantage Asian-Americans, but it is a system applied to all applicants - imperfect, unfair or not. What I read is the total admission scoring is lower for those not accepted and that is based on an admission committee scoring component that by nature is subjective (but so is the personal interview, since each local Harvard club prides itself on the number of admissions they achieve each year). However, IF the personal rating system is applied equally to ALL applicants w/o attention to gender/race/etc. I would argue the process is a fair one, but the “tool” may be flawed (intentionally or unintentionally-leave that to the court to decide).
2
@Vinny
What does the Judge know
that we do not know ?
There are no secret files, it is clear that Harvard
favours "Black and Hispanic" applicants over
far more qualified Asian applicants in the
"Personality" portion of the evaluation.
The percentage of admits who are of Asian
background remains about the same year in
and year out though the percentage of applicants who are Asian has increased.
Harvard did two internal studies which showed if it just admitted on Academic Qualifications the number of Asians admitted would double
or if it admitted via Socio-Economic parity
that fewer African Americans would be admitted.
Why are people called Asians ?
If their grandparents immigrated and their
parents are American Citizens then why are
they called Asians - is that not a form of
de jure Discrimination, likewise if the applicant
is an American citizen ?
People from India are not that similar to people
from Mongolia, but both are labeled Asians
by Harvard and thus undergo special scrutiny
to make sure that no too many of "them"
are admitted.
It is Racism plain and simple and Harvard
should remove "Veritas" from its Insignia
out of simple shame.
"Liberals object to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision allowing tycoons to buy political influence, so why allow tycoons to buy influence in college admissions?"
Liberals do NOT object to tycoons buying influence; they depend upon it. Look at the $$$ poured into leftist campaigns by Bloomberg, Soros, and Steyer. Leftists are spending $half a billion this year to get power. They don't mind spending money; they just want to prevent people who disagree with them from spending money.
Harvard should be completely free to choose its class as it sees fit, PROVIDED it takes no taxpayer money and further conditioned on the leftist admission that they staunchly support racist policies. That is, if you couldn't award a white kid points for being white without being racist, you can't award a black kids points for her race without being racist. Such is the great promise of the civil rights movement: one size fits all. No more kids excluded because of their race. Once you admit that you really weren't serious, and have no objections whatsoever to naked racism -- provided that the beneficiaries are Politically Correct -- Harvard, sans subsidy, should be permitted to go about its merry little racist way.
A sage once noted that we did not fight a Civil War or march on Selma over alumni preferences. Race is different, a uniquely problematic factor to consider, and it should NEVER -- NEVER!!!! -- be a consideration.
7
One thing to consider and would have a potential for legal action is that the philanthropy given to colleges can be used as a tax deduction. This is inappropriate if that donation contributes to a material gain, namely getting ones child into college.
9
Admission policy is a complex issue for which I have no suggestions. But I know this: my daughter, a non legacy from an unremarkable public high school, benefited from financial substantial aid from Yale, an Ivy considered the most diverse of all the Ivies. They have students from every state, and certainly every income. I was surprised by the lack of interest in legacy/non legacy students in the students themselves, or how and why each arrived. Once you were there, you were an Eli. No questions asked. My beloved nobody received extraordinary opportunities, including membership in one of their most revered social clubs and remarkable grants. At 26, she's a thoughtful young woman, successful in what she enjoys doing, which feels like a win and the whole point of education. These Ivy league opportunities didn't exist for the middle class forty years ago. So the times, however slow, they are a changing. And I will always feel indebted to Mother Yale.
11
Many of the athletic scholarships are alternative forms of legacy preference. How many lower or middle class kids are in a top-notch lacrosse league? Could a rich parent with a kid with middling SATs but with some athleticism get them coached up sufficiently in lacrosse to get him into admissions at Harvard? Why, yes, that is something you could buy. Many other rich-person sports work the same way, like water polo or the various and often odd forms of gymnastics. You won't see an inner city athlete getting the scholarship for Rhythmic Gymnastics.
6
@Tom You still cannot say it. Period. In the year 2018. As long as you don't bring it up, it goes on. Was supposed to stop a long time ago. And, in some ways it's worse than 40 years ago.
3
@Tom Excellent point, except that you won't see ANY athlete getting a Harvard scholarship for any sport, because as a matter of policy the Ivy League colleges don't offer athletic scholarships.
They also don't offer merit scholarships to undergraduates. They do offer need-based aid, so if a low-income student is admitted all demonstrated need will be met through a combination of grants and scholarships (they eliminated "loans" from the aid package years ago).
Certain sports offer an admissions preference if the student is recruited by the coach, but - unlike Football - Rhythmic Gymnastics (if such a team exists) is not among the teams that recruit; unlike Football and Basketball, a winning gymnastics team doesn't bring attention or donations to the university. None of this is new, and it is not a secret.
9
I would underhand and agree with the idea that giving some of the rich preference in being admixed into Harvard forb example if by being admitted means someone who can't afford to pay will not be able to be admitted because the school can only admit as many students as it has room.
However if a rich person can give the school enough money to build a additional building then the number of students who can be admitted will increase and if this will mean more students can be admitted who can't afford to pay then it is in the interest of the poor to give preference to the rich who will donate money to the school.
Granted there are very few who donate enough to build a building I am using this to bring out a principle.
Giving preference to the rich isn't wrong if they pay enough not only to pay the school for their education it will be used
to educate others.
This is why Universities will spend money on athletic programs.
They make more than what it cost and with the profit they make they can subsidize the rest of the school.
So if by admitting the rich more poor will be admitted then I say admit as many as is possible.
2
The author should tell a superior Asian applicant who was excluded from an Ivy League institution because of her race that she was part of a "false flag operation".
Or I guess that, in this column, he already has.
8
The Harvard admissions case is not a "false flag operation." A lot of the most convincing data the plaintiffs have consist of comparisons between Asian American versus white applicants. Some of the most damning information being:
1) Asian Americans score higher or comparably to whites on almost every measure except a "personal rating," where Asian Americans score dramatically lower than whites - according to the admissions office. BUT
2) Asian Americans score comparably to whites on the "personal rating" by alumni interviewers.
It's Harvard that's trying to make this a case about affirmative action instead of a straightforward anti-discrimination case against Asian Americans. Over and over again you see in Harvard's filings and arguments sanctimonious pontification about diversity, while ignoring or pooh-poohing the evidence of discrimination by Asian Americans. Maybe they are that desperate to just keep what they're used to instead of try to come up with a creative and long-due reform. Surely there is a way to keep all the good of affirmative action but prevent discrimination against one historically disadvantaged minority.
14
@Jing-Li Yu Thank you! This is exactly what I've been saying. This is not about affirmative action but about old-fashioned discrimination based on racial stereotyping.
1
Make our pubic universities free and the allure of Harvard evaporates.
5
Every strata of our society does it's utmost to keep those below it from clawing their way up. The 0.1% no more so than the 9.9% below them. It's a rigged system of tax breaks, imported labor, exported manufacturing, PTAs that are no more than teacher suck up societies, SAT coaching, Patagonia wearing elites. The Trump phenomena is not over, things will get worse.
5
Shining light on the admissions practices of so-called elite universities is necessary but the whole discussion is drawn too narrowly. The underlying reason there is such intense pressure on children to gain admission to a small group of colleges is that those institutions serve as gateways to opportunity after graduation, not because the education they provide is necessarily better than that provided by hundreds of other institutions of higher education. It is absurd to think that the intellectual and creative potential of every person is manifest by the time they are 16 years old and applying to college, yet we use determinations made then to judge qualifications for the rest of people's lives. Using attendance at an "elite" undergraduate school as a permanent signifier of competence is sometimes due to employer laziness or risk aversion, but most often it is the legacy of an obnoxious method of limiting career opportunities to members of a closed economic and social elite.
In my professional career I have had the responsibility of hiring many young professionals and have always tried to rank applicants based on their intellectual curiosity and actual knowledge, not according to their undergraduate alma mater. If more employers took this approach, there would be greater diversity and a higher level of competence among people in positions of influence, and far less pressure on children to grow up according to the dictates of college admissions officers.
10
@fbraconi Thanks for your observation. I can reinforce that position. My observation: after the first job/graduate school/etc. the imprimatur of that Ivy degree becomes muted, almost a curiosity (since many hiring managers will not have had that experience). It becomes more about what you accomplished in your preceding positions. As for networks - they exist, but everywhere, for multiple kinds social groupings and employment relationships. While it is a series of one, most of the advances in my career came through business relationships, and none of those shared an Ivy alma mater connection. None. With the exception of academic careers, other than a possible advantage in competing for that initial position, opportunity is built on the networks established by and the accomplishments of the individual. How many Fortune 500 CEO’s are Harvard or Ivy League grads? Would it be more of an advantage to have attended their alma maters if seeking a career in those companies?
4
You're opening a can of worms here about wealthy liberals Nicolas. It also includes other education-related issues such as private schooling and high-property value neighborhoods with "better schools".
Wealthy Liberals are liberal until it comes to their kids. Once they have children, they will "do anything for their kids", which often follows the same map of racist and classist behaviors as conservative Republicans.
At least Republicans do and say the same things. Democrats who talk about how liberal they are while sending their kids to private school and moving to all-white neighbors are hypocrites, pure and simple. And there are lots of them.
12
I’d like to think that in addition to being a farm boy, you had excellent grades and sat scores. Regardless, one can be jewish, black, white or Indian and still be a farm boy. It is the experience not the race that makes for the interest.
As a poor jewish kid grown into a poor jewish old man, it always amazes me how progressive whites/Jews/asians who’ve ‘made it’ are so ready to drop merit from the equation and to deny individuals competition based primarily on merit.
Look there are differences in abilities between individuals. There are differences in abilities between races and ethnic groups and no doubt between genders – of course you can dismiss the scientific evidence if you like, it’s a free country.
But as someone who has known really bright people of every race and gender, and who remains poor; I am happy for all of them who made it on the basis of merit.
But I can tell you as a baby boomer and a poor one at that, I deeply resent having seen throughout my life special advantages given to individuals because of their race. 50 years!
You in your haughtiness can call me misled, and in your smug sense of wisdom I may be just a necessary white causality in the ‘noble goal’ of racial parity, but as an old man – I can tell you that good legal discrimination burns ever bright.
6
Thank you for this insightful article about the hypocrises of NYT oped writers. I am quite sure your children have attended public schools, rather than prep schools, and would never go to Harvard so as to avoid any hint of taking advantage of legacy admissions.
11
@Robert Silverman. Darn. I hoped to find that your criticism was off-point, but a quick Google search reveals that all three children indeed attended (or attend) Harvard. Mr. Kristof probably should have noted that in the article.
13
The existence of “legacy” admissions by private universities such as Harvard reveals the same self-interest which activates the “NIMBY” reflex when a government-funded housing project for the poor is sought to be built in the middle of a rich neighborhood.
Elected officials will meet with large contributors and big-contribution “bundlers” before meeting with a constituent who hasn’t contributed. That goes for both liberal and conservative politicians.
If a criminal defendant has money he can hire a better criminal-defense lawyer. If you are rich you can buy a better and safer car and afford to maintain it. The affluent can afford to hire tutors for their children to do better in school and improve their scores on tests which determine which college and graduate school the child will get into.
Yes, money makes a difference in life. While an established, mature adult might give up his seat on the subway for an older rider, don’t expect the same principle to operate when it comes to getting the best for his children. People would die for their children, and while a parent might truly believe in creating a society of equal opportunity politically—as I think most people do—when it comes to getting their kid at the top of the ladder today there is nearly nothing a parent wouldn’t do to make that happen.
So while some rich whites who lament “white privilege” would like to ultimately see a better balance, that is aspirational only when applied to their kid today.
8
Are they qualified to attend? Are any of the legacy benefactors minorities themselves or are you just making a blanket assumption because it’s an easy target? A few weeks ago the Liberals seemed to be okay with Harvard’s nuanced admissions process but I guess upon further inspection some privileged white people may benefit so therefore it must be burned to the ground.
4
While I don't think it is fair that a son or daughter of an alum and/or wealthy benefactor obtains preferential treatment in admissions; on the other hand these are private institutions; would Harvard as we know it and respect it today as an elite institution be the same Harvard without the hundreds of millions of dollars of donations by all of its benefactors over the nearly 300 years of its existence?
5
Mr. Kristof cites a very misleading statistic as the premise for his argument: that 33.6% of legacies are admitted to Harvard while only 5.9% of nonlegacy applicants (or is this 5.9% of all applicants?) are admitted. This ignores the fact that having a parent (or 2) who went to Harvard means that the student was likely brought up in an intellectually stimulating household and may be among the most qualified applicants. Yet a full 66% of legacies are rejected from Harvard. Why wouldn't a Harvard grad want the same for his or her child? Most are rejected. I agree that it's lousy that a large donor can sometimes "buy" a way in, and I agree that these schools should continue to work towards diversity and fairness, but I think Mr. Kristof is jumping to conclusions by assuming the legacy/nonlegacy discrepancy is due entirely to legacy bias and not due at least in large part to the objective qualifications of legacy applicants. A more telling statistic might be to look at how many children of other Ivy or similar schools get into Harvard and compare that to the 33.6% (adjusted for the number of applicants with parents from each alma mater). I think there would be a smaller difference.
7
Like Kristof, I was a western merit admit to Harvard. However, I beg to differ with his analysis. The Ivy League is what it is precisely because it is a stew of wildly different students, mixed together and allowed to simmer for four years. If that includes a sizable dollop of money --some old, some vulgarly new -- so be it. Perfectly good educations can be had elsewhere at any of the great state universities or small liberal arts colleges of the MidWest and West.
Rich jerks also go to non-Ivy schools - witness the education of Donald Trump. Nor do all Ivy students end up at Goldmann Sachs or Wall Street brokerages and hedge funds, rolling in dough. Plenty of them go into teaching or public service and end up with mortgages and modest pensions. This column has more to do with Ivy League snobbery and outsider envy than reality. As Will Rogers said: "Four years at Harvard, four years out, you're just as good as the next man."
21
@Howard Eddy "Rich jerks also go to non-Ivy schools - witness the education of Donald Trump." He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968--an Ivy League university. But Donald did attend Fordham for two years before transferring to UPenn in 1966. But in the pedigree-obsessed environment of 21st century, could a Fordham graduate have become the Republican nominee for president in 2016?
Maybe, maybe not. We'll never know. But keep in mind that Barack Obama did something similar to Donald. He attended non-Ivy Occidental College for two years before transferring to Columbia University in 1981 and graduating from that Ivy League school 2 years later. Why did both men transfer to Ivy League universities from perfectly good schools like Occidental and Fordham? Could Obama have been elected U.S. president as a person who had completed his undergraduate education at Occidental and not Columbia?
These are questions worth asking. Graduating from a select group of universities should not be a prerequisite for being elected U.S. president.
15
Trump went to PENN, an Ivy, fyi. @Howard Eddy
5
"Over all, children from the top 1 percent are 77 times more likely to attend Ivy League colleges than children from the bottom 20 percent."
Right; but who else can afford paying full Ivy League tuition for their kids?
4
Mr Kristof, It is hardly a "false flag" operation to support an admissions process that intentionally limits Asian students by forcing them to earn SAT's 270 points higher than Hispanic & 450 points higher than Blacks students. The result is that while the Asian population of college eligible students has doubled the % of Asians at Harvard has not increased. Similarly, Jewish students at Harvard represent ~25% of the population. While the Jews in America represent 2% of the population. Should the next step in creating diversity be to limit Jews by increasing the number of Muslims (population in US has doubled in last 10 years)? BTW - Harvard's definition of "Blacks" to create diversity is to massively over-represent Black immigrants. ~41% of Harvard's Black students are from the West Indies or Africa (Ghana/Nigeria) - Hard to see how this is about creating opportunity. So again, should Asians have to out perform immigrant Black students because of skin color? This country has aspired to be a place based on one's merits. Make it so. Eliminate race, sports & legacies in admissions
7
“Institutions so associated with liberalism”—not in my mind, and I grew up less than ten miles from Harvard. Associate away, Mr. Kristof, but have you ever met any rightwing or conservative or reactionary alums of Princeton or Yale or Amherst or Stanford or your own Harvard? They exist, as I am sure you know. Some are hypocrites in precisely the sense you apply to liberals. In fact could we not say that “both sides” of the political aisle are guilty of protecting hereditary privilege? The problem is self-love and selfishness, not a political ideology—didn’t you learn that much on the farm?
6
The sad thing about this controversy is it starkly illustrates American’s avaricious scramble for “status.” Harvard and other so-called elite schools do give their students a leg up at opportunity so I don’t blame kids for seeking admission, however, these students have unfortunately, more and more been trending toward careers in finance, politics and law. The classes have become unbalanced and do not have as many students in STEM and humanities. I attended Radcliffe in the late 60’s when H/R was a predominately WASP institution with a few representatives of everybody else. Jews and now Asians scrambled for admission and could gain it on their culture’s values of hard work and appreciation for education. Also, the H degree is an automatic admit to the middle classes. As the high powered colleges started looking for and admitting qualified other minorities who were much more disadvanted the student body did become more diverse. This is a good thing, but I believe we should begin to define “elite” to mean not where you went to school, how rich you are your parents are, where you live, the car you drive or even your career but what your character is. Just because you can claw your way into an elite school due to gaming the system because of privilege, legacy or a big donation from your family does not make you special. In fact, it may make you something that is a bit scary.
5
Ivy League federal taxpayer subsidies, 2010-2015: $41.59 billion (!): http://www.schoolinfosystem.org/2017/03/29/ivy-league-summary-tax-break-...
1
I don't know when you went to college, but in my own school days in the last century, legacy was perhaps the key to the ivy-covered castle. the plan was as simple as it was obvious: schools like Harvard and Yale existed primarily as training grounds and finishing schools for "our" kind of people, the right sort of people - the place you would learn the folkways of how to navigate America's ruling class (after having been groomed at one of a handful of English style prep schools). once in, you could room with someone from a family lke your own, who would get to know and accept you, and, after graduation, offer you a job or a place in government. that's how things were done. read Harlot's Ghost.
there was a thing then known as a "gentleman's C" - the perfect grade to show you were holding up your end of the bargain, but not sinking into becoming a declasse grind and thereb demonstrating your feelings of social inferiority.
fraternaties, dining clubs, and shadowy secret societies were all part of the fun. restricted and exclusive were key concepts. it was all about being a kid being taken by the hand of a wise elder and led to his rightful place in the firm.
the later lofty admission requirements were designed to keep out the riffraff, and especially those with numerical quotas such as women (zero) and Jews (tiny percents).
this is the world that gave us such paragons of brilliance and academic achievement as George W. Bush, a graduate of both Harvard and Yale.
3
Dear Mr. Kristof,
IF you have children, did any of them attend Harvard or equivalent high powered school? Do you think there was an advantage for them as you are a famous columnist for the New York times and an alumni of Harvard? Even without donations, it would seem difficult for an admissions committee to "ignore" that information. I would be curious to hear your thoughts on bias in admissions even without the money.....
10
I have 2 problems with this piece.
1. Why is this considered "liberal hypocrisy"? I know no liberals that defend these appalling practices.
2. It's missing very important data -- the number of legacy applicants or donors' kids that these institutions accept. Are we talking about a handful of cases or a significant percentage of the student body? It's the difference between a having an interesting philosophical discussion or identifying a potentially huge injustice.
6
Pick your issues, Nick.
While you are correct about this one, we as a society have many, many bigger fish to fry as it relates to universities. Give the plutocrats their Ivy League legacies. There are not that many of them, anyway. BTW, there still has been some improvement in admissions policies over there in WASP-land. Let Yale have their Bushes. They deserve each other.
If you want to get wound up about something college-related I offer you a smorgasbord of higher impact topics to pick from:
a. overt discrimination against US students of Asian ethnic background;
b. tax-related subsidies for big-time athletics;
c. university exploitation of so-called student-athletes for university profit;
d. using state and federal tax subsidy to train foreign students who are just going to return home and out-compete us;
e. college president salaries;
and, my favorite -
f. universities providing prostitutes for athletes and recruits.
6
"Supposedly egalitarian America"? Really? The nation of slavery and moneyed aristocracy? How amazing that such a myth endures. Or is it? After all, the myth of a supreme being has lasted for millenia.
1
The hypocrisy of legacy preferences" is perfectly (sic) reflected in the posted comments to this commentary . All the most popular comments here defend legacy preferences AKA the privilege off birth and wealth.
Making that even worse many comments in support of these legacy privileges include condemnation of preferences athletes receive and of course many of those athletes are Black !
Hypocrisy knows no limits.
I find it strange that Mr. Kristof doesn't disclose that at least one of his children also attended Harvard so benefitted from the legacy bump. (They are also mixed race.)
14
@LizzieUES
Liberal hypocrites all believe their own children made good on merit, it is the others who took advantage of race and legacy. That is why we need a color blind system that does away with all the subjective criteria.
7
Mr. Kristof, it is perfectly legitimate for Harvard University to put their thumb on the scale for all kinds of attributes including athletes, legacies, farm boys, Red Sox fans, etc.
What they CANNOT do - what no institution, public or private, rich or poor, can do - is to engage in systemic discrimination on the basis of race. That is simply illegal.
And that, Sir, is exactly what Harvard is doing.
9
Mr Kristof speaks out of both sides of his mouth in arguing his point about legacy and meritocracy.
He rejects the suit brought about by Asian Americans claiming, without evidence, that it is a false flag to dismantle affirmative action admissions for African Americans. Clearly, he is comfortable that meritocracy does not apply to affirmative action policies. (for the record, I think affirmative action admission is both good and necessary for African Americans; my point is Mr Kristof's intellectual dishonesty).
Nor does he mention whether or not the legacy admissions actually add value to both their schools and to society. They do. Far and away, these are the children who have inherited far more than the prospects of wealth from their parents. They have inherited some formidable cognitive DNA, some ferocious work and study ethics.
Once again, there is zero mention of the fact that for the most part the children of successful, sometimes affluent parents succeed on their own merits. There is only a criticism that implies these students should not be judged on the merits of their demonstrated performance. They should be judged as "rich white kids."
Which brings us to the reality that yes, such "liberals" as Mr Kristof are hypocritical when they argue for meritocracy based on objective standards yet lobby for set asides based on racial or ethnic characteristics. The reality is that Mr Kristof and his ilk are not interested in classic liberalism at all. Just quotas.
4
The "dirty little secret" is that most white progressives, and whites in general, don't favor legacy admissions, because most whites don't benefit from them; just the 1%. Please stop using this "legacy" straw horse, which conflates race with class to produce a toothless rejoinder to attacks on affirmative action. There are plenty of good reasons to support affirmative action (I do); to defend it, talk about those. But you can't cry "hypocrisy!" if most whites would like to see legacy preferences eliminated.
6
Exhibit A: Jared Kushner’s father reportedly pledged millions to the the defendant Harvard while his son was a high school student. Administrators at that private school were surprised that he was admitted based upon his academic record, relative to that of his peers there. This is the real scandal imbedded in the admissions process, a corrupt “donate to graduate” scheme, a “dialing for dollars” creepy transaction. Middle and working class kids cannot apply!
6
I don't know what the answers are because there is hypocrisy all around but whatever the case, Harvard's image has taken a hit.
Harvard will always have a name and prestige but I think more and more, in the future, it will hold less sway for the general populace. I say this for all Ivies in general and this is from someone who went to an Ivy (not Harvard).
5
Sometimes it comes down to the 'P' word, Philanthropy.
Students are assessed as to how much they'll potentially give back as alumni. This is a very important factor in selection.
The nouveau riche, especially foreigners, must learn the 'P' word.
Legacies are invited perhaps because of very generous donations. Yes, this may be unfair or could be considered a bribe but if you or your family does not or are not inclined to give back, they're not as interested.
4
"..hicks from the sticks..." I think this is the best way to analyze affirmative action. Geographical selection. I believe that Harvard could admit all of the incoming class from a specific geographical area and there would be no question that all of them would be qualified--there would be no significant difference between this group and all others in prior academic achievement. So, we could have all new admissions to Harvard from New York City, period. Is this a good idea? No. We do need some "hicks from the sticks". And this is affirmative action.
2
Are we pretending we haven't always known this?
If certain people can get into school because they happen to be a certain skin color then what’s wrong with letting in other people because of the luck of being born a certain way?
5
My son is currently filling out college applications. Every single school - mostly state schools (several that offer lower tuition to residents of adjacent states), with a few private schools (my alma mater included) ask if the applicant has parents who attended, worked at, or currently work at the school in question. Most of these schools are not top-ranked elite private (or public) universities. So how does the "legacy" analysis apply when it's a mid-ranked state school asking the question?
6
It’s all about the money, even at state schools. Creating a family attachment to a school increases loyalty and donations. And with state support declining, it is hard to blame the schools for focusing on their endowments. For some, it’s a matter of survival.
5
If you defend affirmative action how can you then not defend legacy admissions-aren't they two sides of the same coin?
As long as legacies are a small part of college admissions they can be a positive factor as part of the college tradition. Harvard should make more of an effort to accept legacies that are not simply rich.
The problem I have with basing admissions most;y on sats is that you are not only using an intelligence test you are using a faulty one-it is really ridiculous, the idea that the most important factor should be how good someone is at taking tests.
If you then allow factors other than tests to be considered shouldn't tradition be one of those factors along with diversity? It seems to me that the two go together synergystically, the old and the new.
If you give enough opportunities to poorer students who otherwise couldn't get in don't you then provide a melting pot of class where rich kids engage with kids from poorer backgrounds, this seems a key part of Liberalism-and you are not giving those rich kids any advantage either, a Harvard degree is not going to make a financial difference to a multimillionaire.
5
Americans are going to have to radically re-evaluate their views of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. It wasn't a bunch of high school graduates and community college dropouts who decided it would be a great idea for U.S. armed forces to invade Iraq and overthrow the government of that country in 2003. It was HYP graduates who pushed this disastrous idea, from George W. Bush to D. Rumsfeld to Douglas Feith to Fareed Zakaria to C. Krauthammer. And let's not forget the many HYP graduates who as Democratic politicians went ahead and supported the Iraq resolution of October 2002 (John Kerry, Charles Schumer, Hillary Clinton, etc.).
Academic pedigree is WAY too important in the United States, considering that the credentialed ruling class of the country has been utterly discredited by the events of the 21st century. They were utterly discredited once before, during the Vietnam War. How many damn times will the U.S. have to go through this process of realizing their "best and brightest" are often not that at all?
Not everybody who attends HYP is uninformed and stupid. But knowing that George W. Bush, in the weeks prior to having U.S. armed forces invade Iraq, was apparently unable to understand the differences between Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims should have been enough to discredit academic pedigree.
This is the real problem with the obsession over Harvard admissions. Graduates of that school are given the benefit of the doubt when there should be much more skepticism about them.
14
News flash. The smartest people don't go to Harvard, the richest people do. If Harvard were completely filled with the smartest poor people, it would be a State University. And if Harvard were completely filled with poor people then nobody would want to go there. Admission grants those so lucky social access to the wealthiest and most powerful on the planet.
8
Nicholas Kristoff is missing the point about the Asian-American lawsuit. I work in a professional setting, some of my colleagues are African-American or Latino American. Many of them are 1st generation immigrants to this country. They all have similar salaries to mine and live in the same suburbs. Their children go to the same schools as mine. Why does the Affirmative Action system favor their children over mine? The fact is that the Affirmative Action system is an anachronism of a bygone era. How do you even define race in an era where interracial marriages are common? We need to move away from race as a defining criteria for helping people. The CEO of the company I work for is an African-American, many of the top executives are African-Americans, they all benefited from Affirmative Action. Is it fair that their children get this advantage too? How many generations will we tolerate this system?
10
Yes, legacy admission is wrong. However, that does not make the racial discrimination of affirmative action right.
7
Very clearly the admissions policies followed by elite universities discriminate in favor of Black and Hispanic applicants. But it should not be lost on anyone, that these policies also discriminate in favor of whites. The data show that successful Asian applicants must substantially surpass white applicants on core academic qualifications and that the admissions staff have a secret code of disdain for the personal and family qualities that make Asians succeed.
No sensible institution will turn its back on large donors and important legacies. This is America, and money always talks. The real liberal hypocrisy here is in the belief that all-knowing progressives can somehow fashion utopian diversity, and that such a system is somehow fairer and morally superior to a system that grants admissions to those who have earned it through demonstrated academic performance.
What kind of sick system would punish an Asian applicant for being single-minded in the pursuit of academic excellence or punish another applicant for coming from a successful family or attending a prestigious secondary school. At Cal, where the system is obsessed with social reckoning, it's amusing to watch the children of friends trying to find hardship and dysfunction in their otherwise excellent lives, just so their exceptional grades and test scores won't be held against them. Perverse systems produce perverse results.
4
I'm not sure I would paint this phenomenon as liberal hypocrisy so much as an indication that the our colleges and universities aren't nearly as liberal as we think they are.
The op-ed presents no evidence that these policies originate from "liberal-minded"policymakers. If you were to poll the students and faculty at Harvard about legacy preferences, I wonder what we would find?
5
What a minute. Is Harvard’s endowment suffering? If they were struggling to pay for programs, scholarships, etc., then I could understand their pay to play admissions policy (see eminently unqualified Jared Kushner who was miraculously admitted when Dad paid $1.5 million towards a new building). But in 2015, Harvard was reported to have the largest university endowment by far.
So the pay to play policy is just Harvard seeking to further enrich itself by giving acceptances to unqualified wealthy kids. Got it.
And legacies? Unless the legacies who are enjoying the 33.6 acceptance rate versus the 5.9 for the non-Harvard plebes are also all giving millions of dollars or are abnormally gifted, they are being given a huge advantage simply due to the accident of their birth.
So instead of being seeking to educate the “Best and the Brightest” Harvard chooses the “Wealthiest and the Well-Connected.”
3
@LW “unqualified”? You reviewed those applications?
2
Legacy admissions provide an excellent forum for testing your colleague Bret Stephens’s assertion that the recipients of such preferences in the admissions process know “the insult’s insidious psychological power to wound.” So, have legacy admits been psychologically wounded by the process—a process that Stephens and others are so eager to protect minorities from having to experience?
2
Population has grown. Maybe the number of universities should grow.
Elite universities have not done too well at producing moral leaders. Do we really need to worry about this.
5
Here's a solution - end the tax deductibility to institutions that offer preferential admissions to donors, whether alumni or not. Other charitable institutions are not allowed to offer anything of value in exchange for the donation, why is Harvard allowed to do so? A Harvard degree is certainly worth something if they're able to sell admission for upwards of $2 million to non-alumni (Kushner, cough, cough) and Harvard is clearly good at dangling the possibility of admission in alumni faces, with stories of those who didn't donate enough not getting their children in, so the choice should be simple - either donations aren't tied to admission and they're deductible or they're are and they're not. Simple ruling by the IRS, no legislation necessary. But I won't hold my breath, too many insiders like it the way it is.
4
This is an interesting issue. It may be helpful to think generationally rather than individual by individual.
I am a first generation high school student and college student who inherited nothing from my parents. I teach at the college-level and make a decent living. But the only thing I can pass on to my children is my passion for education and the knowledge and background of my legacy status. If my children are qualified (and there is a surplus of qualified students in elite college admissions), that is they are at the same level as other candidates, then I see no issue with legacy tipping the scales, as many other factors in fact do.
At private elite institutions, especially lesser known ones, the community of alumni are what keep the institution running in the long run. Oxford and Cambridge are state schools which receive significant tax payer funding, Carleton, Pomona, Oberlin, etc do not.
It is certainly a problem that a place like Harvard is so obviously pay-to-play. Moreover, the privilege being exercised in these cases most likely does not come from liberal sources--though very rich liberals take advantage as well. Thus perhaps families who are not so wealthy, but are dedicated to an institution's well-being, and produce highly qualified children for admission should benefit from legacy status.
To talk as if meritocracy is simply a matter of objective measurement is misleading, especially when building a class.
6
Another issue associated with legacy admissions that is rarely, if ever, discussed is racial preference. The parents of today’s college applicants were admitted to college minimally 25 years ago. Multigenerational legacy applicants preference is based on family members admitted even further back in time. There was no affirmative action in admission in those days. So legacy admissions perpetuate a racial preference in admissions from years past.
4
And I wonder how many of those students coming from the bottom 20% happen to be athletes?
6
Private universities should be able to admit students on any criteria they desire *as long as they are not accepting federal funds either directly or indirectly.*
If they accept taxpayer funds indirectly (e.g. Pell Grants, Stafford Loans which are federally guaranteed for students) or National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), or other federal grants, then they should not be allowed to use anti-merit legacy preferences *by law.*. I hope the current administration passes laws to this effect. The problem is that many members of Congress have an inherent conflict of interest since they attended these universities and they desire these legacy preferences for their children.
A combination of legacy preferences which are mostly whites and "diversity preferences" means that there is an inherent discrimination not only against Asians but against whites that do not have legacy admissions which includes for example both Christians and Jews. Thus, we still have a system in place that discriminates against Jews, only Jews that don't have legacy preferences.
Thus, thanks to "diversity preferences" and the fact that most legacy students are white the discrimination against Jews attending these elite institutions still continues *if* one doesn't have a parent that attended these elite institutions.
4
We Americans are ruled by way of belief in the value of privileged autocracy. Harvard has in the past and continues to support this premise.
History has shown that economic reward as an upward mobility driver in time produces a calcified top-down society. Future generations then become an entrenched moneyed oligarchy grounded on nepotistic loyalty. This pattern has been our civilizational societal structure from the early Egyptian and Levant period to today.
Our American system is no different. It fits the historical pattern.
We fool ourselves when we play games with issues such as this and think otherwise.
www.InquiryAbraham.com
4
Mr. Kristof grew up in the same part of Oregon that I did and let me contextualize his comments about his Harvard essay. If you are close to 60 years old and grew up in the Willamette Valley you may recall a time when farmers would pick you up in the morning to pick berries, then return you to the same spot in the afternoon. The last summer I picked berries I worked for two days in the fields. I picked 250 lbs of strawberries and earned $25.00. Mr. Kristof could probably tell a similar story.
Harvard should have students who come from something other than a privileged background. Students who have participated in 4-H and/or Future Farmers of America, tended crops, animals, or farm equipment, have great lessons to share with everyone.
9
Agree. It seems today’s rich and privileged in powerful positions no longer feel “noblesse oblige”, instead pursuing personal wealth at the cost of anyone and anything. It’s hard to see on what merit or for which purpose we should prioritize the education of their sons and daughters who have been raised with the same attitude. Not the legacy we want.
5
How many of Kristof's three children attended or are attending his alma mater, Harvard College? My question is not to suggest that there is necessarily anything wrong if they did. But only to suggest that it is one thing to suggest legacy should weigh less than it once did in admissions. And quite another to suggest that it must be wholly irrelevant in the complicated process of selecting a freshman class. I do not pretend to know the answer, but found Mr. Kristof's superficial analysis unpersuasive.
9
@Richard Kristof has two sons and one daughter. Both sons graduated from Harvard and his daughter is a student there now. I don't think there was any chance in hell that his children would attend any college/university other than Harvard.
10
Unfortunately, many people have "liberal" opinions when they take a "global" view...and have very different views when they take a "micro" view on things that directly affect them.
I often see this in the San Francisco Bay Area where many affluent "progressives" take the "not in my back yard" position when it come to housing and other programs for the homeless and poor. It is sad to see the large numbers of people living on the streets in an area having so much wealth.
So favoritism at elite university admissions comes as no surprise. I am sure many wealthy/powerful parents of children that benefit can easily rationalize special admission rules.
16
Why are we calling legacy admissions a 'liberal' policy? I'm sure most who embrace the 'liberal'/'progressive' label would be quite happy to eliminate these kinds of preferences. Don't confuse 'liberals' with the universities. Their goals and interests often intersect, but are not identical.
7
@Sean Don't be so sure. I see plenty of Harvard alumni in national publications recently defending the Harvard admissions system. They don't admit they're Harvard alumni, they went to a small college outside Boston not named Tufts, but they do defend the system. Kudos to Mr Kristof for pointing out the hypocrisy.
4
@rkanyok I don't doubt what you say for a moment. And I do applaud Mr. Kristof for drawing attention to the problem of legacy admissions. I just mean to say that not everyone associated with Harvard is necessarily 'liberal'.
Disclosure: I was a legacy student from a middle class family, but with a 1590 SAT and valedictorian of my class, I would have gotten in anyway. I agree with the general thrust of this article, but have one reservation. Brainpower is not evenly distributed amongst the socio-economic classes. Children from the higher percentiles are likely to have more of it, or at least a better education, so it makes some sense to admit more of them. But that doesn't justify the legacy system, especially if donations (bribes) are involved.
10
@Renaissance Man Bob Kruszyna
Sorry RenMan, but the NYT is not an environment where you can expect the opinionators to acknowledge your point about brainpower, or hard work for that matter. You were a rich white kid, never mind the valedictorian status you achieved. You only got that because some minority kid was denied your spot in whatever school you attended.
The problem with writers such as Mr Kristof is that they are just as incapable of changing their one-note song as is Sean Hannity. Different politics, same use of diatribe to make their points. That said, Mr Kirstof appears more erudite and more civil while he slanders those who have made genuine accomplishment.
He forgets that most of the white kids who went to top schools or sent their kids to top schools are more likely to want their tax dollars spent to aid affirmative action. The underachievement of minorities is a festering social problem that needs new thinking about fixes. Throwing money at the problem and barbs at white kids doesn't work; Mr Kristof is incapable of new ideas.
Your point is well taken about the legacy system and the impact of donations.
2
"Liberal Hypocrisy "
This is news?
Liberals want more taxes, they personally just don't want to pay more ETC...
8
@R. R. ...and short people want... Broad categorizations are meaningless and used by those who do not care or are too lazy to acknowledge distinctions. Unless you mean people who want more taxes but don’t want to pay more should be called “liberals” or “zebras”, or some term that applies specifically the definition you have given. Otherwise it’s hogwash - meaningless. Labels such as the one you’ve chosen are misleading and at some level even bigotry if you’ve decided to define a group of people with diverse views on a host of policy and political issues with one word. It doesn’t work for racial characterizations and it doesn’t work here.
1
@Vinny
Most of my friends are liberals.
They all try to minimize their own taxes. This observation is apt.
To whom is this piece addressed? Is it to Harvard? Because, after all, Harvard is a private institution that is free to grant preferential treatment to legacies if it wishes. As someone with no connection to Harvard, I don't see that Harvard has a duty to me or to anyone else not to grant such treatment, and I don't see it as particularly my business. Perhaps there is something to the charge of hypocrisy or inconsistency with other ideals, but I also know that Harvard has its institutional needs to stay on the good side of alumni donors.
If Kristof is asking Harvard to consider what its values truly are, fine. But the implication seems to be that Harvard has some sort of duty to the public not to be yucky, to perfectly implement equal opportunity and meritocracy, and not to "perpetuate privilege." And then all the commenters pile on with their solutions. I think we need to remember that Harvard is free, within certain limits, to decide what kind of an institution it wishes to be. It could grant admission to the poorest applicants, and insofar as it does not it "takes opportunities from those with less and turns them over to those who have more." Giving preference to children of alumni may not be saintly, but I don't see that it's "unconscionable" either.
8
@Mark
"Because, after all, Harvard is a private institution that is free to grant preferential treatment to legacies if it wishes. "
This would be true *if* Harvard did not accept taxpayer federal funds either directly (through National Science Foundation (NSF) or National Institutes of Health (NIH) or other federal grants) or indirectly to student that attend Harvard (eg. Pell Grants, Stafford Loans which are backed by the federal government/taxpayer).
If Harvard stops accepting federal grants and returns the money from the existing grants and they stop accepting as payment Pell Grants and Stafford Loans, they can chose to do as they please. But not while accepting taxpayer funds.
6
@David MD: That's interesting. I didn't know that it is specified in the requirements for receiving those funds that Harvard must agree to give up that freedom. Is it also the case that if a writer stops accepting an NEH grant, then they may write whatever opinions they please, but not while accepting taxpayer funds?
Speaking as someone who was himself a legacy admit, I couldn't agree more. Admissions should be based on merit, rather than birth, wealth, race, or any other factor.
And let's not forget to include athletic preferences, which, as I recall, can be worth no more than 100 points in the Ivy League -- meaning, that in practice, they are sometimes worth a good deal more. It is absurd to send athletes to a school like Harvard, an almost obscene waste of scholarly resources that should be going to the students who can benefit from them.
Athletics should receive the weighting of any extracurricular activity, if that.
10
Harvard has an $37B endowment (as of 2017) made up largely of alumni donations large and small. That money makes it possible for the school not only to lead in academic research but also to offer scholarships and aid to students unable to afford the special experience that Harvard provides. You might say that the endowment makes increased diversity possible by removing the consideration of ability to pay. If the cost of this largess is some legacy admissions, Mr. Kristof should consider whether this trade off is worthwhile.
10
@Mister Mxyzptlk
Since donations are a tax deduction, this means that those deductions are federal (and state) taxpayer subsidized, hence those donations have an implicit taxpayer subsidy.
4
What is the product that "elite" universities such as Harvard, Yale, and Stanford sell? What sets them apart? It is not a superb education, many universities, some much cheaper, offer that.
What "elite" universities sell is connections and access to power. In order to do that, they need to include the sons and daughters of powerful people in their student body. They need to include the future leaders of businesses and politics. And if you examine the selection criteria that Harvard is using, that is exactly what they are trying to do.
20
Is it really a problem to place the most talented, accomplished, and highly achieving students in close contact with the scions of America's most influential and powerful families during their formative years? Seems like another benefit for those admitted on merit to get such close and informal access, and on top of that their school gets money, influence and prestige by creating a few extra spots for the privileged.
2
There is way too much attention on the Ivies and other 'elite' institutions. Bastions of liberalism? These elite institutions perpetuate our current plutocracy. Let's talk about the institutions that educate 99% of our kids. Some of them are actually quite good....
27
I would like to ask Mr. Kristof if he supports race based affirmative action.
Why should a black student of affluent parents who has gone to an elite high school be given AA preference over a white student of lower class parents who has attended an inferior high school.
Legacy admissions are "unfair". But colleges do it to encourage graduates to donate to the college.
It is purely a financial consideration and has nothing to do with wanting to maintain upper class privilege.
If Mr. Kristof is concerned about unfairness he might consider how public K-12 education is financed.
Reliance on the property tax means there are school districts who can afford excellent facilities and can hire excellent teachers and have smaller class sizes and there are school districts who can not afford these things.
Obviously on average students attending better quality schools will score higher on standardized tests.
If there are enough admissions positions in "good" colleges the need to ration admissions by affirmative action based on race or gender or by legacy disappears.
Mr. Kristof might address the problem of why there are only a limited number of admission positions in "good" schools.
13
@david This has been a major problem with education funding in the state of Pennsylvania.
2
Nicholas Kristof seems preoccupied with elite university policies of legacy preferences: does he not think legacy preferences do not occur in non-elite institutions or is it that what happens there is of lesser concern? Is he showing his "privileged" bias?
4
The headline misled me, I thought the point would be that liberals supported race based admissions rather than the color blind ideal we once sought. Some liberals might take advantage of legacy admission if offered, but it is not liberal ideology.
Conservatives have the rhetorical high ground when they advocate for race neutral policies, but they are the hypocrites because most don't mean it, witness their embrace of Trump and his racist rhetoric and policies.
4
This is one of the rare times I find myself in agreement with Nicholas Kristof.
But the irony is not lost on me that Kristof continues to tout his "farm boy" background when both of his parents were Professors at Portland State University.
Did Kristof use this story to take a place at Harvard College from a truly working class kid from some logging town, or an African American kid from North Portland?
28
Who would have thought the Liberals who came out of the 1960's & early 1970's would help turn the education system into a defacto pay to play business model that systematically sorts students by race, gives detrimental personality marks towards applicants, and has made college several hundreds of percentage points higher in cost than it was for you. Nice Work.
4
@Dean Ivy League liberals like Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts and George W. Bush and...
2
"Isn’t it a bit hypocritical that institutions so associated with liberalism should embrace a hereditary aristocratic structure? Ah, never underestimate the power of self-interest to shape people’s views. As Reeves put it dryly: “American liberalism tends to diminish as the issues get closer to home.” "
I expected this to be penned by Douthat or Brooks. Who's defining "liberalism?" Jared Kushner, who's daddy paid Harvard 2.5 million? The 5 conservative justices on SCOTUS? The titans of Wall Street, whose children major in economics or business before going to work for daddy's hedge fund while they clamor for deregulation of our financial institutions? Perhaps Fred Trump?
The linked article of 38 elite colleges is rather interesting. Sure the families of the 1% are overrepresented. But dig deeper, we find the overwhelming majority of the children of the 1% do not gain entrance into these elite schools.
Who exactly pays for the scholarships for the kids from economically disadvantaged backgrounds? Who builds the new buildings on campus enjoyed by all? Without that largesse, tuition and fees increase for all. Who can least afford that?
How do private colleges and universities get lumped with public ones? When Jews were excluded from getting hospital privileges they started their own- why every major city in America has one with "Sinai" in the title. Ditto for Catholic universities. What's to stop the Asians from building their own version of Harvard? No flied lice jokes.
7
It is not hypocrisy in college admissions, but artificial selection of the young who would become "people like us".
College administrators feel -- wholly unjustly, in my opinion -- obliged to discuss in public their admission, grading, and housing policies, under the pressure of the leftist radical and crypto-socialist icon-clicking press scribblers.
1
Why keep focusing on 'the Ivies'? How many of those admitted to Harvard and Yale through anything but merit could survive the computer science or engineering programs at Berkeley, Georgia Tech, Illinois, Carnegie Mellon, UW.......that's the future. Not status seeking, rent seeking elitism at 'the Ivies'.
12
Let's be clear affirmative action as practiced tends to give advantage to members of identified classes who are also persons of privilege. Minorities and others who have actually faced adversity are rarely advantaged by affirmative action because we don't know how to facilitate their successful passage through college. The hypocrisy goes deeper than this essay suggests
7
So you are going to kick out legacies and they are going to form their own universities and then you are going to argue that those universities also have to start accepting everyone else, and so on. You have to admit that if Harvard is 100% middle and lower class Asia students and some Legacy Uni is 80% kids from connected families those Asian kids would switch from Harvard to Legacy U. The main benefit of Harvard is connections you forge with important people who will help you to succeed in your future endeavors. Physics is the same in every Uni, including the online ones.
6
Mr. Kristof,
Well I certainly don’t disagree. But... looking at the train wreck that America has become I must truly say “yes okay but whatever”.
Our country and our world are being ruined by Republican treason and indifference. Our country and our world are being ruined by the unimpeded corruption of the super rich.
The wealthy’s abilty to get their kids into the best schools is certainly problematic but really? This phenomena is so far down the list of how money has destroyed our democracy and many aspects of our society that I’m truly confused that just over a week before midterms you would choose this topic to fill your space. In fact, right now, in the scheme of things, this so unimportant to our immediate existential crises that it almost feels like an abdication of your responsibilities as an opinion writer.
You hold an AWESOME responsibility in being a NY Times columnist and right now there is only one set of topics appropriate for your space.
I understand that we cannot be obsessed to the exclusion of all other societal problems, but to channel your kind of analogy, this would be like worrying that the sink is clogged with the living room on fire.
Sir, we need you to use your incredibly powerful podium to get back on point. Right now we must just try to save our country. Period.
15
How in the world is the preference given to "legacies" to be laid at the feet of liberals? In fact, this legacy preference is very much the province of conservatives. They are the ones preserving white privilege, preserving the prerogatives of the wealthy.
As a liberal Democrat, I would be happy to see the extra benefit given to the wealthy legacies eliminated. I would be even more pleased to see faux liberal New York Times columnist stop blaming liberals for those things that have absolutely nothing to do with them.
12
Hard to argue with Mr. Kristof's point. Legacy, alumni, donor, and importantly, faculty children should not get any preference. It would be must better for preference to go to the children of the kitchen staff rather than faculty - I'm guessing tenure track only. Preferences, really discrimination, based on any of the above or race or religion must stop. Diversity is a crock, a facile disguise. The only way to stop discrimination is to stop discriminating.
Universities like to portray themselves as 'private' institutions when it is convenient, as in admitting who they want or curtailing unapproved free speech, but they are very, very dependent on government benefits, student loans and grants, research grants, and tax-free donations. If they want to give all of that up, then, OK, admit who you want. Until then you must respect the standards we aspire to in this country.
2
@wnhokeHarvard receives federal funding as do many private and public universities, but what does that funding pay for. The government gets something in return. It’s no handout. At Harvard the vast majority goes to R&D in the life sciences - research that might ultimately benefit society as a whole, or at the very least, individuals afflicted by certain conditions. Harvard receives a little over half a billion, which is less than over a dozen other public and private universities. Unlike its peers, Harvard invests an equal amount for research from its funds, largely in other academic areas. So if gov’t support is not tied to matriculation should admission criteria be part of the package?
2
All this hullabaloo about admissions at Harvard and the recent legal action against it is nothing but a ploy to gut affirmative action. Liberals are not the ones defending legacy admissions. They know that the man behind this whole brouhaha, Blum, is using this as an excuse to ban affirmative action once and for all. After losing the case at UT Austin over AA for African Americans and Hispanics, he is now using Asians as the group being hurt by the preference given to rural whites, the same preference you benefited from. But are affluent Asians, who benefit from access to expensive Tutoring and extra-curricular activities, really an underprivileged minority?
3
I'm not sure it's liberal hypocrisy, since I don't think many liberals support the system. It's a vestige of the old aristocratic attitudes that are far more emblematic of the conservative mindset, right along with abolishing the estate tax and giving every conceivable benefit to rich people.
My kids would be legacy admits at four different Ivies, but as much as I'm fretting about my teenager's application process as it is in its full throes, I wouldn't support them getting any more advantage than they already have.
3
"The top universities"? According to whom and by what ranking? If you want to focus on "merit" and how to select based on this please tell us how these institutions themselves are being ranked.
I think "liberals" and "conservatives" alike are hypocritical with respect to legacy admissions; "liberals" because they preach equal chances for equal ambition and talent, "conservatives" because they oppose affirmative action, but not in the cases when they are the beneficiaries. The whole system is built around pretended meritocracy.
8
The concept of "donation" governs many important areas of American life.
Legacy admissions are all about creating a perpetual cycle of donors -- not that typical University PR about "community." Privileged parents -- and grandparents -- will open their wallets to their precious offspring's alma mater. That offspring can then be milked in turn, maybe in a memorial donation in memory of their parents or grandparents when they pass. Or when their own child gets "knighted" by these rather grotesque credential and privilege mills.
Our politics is also largely based on a system of donation cultivation as organizational principle #1.
In the future of our country, there will eventually be two types of people. Donors potential or actual, and then the vast rest of us, trying to beg for scraps -- aka donations -- from their tables.
1
If discrimination for children of graduates is unacceptable, then so is discrimination by race, whether that is called "affirmative action" or anything else.
If affirmative action is within the legitimate discretion of college admissions offices then so are legacy admissions.
If you like one of those two forms of discrimination, but not the other, that may be a legitimate point of view, but not a credible argument for forcing that point of view onto universities.
2
"A lawsuit against Harvard University has put a focus on admissions policies that the plaintiffs argue hurt Asian-American applicants. I disagree with the suit, seeing it as a false flag operation that aims to dismantle affirmative action for black and Latino students."
Why is it ok that Asians are discriminated against so blacks and Latino students can get an advantage in admissions?
9
You say that 33% of legacy applicants are admitted, as opposed to 5% of all applicants. That means that 67% of legacy applicants are rejected. So how can you say that all legacy applicants are "privileged"? Are the 67% who are rejected "privileged"? The legacy applicants apparently have a slight "comparative advantage"--it is a misuse of the English language to call them "privileged".
Also, the entire admissions procedure at elite institutions is insane at the moment. Harvard could fill its entire entering class with students with perfect SAT/GPA's, but the process is clearly not about using only test scores and "objective" criteria--Harvard does not want an entire freshman class which hides in the library studying all the time. Harvard chooses to admit students based on other criteria such as "promise" or "imagination" or "diversity", so the process by definition is not "objective" or strictly "logical" based on test scores.
Thousands of highly qualified applicants will be rejected. So how can you say that it is "unfair" for one particular applicant to be rejected, when the entire process is in many ways "arbitrary" or "unfair" from the individual's point of view?
If you are seriously interested in attacking privilege in US society, then one should consider abolishing the Ivy League. Or rename "Harvard University" something anodyne like "University #34" or "UMass East".
2
"I write this a beneficiary of affirmative action."
Seriously, Kristof?
It is hard to take anything on the progressive agenda seriously when its own standard-bearers promote solipsisms in order to justify positions that cannot otherwise be justified. Perhaps you can explain what protected class of disadvantaged 'white males' did you belonged to when you applied to Harvard and later became a Rhodes Scholar.
Composing a class that is diverse in geographic and socieoeconomic terms is a far different mandate than one ordered on race and ethnicity. Equating your experience as a 'hick' who picked strawberries to Asian American applicants who have to score and rank higher than any other group in order to even stand a chance is insulting. At least the committee saw you as an individual, not as 'another' Asian that was interchangable with so many others.
It is curious that legacy preferences are being attacked only now -- just as my peers in the Asian American community prepare to send our own children to the colleges that we once attended. I suppose we should have expected as much.
This is par for the course. Fairness for the progressive left is 'fair' only until it costs them something.
4
We must recognize that Harvard, Princeton, et al are social institutions with enormous impact on our larger society. Their admissions and other critical policies are not subject to influence from legislators, nonetheless, they can and do react to social pressures and public opinion while trying to sell the idea that merit is the central means by which the few are granted the opportunity of studying under their banner of prestige.
Prior to the social, youth oriented upheavals of the 1960s and '70s, the elite colleges held wide open doors for the children of the wealthy. Expensive prep schools acted as "feeders" to the Ivy League and with, some cases, up to 90% of their graduates admitted. In the process, ways were found to exclude Jews and blacks systematically. (Karabel, "The Chosen")
Legacy preference admissions allowed these colleges to maintain some of the old order, and the flow of generational donations, while merit, by various standards, was put into place. Without legacy preference, tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, in donations would be threatened.
This is, quite simply, an affirmative action program for rich white kids. If the top prestige schools would make true efforts to share their advantages with a much wider base, they might be able to get away with continuing this practice. Yet, they don't want to be less exclusive. It would dilute their brand and lessen the motives of parents to spend big on tuition.
(Also: "The Price of Admission", Golden)
4
You want elite education with zero legacy admissions, very very few athletics-influenced admissions, and (by law) no consideration of race? Three words: U.C. Berkeley.
4
@Cal Prof
As long as your child is a California resident, maybe.
1
Amen. Any “ stable genius “ can get into any School, as long as the Parents have enough CASH. Thank you.
4
You may call it hypocritical if you wish, but I suspect that the scholarship money that got you through Harvard came from donations made by donors who used that to get their kids into the school.
It is a simple business decision to determine that you need to give something to entice the donations to your school rather than some other one. If that means that certain students get a leg up, that's the trade off to get the cash.
6
Instead of everyone trying to get into Harvard maybe we should improve education at all of our universities. There is no reason that a Harvard education is superior to Harvey Mudd, Cal Berkeley, Penn State. The top students in each all get a superior education if they want it.
2
Bravo for calling out hypocrisy, We should all strive to do this regardless of the issue or the politics of those involved.
I do disagree with the comment "I disagree with the suit, seeing it as a false flag operation that aims to dismantle affirmative action for black and Latino students".....if you had a non-privileged Asian son wanting to go to one of these schools, I'm sure you would feel differently.
Wrong is wrong whether or not it helps a favorite identity group.
3
What this piece doesn't mention is the fact that in other countries, where admission is egalitarian, university funding is provided by government. There is no need to woo big donors. In the United States, elite colleges are privately funded. To assure ongoing funding, these schools would be foolish not to allocate some percentage of admission slots to big givers for the benefit of all other students.
6
$$$$$ drive a lot of decisions. I got in without that, a great university took a chance, I survived the experience studying/working alongside far better prepared students. One of my kids got in later, on merits, still no money. So the world does favor $$$exchanges, favors for $$$, rarely explicitly stated.
However I think we are building another set of preferences which will last along with preference for $$$ and alums: racial and other favored groups.
How does that work out? I have five grand children; three can claim a preference on the new race based preferences and two cannot. All in one generation these preference are sorting in ways not intended.
We need to find our way to a more merit based system and not just rejigger the system to favor a few others...with only skin color or sexual preference as guides.
4
Okay, agreed on most points except..."I disagree with the suit, seeing it as a false flag operation that aims to dismantle affirmative action for black and Latino students."
Okay, why? It seems Mr. Kristof and every other white liberal cannot seem to fathom that Asians might have a legitimate beef with having to be more qualified than applicants of any other race in order to be accepted by these universities. Really?? A false flag operation? In this very article, you cite the influential 2004 study in which you rightly point out that legacy seems to add the equivalent of 160 points on an SAT. Well, guess what? That same study found that just being Asian takes away 50 points. Still thing this suit is a false flag?
The true liberal position is to get rid of it all. Get rid of legacy. Get rid of race-based affirmative action. Get rid of preference to athletes. Redefine affirmative action so that it is income based. I can't understand why liberals won't take up this unquestionably liberal position. Besides, seeing as how blacks and Latinos are disproportionately poor, wouldn't it stand to reason that an income based system would help them the most?
9
The statistics and platitudes bemoaning legacy admissions are pouring forth with more casuistry than statistical insight.:
First, take it from one with reliable sources: one reason a high percent of legacy applicants get in is that many who would not are tactfully steered away from applying. Second, the legacies, athletes and country bumpkins, darn smart themselves, happen to add valuable diversity to the school: how can all the affirmative action admits possibly appreciate the class system they are up against if they never meet its representatives? And third, this sputtering over Harvard's tortured admissions process distracts from America's real problems -- fierce anti-intellectualism, lousy K-12, pauperized teacher wages, and starvation of once great public university systems.
4
@Fiorella,
Not sure how one would quantify the "steering away," and it's difficult to accept this statement without some evidence to support it.
Harvard is like the king with no clothes. Also the rest of the Ivies are revealed as wildly discriminatory too.
2
Exhibit A of the corruption at Harvard this column attacks is Jared Kushner, who could no more have gotten in on the basis of merit than he could have flown to the moon. Bribery was his only hope, and all that was required.
7
The real hypocrisy of Harvard is the idea of casting the institution as a dictator of standards that are controlled by Harvard. We simply fail to create learning environments in which students themselves control the standards that they can attain. Anyone can attain Harvard standards if they knew how and understood the agency involved. The only problem is a social system that says that institutions are in control and therefore dominate the notion of standards. We could create a learning support system that make high and low standards up to the learner thereby eliminating high standard connections with Harvard and, incidentally, also the low standard connections with ghetto schools. It is simply the same process. Our inept and elitist approach to education creates both Harvard and ghetto schools, to say nothing of the damage it does to our democracy and a vast mountain of human potential.
I don't resent the fact that private colleges let rich people buy their way in. Money should be able to buy you some advantages, and a school should be able to set their own rules.
What I resent is that Harvard grads, and less so Yale, are the sole proprietors of the Magic Key that opens all doors. ALL of our Supreme Court justices MUST have attended Harvard or Yale?? THIS is why kids are desperate to get into Harvard. Do you think it is for the education? It is for the back-slapping monopoly they will have on being Masters of the Universe.
America needs to get over Harvard.
7
@Madeline Conant
A kid who wants to be a Supreme Court Justice at 18 is a mental case, not a good admissions applicant. And the Law Schools of those institutions are not their Colleges.
You are quite right that the current composition of SCOTUS is dangerously skewed in favour of people who have little knowledge of important things outside law books and elite law schools -- but that is the fault of a series of Presidents, not of the Ivy League.
2
Great post Mr. Kristof! Awesome expose of university policies that shows how America often hypocritically favors hereditary graft and nepotism, while claiming to be egalitarian with merit-based rewards.
1
@James Igoe
Could athletes’ “leg up” be justified on the ground that they add physical diversity?
The problem in America is not too much elitism. It's a deeply misguided belief in meritocracy.
1
Ivy League schools are not bastions of equal opportunity,
And in other stunning news, the sun rose in the East this morning.
10
You put a finger in U.S.'s deep inequality in Education (similarly in Housing and Health care).You mention 'legacy and financial preferences', odious in and by themselves but very much alive today. Now, you spoke about meritocracy as a desired aim based on talent. But, as defined by Todd Rose in his "Dark Horse", merit-ocracy remains an arist-ocracy, as it's aim to maximize excellence in society by equalizing opportunities, it remains a zero-sum game, even a negative-sum game, as the quotas imposed do privilege a small minority, the winners; while the majority is excluded, with no chance to advance; if I win, you lose, and viceversa (see the science of game theory). And, at least for now, the quotas for acceptance are petty, arbitrary, hence, unjust. We need a paradigm here. And your article today might catapult a more serious thought process...and change for the better, allow the richness of our individualism to shine. And narrow-minded SAT tests, in and by themselves, are useless in evaluating true human talent. One more thing: the so called best universities depend on the human talent they are able to attract; so they entice you with sport stadiums, and other 'goodies', that have really no value for student's education; in fact, they may constitute a distraction for our already diminished attention span, and the required time and space for developing our talent.
1
Please stop pretending that Ivy League universities are the best because it is untrue. Many public universities do admit based on merit and the quality of those institutions is just as good if not better. The University of Texas, for example, rejected GW Bush but Harvard and Yale accepted him. I’ll take UT any day.
9
Harvard is considered one of the “world’s greatest public goods” only because the intellectual elite continually value its graduates above those of from the amazing state universities this country has to offer. Frank Bruni’s book, Where You Go Is Not Who You Will Become, points out that many of our CEOs and leaders come from beyond the Ivies. The so called elite university status results from society’s outsized value placed upon them. Perhaps we should focus on ending that legacy.
5
I would disagree that other countries don’t have a legacy system. In Many places in the world, universities surely admit people based on family connections and ‘who you know’ and string-pulling, favors, and even bribes. Legacy in the US is just a tiny vestige of doing things that way. Of course we could do things more fairly, but I don’t think it’s useful to put ourselves down too much.
Mr. Kristof makes some good points, but they're irrelevant to the SFFA lawsuit. Unfortunately (and I use that word intentionally) it's not illegal to discriminate on the basis or legacy or donor history in college admission, but it IS illegal to discriminate on the basis of race (Title VI of the Civil Rights Act), which is what the lawsuit is all about. One way Harvard could be compliant with the law is refuse all federal funds (including things like NIH grants), in which case they can discriminate against whomever they want. Or congress could just amend the CRA to outlaw legacy discrimination. I doubt that either of these things is going to happen.
3
In a pure meritocracy where admissions are blind to the income level of the applicants you would still have a higher percentage of students accepted from the 1% than from the bottom 60%. In this country money buys you a better education. Legacy is another matter, but again the children of Ivy league educated parents are likely to be more affluent and get a better education at school and home. Many children of Ivy league parents end up going to Ivy league schools, not necessarily the ones their parents went to.
1
Many of these families are already used to this treatment. The elite private schools in NYC and other places around the country do the same thing with legacies.
4
A lot could be learned by examining college academic performance of students admitted under legacy preference. Do they cluster near the bottom in class rank? Do they drop out more often, or have more course failures and withdrawals? Those measures would easily determine whether the students admitted under this policy are on average less qualified academically than their peers.
My guess is that these students actually do fine academically and are distributed uniformly on the bell curve distribution of academic performance. I learned in a psychometrics course at Harvard that intelligence, as measured by IQ testing, is a heritable trait. In other words, the (crimson) apple does not fall far from the (Harvard) tree.
For this reason, having a Harvard-educated parent might actually be a statistically valid predictor of academic success. A statistical analysis could tell us whether that idea is valid or just wishful thinking.
6
@Robin Selinger,
Agree that seeing the distribution of GPAs and test scores - as well as grades - would be helpful.
I disagree with the assumptions in the second paragraph.
I agree with this article.
A detail is that a second part of the reason legacy applicants do better is because if their parents went to Harvard, those parents may be giving their children a better grammar school and high school education than some of the other applicants get.
This could help to skew the statistics.
4
Being a provider of "the world's greatest public goods" requires some the world's greatest funding. Hence, the need to accept $5M checks.
4
So, what you are saying is that by working hard to help your children be successful, and encouraging them to attend the college you attended means you are therefore hurting the country. Not all graduates become wealthy, and not all graduates are able to donate huge sums to their university.
Also, not all college graduates become successful and their children do not always have "violin lessons" or other supposed privileges which Kristof has determined only go to "the rich".
Legacy preference encourages multi-generational participation at a university, a feeling of belonging, like a family. This is a good and healthy thing.
3
One thing that is never, or almost never, mentioned is that universities are businesses. They require money in order to operate. The top universities have acquired their status because they hire the very best and therefore the most expensive experts in their fields (not always usefully, I might add), they have the best facilities, etc. Donations by the wealthy and full tuition paid by those who can, are important to maintain their position. Moreover, this money allows institutions to offer scholarships to meritorious students who otherwise would not be able to attend. I am baffled and disappointed by Kristof's ironic and singularly unappreciative narration on how he got to Harvard. As evident from his career, Harvard seems to have seen in this self-described hick, someone with potential. As someone who had all of his schooling in public schools, I am getting discouraged by all these lamentations from people who have not one but several highly placed institutions to choose from. There is
a famous phrase regarding the University of Salamanca, in its day the top university in Spain, that says: " What nature does not give, Salamanca cannot offer". The intellectual development of students is in their hands (and mind), and where they study is not absolutely essential.
3
@Frank Casa,
Fine, Harvard is a business.
Why, then, are donations tax-deductible?
This is a tendentious column.
1. Legacy admissions and admissions to children of large donors are two different categories. The two can of course overlap.
2. Preference for children of large donors is understandable, but still unacceptable.
3. Preference for legacies, when "all other things are equal" (they never are, but close), makes sense for institutional cohesiveness and does not provide advantages to clearly less qualified applicants.
4. It is of course not ideal that so many students at elite colleges come from economically privileged backgrounds.
5. But it is simply a fact that such privilege yields a high percentage of applicants with superior talent and preparation for college at the highest levels.
6. Harvard and its peers go to extraordinary lengths to mitigate such imbalances by doing everything possible to attract talented students from under-privileged backgrounds.
7. I was as much a "hick from the sticks" as Nicholas Kristof (middle middle-class background, not a legacy); didn't get into an Ivy League college, but never resented it; went to a great college; through years of hard work and excellent training reached the highest level of higher education. Transformative experiences occur at a great variety of colleges.
8. Not everyone has to get into Harvard, and there will never be a time when all excellent applicants do. This is not the fault of legacy admissions. (But we could talk about athletic recruits...)
3
My response to Mr. Kristof's essay: "Duh."
It's just now occurring to him that the Ivies are rigged? That the Ivies are a country club... a networking party for the rich and pampered. Don't get me wrong. I'm glad he's pointing it out. But they have been this way for decades if not centuries.
Teaching in them is a bit like being a manager of a professional baseball team. All your players are way more important than you are and live in a rarified world. Coming from a public university I was continually reminded of my handicap. Conversations about "good schools" (read Ivies), and good professors, (Ivy grads), and good neighborhoods (white). Good deeds were C.V. padding and any discovery a potential startup.
There were some great students here and there, but largely smothered by the scions. Left a bad taste. Much prefer players who actually hit singles than those who are born on third.
4
Greatly agree Nick, that the whole 'pay to play Better', like so many of today's video games that want you to make 'in game purchases' to allow you to skip the tedious and challenging parts.
I probably picked Strawberries with you in Beaverton area, Tarbell's Fields stretch into infinity in the mind's eye, rolling over hills into the distance, and your row disappears into the distance: Strawberry Fields Forever!
So I have much the same 'out from the sticks' view, one that is distinctly different than one concrete jungle that most try to survive in today, and so many people dont know the differences between being able to live off the land, with a bit of labor, or having to be dependent for stores, govt or jobs for Everything.
Country people have the advantage of knowing how to survive: City folks have better access to Information, since it is really information transfer that allows the concrete jungles to survive.
So, please keep writing your viewpoint through this lens, or at least keep it close, so that you can help bridge some of the divides that some try to use to leverage themselves to power. Most of those divides follow this Country-folks City-folks line, which is becoming sharper as that line gets blurred.
But we need to get rid of politicians leveraging Negative news for their own good. We cannot continue to make this a zero-sum game when we can all win. People have the right to proper recompense for the time spent for an employer, it is our hours ultimately sold.
1
How about we elect Presidents who didn't go to Ivies, who will appoint SCOTUS justices who didn't go to Ivies, and otherwise replace some of our "leaders" who just fund and hire each other and perpetuate their bubble. Even Trump went to an Ivy at the Wharton School. We have some fine top tier state universities, just for starters. Surely they're not all inferior potential candidates.
1
The central issue is knottier than Nick suggests. Is it such a big surprise that the children of the meritocratic intellectual elite would themselves be acculturated into that elite? A guess is that Nick was hardly just an Oregon bumpkin, but rather grew up in a family that highly valued education. His impressive Ivy-league wife, it seems, also came from such a family. Thus, it's not so much about heredity (genotypes) as about culture (phenotypes). The notion 'hereditary' covers both categories, but the latter is far less problematic than the former from a meritocratic admissions point of view.
1
Strange how, in the NY Times, articles and op-eds say “colleges” and then write about the Ivies and similar institutions. And we wonder why so many folks accuse you of elitism?
9
It is getting boring, quite frankly.
1
If Mr. KRISTOF does succeed in obtaining a visa for Yemen and goes there, my hope is that he will stick around long enough to be of tangible assistance to the beleaguered victims. Never questioned author's derring do, willingness to go where other journos might fear to tread, but once he has the story and brings it gratefully to our attention, we never hear about the crisis in question again. What about the courageous American doctor using out of date equipment, understaffed, trying to aid the sick and vulnerable in south Sudan, and how is he defending his patients from the depredations of the Janjaweed militias? And WHY, since he has the means,did the author not adopt at least 1 family, sponsor them for visas? With limited means as an old age pensioner,sponsored a Ghanaian family, and am not the only 1 from that n.g.o., to the US as well as 7 dogs who, if I had left them there, would certainly have perished."Engagez vous a fond et pas pour faire de la bombinette!" In other words, it's necessary to make a fundamental commitment to those folks,, whether in south Sudan or Liberia, and to be of material assistance, rather than use them simply as subjects of a news story!
2
@Alexander Harrison His role is to bring attention to moral disasters. It's what he does well and to have him building houses instead of recruiting thousands of others and money would be a waste. Everyone does what they do.
How about once you read his clarion calls YOU get on a plane to Yemen or Sudan to help out instead of heckling from the safe sidelines?
@Doug K: Re read my comment.With meager means I , like others in my n.g.o., did sponsor a family from an underdeveloped country and in my case, 7 dogs as well who no doubt would have perished in the harsh environments of either Ghana, Guinea Conakry, Senegal where I was a volunteer,like others whom I worked with. See my video "Krueger and My Dog,"as well as other videos of mine in which 1 sees my spouse Juliana, but this is nothing compared to altruistic, life saving efforts put forth by others of "bonne volonte" daily on behalf of the needy.Recall Latin inscription carved in stone into a bench in Central Park: "Altieri vivas oportet, si vis tibi vivere!" What is apparent among liberals is that they are adept at dramatizing a crisis, but will seldom propose a solution or make an effort to mitigate its effects. If every one of the anti Trumpers critical of his decision to stop the caravaners were to sponsor 1 of those families, that would be worthy of an hosannah. In a CNN panel discussion that challenge was offered to the ultra liberal John King and his ex wife Dana Bash, who dismissed the idea by saying "it's not the issue!" Don't do as I do; do as I say!
@Doug K: Was a contractor in Jiddah, in the Mamlaka in the 1970's, assigned to the military compound on Palestine Road, and among the "plus sympathiques"of the foreign workers were the Yemenis, who did the physical work that the Saudis would not deign to do, so my heart goes out to those victims of Saudi bombing in Yemen.Those who have been fortunate to make it to the US are for the most part "commercants," small shopkeepers and their progeny are well brought up and well behaved, and I should know because many were in my classes at Brandeis High. As I have mentioned, sponsored a family from w. Africa to the US and 1 member is my spouse, as well as 7 dogs who, if left to their own devices in the merciless streets of either Dakar, Accra or Boke in Guinea.would not have survived. Your use of the word "heckler" is interesting. Isn't that the word Ocasio Cortez used when challenged to a debate by Ben Shapiro on her ideas?80 percent of success in this life, according to Woody Allen, is showing up. Ocasio Cortez did not show up for the
'face to face" with Shapiro, who I am sure would have treated her fairly.Your interest is appreciated!See my videos on YouTUBE.com
The problem is less about legacy admissions policies that confer the privilege of ATTENDING a fine school like Harvard or Yale or Princeton...Frankly, I have no problem with that. There are many ways to get a great college education in the U.S,. from small liberal arts colleges to HBCUs to large state universities where a student can pick his or her way through myriad opportunities to build both a life of the mind and a career.
Rather, the real problem is that a life of privilege is nearly automatically guaranteed because of the CONNECTIONS MADE AND STATUS CONFERRED by merely graduating from an elite institution.
The concentration of both wealth and power among "elite" graduates of a handful of institutions contributes to the widespread discontent in the country. We would be better off if a broader net were cast for our leaders.
9
So basically, you're saying that the legacy system is a form of affirmative action, a form that you oppose since it's based primarily on accumulated trans-generational wealth. But you are for affirmative action for Black and Latin students because they are generationally "underprivileged". OK. I get it. So basically, the elite university system should be used as a means of reducing social inequality. But what about the Asian-Americans who academically stand out against their demographic peer group? Surely they deserve admission based on their academic merit, merit that was encouraged by family structures willing to make the sacrifices to see their children succeed. But you, Mr. Kristof, reject their petition, because it takes away from your vision of a university's role as a social engineer. So let's call a spade a spade. You are willing to sacrifice the ethic of merit as long as it satisfies your definition of affirmative action. You proudly call yourself a "Progressive" but I don't see anything progressive in your position.
29
@Independent Perhaps that's because you fundamentally lack an understanding of what "liberty and justice for all" means. Groups that are doing quite well and can no longer have solid evidence for profound discrimination against them are no longer a suitable subject for affirmative action.
Asian students are doing fantastically well.
Also, those who think that admitting students based on their individual merits fail to understand what an educational system does. It's a bit like saying "all the good recruits are wide receivers, so we're hiring them all and simply having a team that has no linebackers." A significant aspect of modern education must be based on exposure to a wide variety of people. That doesn't occur if the class as a whole is unbalanced.
1
@Doug K If you want to foster an environment based on "exposure to a wide variety of people", let's institute a mandatory 1 to 2 year national service. In the meantime, I want our education system to recruit the smartest, most capable candidates possible.
2
Ivy league schools enroll less than 10 percent of American college bound students. According to article about a third of these will be legacies. But we spend all our time discussing it.
Look at SAT, ACT, weighted GPAs, and you will understand where American education is failing its egalitarian principles. The show a disturbing correlation between incomes and scores. Children from high income families score significantly better on these measures of academic ability than those from low income families. Inequality of opportunity begins far earlier than college and it is in our primary schools the ills of poverty lie. Here is where we need to spend our time and money.
14
The problem is the tax-advantaged endowment. I fail to understand why private institutions garner the tax advantages they do. As private institutions, don't they have a right to admit whom they prefer to admit? They should be allowed to do so, without the financial boost from the government at every level. Maybe then the cities that have been disproportionately occupied by tax-exempt entities could begin to find their financial footing. The difference in Europe is that the elite institutions are the public universities. Privates are second-tier. Maybe we should take a look.
6
@Cathy
Nominally private, when it suits them. The Globe did a series awhile ago about how Massachusetts taxpayers subsidize Harvard and MIT. Not to mention federal funding.
@Cathy I believe the tax advantaged status has to do with its not-for-profit vs. for profit status, not private vs. public. Now if you want to tax for profit Trump University....
Mr. Kristof says, "The top universities say that legacy preferences help create a multigenerational community of alumni, and that’s a legitimate argument." Why is that argument legitimate? What is the benefit exactly?
These institutions argue (without rebuttal) that "rewarding donors helps encourage donations that can be used to finance scholarships for needy kids." Meanwhile, these same donors duck their tax obligations, which has the effect of robbing millions of needy kids of a quality education and the opportunity for advancement. Funny how the privileged need carrots to do the right thing, while the poor always seem to need sticks.
10
Yes, time to admit this is a unjustifiable structural advantage in our educational system for the privileged. The current freshman class at Harvard consists of nearly 1/3 legacies. Don’t blame these kids for taking advantage of this, and they’re perfectly capable academic for the most part. The admissions department twists itself into a preztel justifying the system. They claim legacies are a diverse group (getting more diverse racially maybe but still advantaged in every other way).
I absolutely support the universities to use affirmative action to favor underrepresented groups. The reason so many qualified students (such as the Asian plaintiffs in this case) are turned away is because there simply isn't room after filling more than 1/3 of the class with all the have-to-admits such as legacies, staff and faculty kids. If schools such as Harvard would simply see the light on this matter, maybe they would’t be defending their policies in court today.
4
You write, "A lawsuit against Harvard University has put a focus on admissions policies that the plaintiffs argue hurt Asian-American applicants. I disagree with the suit, seeing it as a false flag operation that aims to dismantle affirmative action for black and Latino students."
Please expand on that statement next time. I'm aware that Jeff Sessions's Justice Department is trying to use the suit that way, but the information I've gleaned about the suit itself from articles in the Times makes it clear that what the plaintiffs are opposing is not affirmative action, but negative action. I'm for affirmative action, but let's not allow it to be purchased at the particular expense of Asian-Americans. That amounts to affirmative action for all non-Asian-Americans.
What must go are legacy preferences and the reactionary regime at DOJ. There's no need to disagree with the suit on that account.
4
@Longestaffe yes, i think you are exactly right. I am disappointed kristof is towing that false flag. The issue is about discrimination and it mirrors the experiences of Jewish students in the early-mid 20th century. The people most helped by keeping out Asian-Americans are white students.
1
But the suit isn't about legacy it's about affirmative action. So it can only do damage to affirmative action policies it won't do anything wrt legacy policies. That is why it is really about admitting fewer minority students not about admitting more Asian-Americans
Yes, legacy preference should end.
BUT
We can’t keep the discussion of college opportunity stuck on the Ivies. Local state run public universities are some of the greatest drivers of opportunity and change. They are becoming increasingly unaffordable. If we want fair opportunity for the 99%, let’s focus less on sending them to Harvard with the 1%, and focus more on strengthening state schools.
59
I undoubtedly got into Yale for two reasons, I was fourth generation and I came from a small rural town. My family had never made a major donation and by my time could not afford to do so. I thrived there, but I had several classmates whose family fortunes were clearly the only reason they had gotten accepted, and who worked hard to poison the atmosphere for less privileged students, blacks in particular. Now faculty are asked to give special tours to students whose parents are big donors. It is time to get rid of legacy admissions. I was very proud of my son for applying and choosing to go to a school where we had no connections.
14
The admissions process at the Ivies and other "top-tier" schools contains what Hegel and Marx would consider an inner-contradiction that is inescapable because it is an essential feature of the process.
Let's say a student has high test scores and high grades, high enough to be a credible candidate at all eight of the Ivy League universities. Assume this individual applies to all eight Ivies. Let's also assume that the individual is a Legacy at one of the Ivies, we'll just use Harvard because it's Kristof's example.
If the applicant gets into all eight Ivies, including Harvard. Well, in the case of Harvard that's not fair, because the student got an advantage because of being a Legacy. There is invidious discrimination involved. But imagine Harvard eliminates preferences for Legacies, the student is rejected, but gets into the other seven Ivies to which s/he has applied. Well, that's not fair because the student was at a disadvantage. There is invidious discrimination involved.
College and universities below the "top-tier" schools don't have such problems. If a high school student has decent grades and test scores s/he gets in everywhere s/he applies. Discrimination is only a phenomenon of the so-called "elite" colleges and universities in the United States. At most other schools the admissions process is decidedly egalitarian.
15
@Metaphor unless you include a big chunk of American colleges and universities in your “top-tier,” I don’t think your characterization of the typical experience is empirically correct. Look at the pattern of acceptance and rejection that good students get and you’ll see the irrationality of the process. Even a statistician could not make sense of the schools our kids did and did not get into.
8
Hear, hear! As a university professor, I support the end of legacy preference.
15
Universities are in the first place communities of human beings. They have every right to decide whom they would like to invite into their community, and which criteria they will consult when making their invitation list. They should never have let themselves be put into the position of having to defend either affirmative action or legacy-based admission, as though these were extraordinary and unjust practices. They are not at all.
But though we should grant that, it must also be admitted that if a university community wish to cultivate a liberal or progressive value system -- and reputation -- , then of course it follows that their criteria for whom to invite in will be of a certain sort. That may be the time to have a serious conversation with prosperous alumni who are parents of college-age children.
Aside from that, fierce competition for a limited number of spaces in a class seems based on a serious societal error regarding the purpose of a college education, viz. to prepare young people to be "successful" players in an economics-framed "real world." But universities are communities that cultivate the love of learning, or should be. Whence the idolization of meritocracy? -- as though university life were all about struggling to get high grades and scores, and to climb up to the rank of the most prolific and praise of scholars and scientists. "Competitiveness is the root of all moral evil," and universities wishing to be moral must learn that.
6
@Mark Caponigro
You speak and the SCOTUS listens. Forget the Constitution. Or perhaps you really don't know that Colleges and Universities, even the private ones, receive government funding.
Unfortunately there is no prohibition against discriminating on the basis of legacy status.
1
@Mark Caponigro You make two mistakes.
One, private universities should be free to admit who they want, if, if they give up tax-free charitable donations, government student loans and grants, and research grants. If they do that, OK.
Two, competition is not a moral evil. Yes, war is evil - sometimes, but economic, sport, and academic competition has built our world.
1
@Mark Caponigro
universities "have every right to decide whom to invite into their community"?
how about an openly explicit quota on Asian students?
they have every right to engage their racial prejudice under the laws in the USA?
really?
2
A few years ago I attended an open house at a New England boarding school with my son. In addressing us the headmaster made sure to mention his own son had graduated from the school a few years earlier (enjoying free tuition as the child of a staff member) and then graduated from Harvard, as had the headmaster himself. How much more obscene advantage can be crammed into this scenario? Do the elite ever get enough?
44
It's ridiculous that Nick Kristof benefited from affirmative action. Wasn't that meant for blacks from the rural south or Hispanics from the ghettos of Los Angeles? Doesn't Harvard already have enough white liberal Jewish men? Is that demographic really underrepresented in the Ivy League?
It is almost as ridiculous as the admission of Elizabeth Warren as a Native American. If Harvard actually cared about diversity, they would have ensured that Warren documented her ancestry. Then they would have had to face the question of whether being 1/64th Native American was enough to qualify her for a racial preference.
For many, liberalism is just social positioning that covers for ruthless pursuit of self interest. The major difference between most liberals and most Republicans is that the Republicans are more honest.
49
@Schrodinger
Please stop perpetuating this myth. Elizabeth Warren did not use her Native American ancestry to gain admission to Harvard. She did not even attend Harvard. This is simply another lie pushed by Trump and company.
Perhaps the major difference between most liberals and most Republicans is an interest in the truth. Or, if you will, honesty.
14
@Schrodinger Elizabeth Warren did not use her indian heritage on college or law school applications, according to the NYTIMES>
10
I don't think EW was admitted because she was native American, where did this alternative fact come from?
10
I came from a blue collar family and entered an Ivy League school with a full scholarship. I am grateful to the legacy families that built my school and paid for my education. I see no reason to dismantle the legacy system in private schools.
30
@Barbara
The same applies to me—blue collar, full merit ride to an Ivy—followed by a stint at Harvard for law school. While also grateful to the school and its donors for funding my education, I don’t see that as sufficient reason to continue a practice that on its face doesn’t pass the sniff test from a basic fairness perspective.
7
@Barbara
Two of my children also attended Ivy League Universities because they were excellent applicants and they were from a low socio-economic family. They met their legacy families who contributed to their tuition and attended school with their children who not only were highly educated, but also were raised with a strong sense of obligation to give back. Almost every applicant has a hook of some sort, athletes, musicians, residents from remote parts of the country, a particular talent, minority background and low income. After all the discussion of ending legacy admits, I told my children to prepare to send their own children to the honors program of their state university. They won't have the millions to donate and sadly, they will be negatively branded a legacy. Will be waiting to see where Nicholas Kristof's kids go to college.
2
When I was a freshman at a university with a rising reputation, we were told that, approximately, a third of us would fail to graduate. When this is seen as a mark against a university, what does it mean exactly to be a "top university"? Accepting the kids with the shiniest applications (that may or may not reflect their true talent) and making sure they graduate?
No one really cares that much where they go to college, they care what opportunities are available once they graduate college. End the silly obsession with "top schools" that seems to be a form of ducking responsibility by hiring managers (including, apparently, the president) and democratize the opportunity when it really matters. Let the Ivies do what they want (they are private schools after all), as they do not matter nearly as much as many want to believe they do.
6
It is dubious that Kristof, a white male Christian, not African American, female, Hispanic, or native American benefitted from "affirmative action" at Harvard.
These terms are terribly misused.
All of these terms, "affirmative action, liberal, progressive, conservative" have no meaning that we all agree upon, and therefore they have no meaning at all.
Conservatives, liberals, progressives, all use these terms as a form of self praise or criticism of others.
A true liberal in the classical sense, as a child of the Enlightenment, would judge every individual on their own merit and would not stereotype race, religion, color, ethnic origin, as a criterion for admissions to a college.
People who call themselves progressives or liberals and favor racial preferences are not liberal in the accepted classical historic sense of liberal.
Alumni legacy admissions are a business deal for alumni, admission of your son or daughter in exchange for a "gift" to the
to the university. One would think that Harvard is wealthy enough and does not need to sell admission preferences.
It is also true that wealthy individuals who are not Harvard alumni are able to buy more favorable treatment when their sons or daughters apply to Harvard, in exchange for large "gifts" to Harvard.
Basically Harvard is selling admission preferences because they never feel that they are wealthy enough. Never enough.
16
@David Perhaps we should call these preferences, indulgences.
3
Legacy admissions are the first thing that need to go if academia wants to maintain the facade of meritocracy. I believe Caltech does not admit legacies, they seem to be doing just fine.
14
I really wish less attention was paid to suing to get into Harvard and legacy preferences at Ivy League schools and more time addressing the real problem, the obsession with status, wealth and brand names in college education.
186
@RJ. The real problem is that education needs to start early, and everyone should be ready to take algebra in 7th or 8th grade. Parents need to demand this of their children and their schools; all parents, not just the wealthy ones or the white ones.
2
As an underrepresented minority who was admitted to an Ivy League university, I was in fact imagining of my own future children as legacy applicants as I met other legacies with deep family connections during my first year. I have spent the last twenty years excited at the prospect of becoming a legacy family as someone who is deeply indebted to a school that saw my potential and nurtured my growth. Moreover, my children would further their connection to both me and my alma mater should they attend. Why yank the legacy rug out from us just as scores of brown children can also become the sons and daughters of schools that historically kept our families far from the gates?
Allison Carter
54
@CM talk about tone deafness. You were good enough to make it and it affected your life in a positive way. Your children may be lazy slobs who have no business being there. If they are good enough they will get in on their own. And if they don't, it is not the end of the world.
5
@CM
Oh brown skinned children will be a majority in top schools if affirmative action and leagacy admissions are done away with. Of course, you and many others will probably not like their shade of brown.
3
I think you are overlooking the human element. There is an attachment to the university from which you graduate, a real connection. And a true feeling that your university should have room for your child. It also seems wrong to assume that legacies are always the children of wealth.
22
If all colleges were the same this wouldn't matter so much. The problem is that they are not. Education at all levels in America is another activity that has become divorced from its true purpose. It's also become another way to sort students economically and socially. The competitiveness to get into a half decent school is unbelievable. Colleges ask students who, if they are typical, are teenagers, to produce resumes of worthwhile activities, to prove that they are worth an elite education, and to display enthusiasm above all. Students who are not encouraged don't stand a chance. That means students who are middle class, poor, or yes, rich who don't consider the Ivies because they don't believe they can get in.
Why can't students whose 18 years have been spent learning how to be citizens, what they are good at, where their ambitions lie, and whether or not they like school be considered? I'm amazed at how much 18 year olds are expected to achieve nowadays. What happened to being a lifeguard at the pool, a camp counselor, or being a kid and doing well academically without joining a million clubs or going to Africa to help build a school?
As long as K-12 education in America is funded with property taxes we're going to have very uneven K-12 education, bright students who should be challenged not and students who should be in college (and who might want to be) shying away from it because of the money.
46
It was neat to tour Yale with my father, who had been sent there for training during World War II. I apparently qualified for legacy preference at Penn, but it seemed a lousy and unfair way to select students and in any case, Penn was looking likely to become state-related, so I opted for Penn State, with a few applications to places that would have been attractive, if admission were within reach. Once I reached grad school, I had a better idea of where I should have been an undergrad. Perhaps Duke, North Carolina, Texas, or the brand-new UC San Diego, if they would have had me.
2
Legacy preference admissions gives a lie to the ideal of merit. My merit is more important if my daddy was a graduate?
The kids who have had the most advantages between the age of zero and 17 1/2 should go to the worst schools. I'm not kidding, entirely. If they truly have the brains to do great things, they would find a way no matter.
By creating an environment where the quickest learners are all gathered together, the other colleges across America are denied the opportunity to "diversify" their enrollment by having some of those students associate with and assist others in their education, creating islands of poverty for learning. Of course, a counter argument can be made that sending really smart kids to lesser environments would hold them back. Having them in "elite" colleges provides an enriched, challenging situation in those schools.
There truly are advantages in selecting a cohort of strong learners, not the least of which is they get to associate with each other and form alliances which can shape their futures, In turn, that opportunity is denied to thousands of others who might be equally qualified to use it.
If one could take 1,000 smart kids who've done well before college and then send them off with nothing but each other and 500,000 books, those students would likely do well in life anyway. As it is, the elite schools get to choose excellent students (of sorts) and then we marvel at what those schools produced. This is reasoning through faulty analogy.
5
It’s a pretty safe populist bet to attack legacy admissions practices. However, I’d throw a smallish ideological wrench into such arguments.
Kristof relies on a curious implicit premise. His arguments really make no sense unless you first assume that our colleges and universities are public in the sense that they are fully funded by public dollars. However, Harvard, which comes in for significant criticism here, has an endowment that makes it pretty much autonomous. It’s not all taxpayers that are funding the operations of a lot of private higher education, but those legacies and large donors.
Those institutions are only “public” in the sense that they consider applications from all comers, then seek to educate all whom they admit. But they have an obligation to bring in the resources required to pay their administration and faculty (far more than they paid them in real terms a generation and more ago), hire all those administrative staff bodies that they never had before, and build those buildings that they’ll need less of as the years go by and education is increasingly distributed online.
Clearly, I can see a lot of legitimate issues about Harvard and other private schools that Kristof could mount a rant against that would have a LOT more legitimacy than legacy admissions. If he must, Nick should consider going after the state schools alone, which are FAR less autonomous and FAR more dependent on tax dollars to operate. Harvard isn’t beholden to Nick’s premises.
3
@Richard Luettgen Like much of our current economy, some of the most notable fortunes were long-subsidized by the public. Suggest you take a look at the distribution of federal research grant dollars, the innovations that resulted from them, and the accurral of the benefits under our patent system that are captured by the private institutions. The point I'm making is that the line between private effort and collective public investment is very porous in almost every aspect of our economy.
13
@Eben Espinoza
Yours is the tired argument that the collective (entertainingly led by elites) has an overriding interest in and call on ALL resources because a general enablement was offered ALL our citizens. Some successfully exploited it … and some didn't. By such reasoning as yours, there is NO such thing as "private effort", and by extension and convenient collectivist argument, no rights of independent action by individuals are legitimate that haven't been vetted and approved by the collective. But that simply isn't so.
And I'm sure the feds understand that they can award research grants to whatever schools they wish -- and I expect that they'll continue to award them to Harvard for the quality of the results they habitually get in return -- the one doesn't presuppose some enslavement of the school to the awarder of research grants.
Lastly, unless we manufacture a new interpretation of our statutes or pass new ones, neither the feds nor the states have any leverage to affect legacy admissions practices at Harvard -- which I don't believe is even accredited by any educational accreditation authority.
@Richard Luettgen
You think Harvard isn't subsidized by the public?
Au contraire, and the public's subsidy for Harvard is much larger than the subsidy for a state school or low-wealth private college.
Harvard and every other university is a tax-advantaged institution. Every time a person rich enough to itemize his taxes makes a donation to Harvard, he takes a deduction on that donation.
In 2016 Harvard received $1.2 billion in donations, which we can assume represents $250-$350 million in lost income tax revenue.
Even huge state systems take in a fraction as much as Harvard. Penn State, systemwide, pulled in $360 million last year. Rutgers got $220 million. The University of Connecticut got $72 million.
So the US public loses A LOT more money through the tax code to Harvard than it does to schools that educate a lot more middle-class and lower-income students.
Given Harvard's tax-advantaged status, the people, through the government, do have a right to direct its policies.
108
Let’s get real. It’s not the education received at Ivy League schools that’s important - lots of schools provide educational opportunities equal to, or better than those schools.
It’s the networking and connections that matter. Colleges have entire departments that exist to encourage such networking and career assistance, encouraging their alumni to take care of each other, to the detriment of others. Obviously rich alumni helping other rich alumni get richer is the goal and the result. Small wonder we all know that success is not reached through hard work and talent - it’s reached by inclusion in the exclusive network of the rich and powerful.
69
Nick,
I think you are a little out of touch with who is a liberal.
I'm as liberal as they come, and I don't see Harvard and Yale and their ilk as liberal bastions. I see them as the producers of the Alitos, Thomases and Robertses that deny justice as a reflex. I see these private universities as places where our public school student kids have almost no chances of being admitted to. I was already pretty sure admission is heavily rigged against those without great wealth, though these revelations in the Harvard case have been an eye opener.
So no, I don't feel ownership or responsibility for these bastions of privilege.
On the contrary, I am all for admittance on the basis of ability and potential of the student, not their parents' checkbooks or alumni stickers. Its figuring out the applicant's potential, taking into account the academic resources and life experiences in their lives to the time when they apply, that is the tough question we need to get working on.
37
I think it depends on how the educational institution views it’s mission, not how the public or applicants views that mission. Universities are not simply technical schools. Elite universities the least so. If it is possible to fill an entire class several times over with students who’ve scored in the 99th percentile on college admission tests and who have 4.0 as the president of Yale University has said, short of a lottery other criteria would be needed to select applicants for a limited number of slots. Consider too that above a certain level of achievement the odds are high that a student is very likely to be successful. Consider that a university may not wish or be prepared to field an entire class of engineering or English majors. Given those constraints I do not envy admission committees. How do you choose the next T.S. Elliot, Paul Samuelson, Theodore Roosevelt to include in a class? SAT’s? You can’t know, but you can make educated guesses. I am not convinced by the percentage descepancies of legacies. Is anyone surprised, as has been pointed out, that the children of highly successful, intelligent parents who happen to be alums might qualify for admission - observing that not all do. As far as taxes - if endowments are to be taxed the same rule should be applied to all universities, not just certain well funded elites. That may ultimately prove to be a net societal negative. Elite US universities are national and global assets. Why cripple them?
9
@Vinny MIT does not use legacy in its admission. On the contrary, it has not been crippled. By the way, MIT's President is a first-generation college graduate from Venezuela.
1
Let me give my own "real world" context on your statement:
"The top universities say that legacy preferences help create a multigenerational community of alumni...that’s a legitimate argument."
It's true! I have a relative who went to a very good college and served on its board. Now two children of different cousins of mine have gone there (one met the person they're going to marry there). A nephew is also part of the pile up at this same institution.
So? So, the other day, being at the same location that many of these people were at, including classmates and long standing friends of my relative who went there, I thought, "wow, what a neat sense of community and continuity and commonality." It felt and seemed beautiful and empowering and enriching to all of them, and to us. And it was.
There is no legacy gazillions as part of this story. It is just pluck and community and family. And I think it will have an enduring mark on all those who have or will partake of it, and it will be a source of great connection and pride for them, among themselves, and among others in their alumni community and college community.
It's a great thing in this case, as I am sure it is in many, many other cases. So "privilege" in the sense of some advantage? Presumably. But the outcome is one that greatly enriches the participants and the college community of which they are part. So to feel it a bad thing (or certainly an "automatically" bad thing) is hard to do. It's great here. I envy them.
5
My father attended an Ivy. His brother did too. My male cousin and my male brother also went. I a female and my two female cousins did not: the Ivy was male-only. My father and uncle weren't interested in investing in their female offspring's education. We were on our own. Luckily my good grades, SAT scores qualified me for a generous scholarship to an excellent university. I still note there is no mention of talented women being slighted in admissions in the debate over Harvard's practices. Is Radcliffe a separate college or has it been absorbed by Harvard?
6
I always find it interesting that the parents of non-athletes are so offended by the recruitment process at the Ivies. This is not football at Alabama. There is a formula called the Athletic Index that the athletes must meet or they cannot gain entrance. High school GPA, SAT scores, placement in graduating class all come into consideration. Once on campus they put in 20 hour weeks of training all the while maintaining a GPA, finding time to eat and sleep and all the while provide free advertising for the university for whom they play. The Ivy League is an ATHLETIC conference.
2
And college is supposed to be about academics. Athletics should be given the same consideration as any other demanding extracurricular activity. Instead, athletes are given preferential treatment that is out of place at an academic institution. And those 15 year old recruits don’t have SAT scores when they sign their deals. They don’t even have two years worth of a HS gpa. I recently heard a parent of a recruited athlete say that their child just needs to maintain a B average and stay out of jail and his college acceptance was set. Not fair to the kids who are studying their hearts out all 4 years in the hardest classes offered.
39
@Qnc Also not fair to the athletes who put in 20 hrs of practise every week.
"And college is supposed to be about academics."
Then what possible justification is there for giving a break to AA candidates?
Yes, legacy admissions are an example of a program that favors whites.
But the effects of affirmative action are far more pervasive and have dismantled more meritocratic systems that were in place in the 60's.
In the 1960's admissions to the prestige universities like Harvard was often based on merit. There were in fact scholarship programs set up in which high school students competed for positions. The way to succeed was to perform well enough on exams in mathematics and writing, as well as on more specialized subjects.
But an argument was put forward (often by liberals) that such exams don't actually measure ability. There is some merit to this argument. But the exams had a good impact on high school education; in my high school, for example, there was an effort to add courses in calculus and the sciences that would improve performance on exams.
The way affirmative action affects this process is via the argument that exams are unfair to minority students.
So liberals have denigrated such exams and exams on math, for example, are no longer required for admission to most universities. The result has been a decline in performances of entering freshmen in math courses.
Many students are effectively cut of the sciences and engineering because their high schools did not provide strong enough preparation.
And students from Bison Kansas have no way to get into Harvard even if they achieve an impressive performance on exams which are no longer given.
12
@Jake Wagner I agree with you here that standardized tests have been unfairly maligned and that liberals ignore the ways in which standardized tests actually foster social mobility and are less biased against the poor than other things prized in "holistic" admissions.
For instance, the correlation coefficient between income and SAT scores is only 0.25. Yes, there's still a correlation, but a low one.
I would argue that there is a stronger correlation between income and non-scholastic factors in admissions, like international volunteer work, internships, success in certain sports, AP test taking, and even scientific research.
Stuyvesant's admissions are solely by a test and it is 45% FRL-eligible and is a Title I school.
I would not want to see any college solely use the SAT for admissions like Stuy, but taking the SAT out completely would not make admissions fairer to low-income students.
13
Schools still accept the SAT score, though, and surely take it into account for admissions. An unsubmitted score speaks for itself.
You fail to mention the preference that these universities give to the children of famous and successful people. I've noticed for years that the children of politicians and celebrities and the mega rich often end up at elite universities even when they have no legacy to lean on.
127
(1) MIT does give legacy candidates some consideration, though it says it doesn't. Less perhaps than most, but talk to someone on the inside of admissions, as I did, and you'll learn that for a borderline candidate, legacy can be the deciding factor. A legacy sticker does go on the file. If MIT didn't do legacy, it wouldn't be asking students where their parents attended college -- which it really shouldn't be doing anyway. (2) Though I agree on legacy admissions (and really, this argument is so old and so hashed over, I wish Mr. Kristof had picked something mildly original to say), the lawsuit by Asian families is not a "false flag." In truth, the schools are not going by pure merit and Asian students are put at a disadvantage when it comes to admissions, just as Jewish students used to be. I am not of Asian descent, nor is anyone in my family. (3) The Asian lawsuit is far more important than legacy admissions. It affects far more students. At the very top schools, really very few students are admitted through legacy that didn't have a very strong shot without it. It doesn't make up for an inadequate record. (4) Because of affirmative action, the students most likely to be affected if the lawsuit goes against Harvard are not black and Latino students, but white students.
16
As someone who works with high schoolers who are applying to colleges, I see that the private high schools work overtime to get these kids into these elite colleges, and the public schools must rely on volunteers (like myself) who are supposed to spend 20 minutes with each student on their applications and essays. I've met so many wonderful public school students who deserve an Ivy education but because of circumstances, they end up at a state or community college. It doesn't mean their fate is sealed, but they do miss out on what an elite school can offer them.
25
Mr. Kristof quotes Ms. Dynarski saying that legacy admissions are "the polar opposite of affirmative action, which boosts applicants who have faced adversity." If affirmative action was limited to those who faced economic or other adversity, it would be widely supported and not controversial. But that's not what it is. It's a system of racial preferences that primarily benefits upper middle class and wealthy minorities.
So let's get rid of legacy and big donor preferences, along with all other preferences and limit affirmative action to those who didn't have the same advantages as the top 20%.
71
I went to a very elite college that engages in this practice. I have donated a small fortune to that school to fund scholarships for lower income students. I would love it if my kids went there, but as much as it pains me to admit it I'll say this Harvard case has changed my mind about legacy admits. The disparity in admit rates between legacies and the broader population is staggering and it is clearly not a "tiebreaker" as these universities like to suggest.
I was recently speaking to an ex-admissions officer who suggested that admitting legacies is good for donations, and that was a good enough reason to continue admitting them. I am sure that admitting legacies is one way to boost the endowment, but it is not the only way. The university could also sell cigarettes, or license its brand to for-profit schools, or (perhaps most straightforwardly) simply just set a $10m price per head on admission. But it wouldn't do these things because they are obviously unethical. We need to start seeing legacy admissions in the same light. Lowering the bar for people who have already won the genetic lottery is just plain wrong.
Something tells me that if these schools stopped admitting legacies they would manage to come up with other clever ways to reward potential donors, without doing it at the expense of the farm kids from flyover country.
92
Its also the $$$. Hundreds of dollars just to apply. lots of expenses to get tested. if you get accepted then its tuition and books. Very high even with a scholarship. Then its living expenses, maybe $1000 per , month. How many families making $60-80 K a year an afford this? WE need a National free college program and reasonable loans to allow all who are qualified to get an education.
15
As a light skinned Indian American who was able to pass for white( Italian, Greek or Spanish in my youth) , I was considered by my peers for leadership positions that my Indian and Chinese looking peers in Queens were passed up. Even though I was extremely shy I looked like I was elected since I blended in, unlike my Asian looking Indian and Chinese peers. Blending in gives you the privilege of people accepting you for being yourself. This is preferential treatment against ethnic looking minorities. Looking less Indian when I was young gave me an advantage for my CV extracurriculars and those dubious personal traits that teachers and admissions officers judge and got me into the Ivy League . Now that my ethnicity shows as I have grown older, I notice that I need to wear light foundation one shade lighter than my natural skin tone to have my thoughts acknowledged by less educated colleagues, such as CEOs and hospital administrators ( white and black). They take the ideas of white nurses and therapists and move them into administration while older Asian doctors are forced into premature retirement. Looking ethnic, not just being black or Hispanic, gives you the biggest disadvantage in the work world, especially if u are female. You have to deal with both the glass and bamboo ceiling.
45
the legacies' advantages? I thought they were thank-you notes for generous gifts made by their parents....
9
although premier private universities are now huge hedge funds...on the side...legacy admission is still filed under "fund raising". And that fund raising makes it possible for some farm boys to sweeten the pot.
2
I agree with Nick and a number of posters on the glaring tax problem, one that is amply echoed in other corporations. I cannot understand the worship of Harvard and the Ivy League creds with which so many people at home and abroad are obsessed. The athletics preferences - particularly with big-time sports - are the hardest one to swallow, as it is quite hard to square all-consuming athletic demands with serious studies. Lastly, I hope that qualifies Asian students will get a fair hearing.
4
Great column. And it's not just preference on apps, either-- legacy students are often given priority when it comes to things like private tours, schools paying travel expenses, etc. It's almost an entirely different application process. The hypocrisy runs deep, and schools won't be truly inclusive until they stop giving preference to students whose parents donate money (or might donate money in the future).
14
This, getting rid of legacy admissions, is a fairly easy one. But, as with all affirmative action admissions, opponents have the illusion that all kinds of seats will open up for those who feel that their kid or members of their group (Asians, rurals, late bloomers, you name it) are sure to find a spot. The old joke is that if there were no parking spaces for the handicapped, I would get that open spot in front of Chipotle instead of the hundred drivers who were there before me. If a college has 1000 people in an entering class and receives 5000 applications that are of equal objective/numerical merit, are they not entitled/obligated to use other criteria, such as gender, ethnicity, geography, athletic ability, compassion, musical talent...? Or should there just be a lottery or a flipping of coins? Is not using judgment preferable to a game of chance? And, besides, I have little sympathy for an eighteen-year-old whose dream of going to Harvard is shattered and has to settle for, say, Northwestern or Wesleyan. There are people in the world with real problems.
33
I really have lost a lot of respect for many of the elite colleges. They compete with each other for prestige rather than for their abilities to educate students. That prestige is gained by pumping out the most successful students whose eventual position in life has much to do with their attending aforementioned institutions. Admission decisions at these schools is like shooting fish in barrel. They can't miss at this point as the degree itself outweighs ability and education post graduation. The real harm is to our society because these self-perpetual-promotional institutions disproportionately determine our ruling class of politicians, journalists, business leaders, etc. at the expense of equally talented individuals and viewpoints who do not have access to similar professional or social networks. Nor do they have the preferential societal treatment to which we have grown accustomed. What organization doesn't want to inform their clients/patients/readers the impressive academic credentials of staff.
I recall a study in the 1980's where freshman at a suburban community college scored better on a standardized subject test after completing the same course than their peers at UPenn. It may have been the same year the UPenn students were greeted at an entire freshmen reception by a dean who led with "Welcome to the elite. You are now one of us."
Legacy admissions are just icing on the cake for these systemic abusers of influence.
24
How come conservative group funding the Asian-American lawsuit against Harvard choose to attack affirmative action not the legacy admissions process? The legacy admission admission rate, which benefits a majority of white wealthy and affluent students, is much higher then the percentage of African-Americans and Latino-Americans admitted through affirmative action.
It is obvious this lawsuit has little to do with justice but using one minority group to undo affirmative action for a historically less powerful minority.
15
@Elizabeth Your statement is factually wrong. The SFFA case has repeatedly condemned legacy preferences and eliminating legacy preferences was a major component of star-witness Richard Kahlenberg's testimony that the percentage of minority students at Harvard would be constant under SES-based affirmative action.
The reason SFFA isn't suing over legacy/faculty children/donor preferences is that legally non-legacy/non-faculty/non-donor children are not a protected class like Asian-Americans are. An attempt to sue over legacy preferences would quickly be thrown out of court.
Legacy preferences are barely defensible now, but they would become completely indefensible if race-based affirmative action also didn't exist.
Berkeley and UCLA can't use race-based affirmative action due to Prop 209. They also don't offer legacy preferences. That isn't a coincidence.
9
Thanks, Nick. I'm not sure that I would group favoritism towards faculty children in the same category as development admissions and legacy admissions, but I applaud your placing the spotlight on the mundane corruption underlying elite college admissions in the US.
University Admissions Departments use "Development" admits - kids from centi-millionaire and billionaire parents - and legacy admits in a way that makes the admissions dept. a profit center for the university.
When colleges smugly announce that they have a "needs-blind" admissions process, you can be sure that only in a few cases is admissions actually "wealth-blind."
If this is how elite U's conduct themselves, why should tax payers subsidize them? It's time to end some of the tax protected status for endowments.
14
I am a graduate of Virginia Tech as was my late brother Bill.
My youngest brother (a graduate of the Naval Academy) married a Virginia Tech graduate. All of her sisters are Hokies.
Even my paternal grandfather's older brother was a member of the Corps of Cadets for two years; he did not graduate.
One can safely say that my family has an investment there.
Despite their legacy, two of my nieces failed to gain admission within the last decade.
I was disappointed, but understand why they (decent students) were denied admission when they applied.
As Frank Bruni has noted, where one attends school does not define that person.
Life is unfair and getting rejected is part of the process.
If the Ivies were serious about diversity (Me thinks they are not), they would take a page from the armed forces where ability has greater impact on careers than ethnic preferences.
7
Harvard and other top schools receive applications from all sorts of well-qualified candidates -- many more than they have room for. They take great pains to select from the best-qualified applicants a group that satisfies several criteria, including ethnic and socio-economic diversity. Their final selection process is vulnerable to litigation. Maybe some problems could be avoided if the admissions office identified a large pool of well-qualified candidates -- somewhat more than they have room for -- and then used a lottery process to make the final decision. That would serve to control against conscious and unconscious biases, and quotas, on the part of admissions officers.
8
College professors, except at the most elite universities, don't become rich from teaching. Many college professors view tuition assistance for their children as part of their compensation package. In almost every discipline, a professor can make significantly more money in the private section. People teach because they love teaching; tuition assistance for their children is a good thing.
92
@Raven Senior Kristof wasn't criticizing tuition assistance for faculty children, although that should be criticized if the tuition assistance is tax-free.
Kristof was criticizing the fact that faculty children are given a preference in the admissions process. This is a form of institutionalized hereditary advantage that comes on top of the advantages faculty children would have as children growing up in affluence and extremely cultured homes. If the child of a Harvard professor has a talent, we can be assured that that child already has every opportunity to develop that talent. If the child gets to know their parent's faculty friends, that child gets to know many persons who can write compelling letters of recommendation for him or her.
Not so for a child who grows up in the middle-class or poor family, whose parents can't take sabbaticals, can't afford cello lessons, can't do foreign travel, and whose parents don't have friends among eminent professors who can write letters of recommendation.
So the preference for the children of faculty seems no less unfair to me than the preferences for children of the rich and anyone who happens to have black or Latino ancestry.
20
Nic, is not a higher education... a right gifted to all, not taking allowance of circumstance. When equality is sung into the equation -- good things follow! As with Good Governance, always be mindful of A Just Ephah and A Just Balance!
1
You made me smile, Mr. Kristof, with your description of benefiting from affirmative action as a 'country bumpkin.' That was the background of my nephew who, like you, grew up as a farm boy in OR; he, in fact, grew up on a commune around Umpqua, where he was home-schooled through the sixth grade.
Well, when he finally was allowed to attend public school, he took his education and ran with it. He was so strikingly bright that the principal called his parents in for a meeting about how capable he was. My nephew was a tenacious worker through middle and high school, excelling in honors and AP courses. He went to Yale as an early decision applicant, did brilliantly as an astrophysics major, and is now a grad student with a solid future ahead of him.
Admitting him was about more than diversity, though. He had established his mettle by how much he had accomplished all on his own. There was nothing in his upbringing to point him towards academic competition, and he didn't have the parental input on which so many young people rely. So welcoming students from underprivileged or even adverse situations welcomes those with a lot of determination and potential.
23
Please. You want unfair? Try being a hardworking, high performing student with great extracurriculars who has to compete with recruited athletes. No knock on kids who are good at a particular sport, but I am here to tell you that my kid’s student council leadership and service projects do not help him the way a stellar lacrosse record would. My kid attends HS with athletes who have had their deals signed since they were sophomores, and most do not have the academic credentials that the non athletes have. Legacy is a drop in the bucket. Sports present the greatest unfairness in college admissions.
328
@Qnc Yes. a Thousand times yes. most of the athletes at my University had problems with basic math, reading comprehension, and one of them was even boastful about being illiterate. Add to that, my department's budget was slashed to pieces while the sports program endured without a scratch.
31
That’s because schools want good lacrosse teams not just another aspiring future politician who sits on the student council and does service projects to burnish his resume.
13
@Qnc You are absolutely correct. I know this for a fact. Substantial numbers of sub-standard 'student' athletes (some actually fit the bill, but they're almost always the ones sitting on the bench, there to maintain the minimum academic requirements for the team) take the place of real students.
13
Let’s ban legacy admissions and while we’re at it, marriage by dual high income/Ivy educated couples, their procreating of more than two children, the education of those children in any other than average or below average public schools, the hiring of a tutor by any family in the 50th percentile or above as well as attending more than two cultural events in any given twelve month period.
74
@From Where I Sit Shades of Harrison Bergeron. Nice.
3
Make financing of college and of universities for students fully funded by the public. Assure that there are excellent colleges and university seats open for anyone who can benefit. That is the rational solution.
5
@Casual Observer
The most expensive things are those which are "free."
You could look it up.
Legacy factors in admissions have a sound foundation in serving the needs of private colleges and universities. These institutions depend heavily upon highly successful graduates contributing great amounts of money to their alma maters throughout their lives. They are unlikely to do so if when their children apply for admissions they are denied despite having very good academics but because of highly competitive other applicants must be denied. The schools are then considering the needs of the institutions when they apply preferences for legacies.
15
If a college were entirely privately funded, a,strong case would exist for them to use the legacy placements to help fund-raising. But Harvard et al. get plenty of state and federal tax dollars for research. As such, there is no excuse for such preferential admissions tricks.
25
@Tom Jeff Harvard's subsidy from the federal government isn't only the money that directly flows to it, the subsidy is also through the tax code in how the US Treasury loses income tax revenue every time someone donates to Harvard due to the deductibility of donations.
In 2016 Harvard received $1.2 billion in donations, which we can assume represents $250-$350 million in lost income tax revenue.
The inequality is stark. To use Rutgers at the state university stand in, Rutgers in 2016 only received $220 million. That might represent $40-$50 million in lost income tax revenue.
An egalitarian decision for Congress to make would be some cap on the income tax deduction, either on an institutional or personal basis.
19
ha ha ha! why would they do that? it would be political suicide.
I also attended Harvard College. The financial aid package was so generous that Harvard cost my parents a fraction of what community college would have cost. I definitely noticed that the legacy kids were not as bright as the poor kids...but I never lost sight of the fact that if their parents did not donate money and pay full tuition then I would never have been able to attend.
190
@RCH,
Harvard currently has a $38 billion endowment.
I don't think they need to admit the rich kids to allow scholarship students to attend anymore.
23
@RCH I agree, but is not there something sad about these donations? When we give to charitable causes (and donations to universities are tax-deductible), we do not normally expect anything in return. The wealthy parents you speak of, however, are definitely demanding a quid pro quo. In return for their millions, their children will be admitted regardless of academic qualifications. Perhaps their "donations" should not be treated as tax-deductible contributions but for what they are - purchases of a valuable seat in a prestigious university.
17
As many comments note, there no real link between legacy admissions and liberals. Certainly, there are liberals who want their children admitted through legacy but it isn't a part of progressive thought. The ratio of admissions to applicants is so small that it is impossible to imagine a set of rules that is fair, that is, in which all students of quality have the same chance to be admitted. Money, race, class, and status will always be major factors, when all else is weighed, geographic location is used. The point of getting into Harvard is to be near and among students with those qualities. How are any of them "meritocratic"?
20
@Michael Could not agree more. Not sure why the article’s author goes for the frisson of ‘liberal bastions’ doing legacy admissions. Is the proposition that only ‘liberal bastion’ colleges have legacy boosts? Then show it! Or is that only liberal parents use legacy opportunities provisions? I doubt it, but feel free to show it. But, author, don’t slip it in like some bad faith Trumpian slander.
2
I remember when my daughter, who seemed to me entirely qualified based on the statistics, applied to my Seven Sisters alma mater as an Early Decision candidate. She was rejected and when I called the admissions office as a neurotic mom and an alum, here's what I was told by the Director of Admissions, "Have you given a million dollars? If you had given a million dollars, we would have looked at her candidacy differently."
I replied, "Well, if I was ever in the position to give a million dollars, you just became the last institution to whom I would give it."
I knew the legacy admissions were a real thing. But let's be real: they are definitely much more of a thing for big donors OR prospective big donors.
Legacy admissions advantaging candidates should not be permissible. Period.
94
@Judi F Yes, not all legacies are equal. How about some data correlating legacy admissions decisions with the magnitude of legacy donations?
2
@Judi F I seriously doubt an admissions person would actually say this to you. but nice story.
9
Isn't it more likely that, rather than taking seats from the working class, legacy admits are taking seats from other high-income, privileged, non-legacy applicants? If that is the case, why do we care?
41
@Susan G. - if one assumes a total capacity for the whole class and those "other high-income" kids fill a "legacy" slot, then another slot is opened for others down the socioeconomic ladder... that is, if the privilege is not given, then there are more total truly competitive slots.
5
@Susan G.
Because that's MY kid, and is why I worked hard for that privilege.
What's the point of making $200,000/yr ($125,000 after taxes) if it's going to cost me $70,000 for my kid's education? May as well work part-time, make $75k, take the free tuition and call it a day.
Not really true for me, but I would certainly feel that way if it were.
4
@A. Man
Please tell me where the $75,000.00 part time jobs are.
1
I agree that there is hypocrisy here, but it would be more appropriate to pin it on the faculty and administration of Harvard itself, and not "liberalism" in general.
Harvard's use of legacy preferences, faculty preferences, and donor preferences comes from the self-interest of its own staff, not liberalism. Liberalism itself, by any definition, opposes hereditary privilege. Harvard absolutely deserves to be attacked for how it perpetuates class privilege in so many ways and it is hypocritical, but this isn't due to the liberalism of is staff, but in spite of it.
A more original question and argument about Harvard and the other elite colleges is if the United States benefits from having such an inegalitarian higher education system compared to say, Canada.
The unequal distribution of endowment wealth in the US mirrors the unequal distribution of personal wealth. Harvard and Yale alone have as much endowment money as all private colleges in the South.
Over the years, the importance of the elite colleges has grown. The Supreme Court is but one example of this, where now 9/9 justices attended Harvard or Yale for law school (though RBG finished at Columbia due to her husband's career)
In my opinion measures to equalize endowment wealth and a ceiling on tax deductions for donations (because the deduction disproportionately benefits already-rich colleges) are appropriate.
64
@In NJ
I recognize the problem, but look -- these colleges do serve a purpose, by providing an appropriate education, taught by the best scholars, to the best students.
Rather than leveling them to the questionable level of a typical state school (and remember that education is only half of a university's function -- basic research is just as important to society), it seems to me that we should make it possible for students to attend the best universities on the basis of merit rather than wealth.
It would be better to have a talented poor student attend Yale than a George W. Bush, or Penn rather than a Donald Trump.
I'd note too that research resources (and often teaching resources as well) are terrible at most of Europe's state universities. The great American and British universities crowd out almost all of the universities of Europe in international rankings, for the simple reason that they are well endowed rather than living on a shoestring.
2
This is a little bit off of the subject, but when politicians here in the US talk about free university education for everyone, I don’t think that most realize that other countries’ free university education is offered on a strict meritocracy by testing. Even the UK, which has a hybrid system, offers full financial scholarships solely on testing merit regardless of need. The French, who have a national standardized curriculum and very few students in private schools, are stymied by the fact that relatively few poor students qualify for university. This may be due to the tendency of wealthier parents to either give or pay for their children to have extensive private tutoring from a fairly early age. I think that the French example shows that a strict meritocracy with full financial aid would not help increase diversity and that legacy students would still probably have the advantage of their preparation.
83
@Julia Key
Most countries that offer 'free' university [ I think we all know that it is not really free] also impose significant caps on who can attend university.
9
@Julia Key
It's inevitable in a country with a history of meritocracy that the poor will be less likely to attend university, because IQ and behavioral traits are highly correlated with educational success and all are strongly correlated with economic success.
However, there are always poor students who do have the ability to succeed at a university and are unable to attend because of financial concerns.
These kids are an underserved population. Too often, we focus on sending kids to university who can't make it there because they lack sufficient preparation, intelligence, or diligence, while kids who do have these qualities are excluded by finances.
It is the difference between the old, selective, and free City College, called then the "Harvard of the Working Class," and the tuition-charging City College of open admissions.
It seems to me that we should focus financial resources on the kids who actually could benefit from them, which would require offering a free education (and help with living expenses) to qualified students rather than an often unaffordable education to unqualified ones, but political considerations, namely, that some groups do better than others, make that difficult to achieve.
3
There is a tacit assumption here that parents who attended elite universities are summarily 1% or gigantic donors. I don't dispute that there are significant economic differences between graduates of elite colleges and pretty much the rest of the world. I graduated from one of these universities (non-legacy) and my daughter is now applying to my alma mater -- not because she is a legacy, but because she fell in love with the school when she toured it, and it has top programs for her interests. The admit rate for this school is less than 10%, so tens of thousands of well-qualified applicants are rejected every year. If the fact that I went there gives her a small advantage vs. a demographically identical applicant, so be it. And while my daughter was raised in a more affluent household than either of her parents, we are nowhere near the 1%, my annual donation to the school is a pittance, and despite starting her 529 when she was a baby, if she is admitted (and that's a BIG if -- no matter what, her chances, like any other applicant's, are slim), tuition is going to sting. So if in the absurdity that is now college admissions, legacy helps a tiny bit as a point of differentiation (again, vs. a demographically identical applicant -- I'm not indicting diversity initiatives here, which I fully support), it is what it is -- but I take issue with the assumption that just because an applicant is a legacy s/he is less qualified - or rich as Croesus.
25
@honeywhite
I don't see anywhere that Nick said every applicant who is a legacy is less qualified or rich. All he is saying is that being a legacy, and (perhaps more to the point) having a parent who can afford to fork over a huge donation, should not offer such a huge admissions advantage.
Also agree that we need some more judges and Supreme Court Justices who didn't attend Harvard or Yale. There are other law schools, some of them not even on the Eastern seaboard, which do an excellent job of educating lawyers. Some of our current justices should consider hiring clerks from the University of Chicago, University of Michigan, even the University of Texas!
16
The 1% only support diversity in elite schools if it benefits them with zero opportunity cost. The meritocracy applies to others not them. They will gladly increase racial and socioeconomic diversity in their elite schools, but not at the cost of spots for their own children who are held to lower admission standards as legacies.
23
I lived in Cambridge and graduated from Cambridge High and Latin School. I was admitted to Harvard as part of the Class of 1964. There was no legacy involved. My grandparents came to this country from Armenia. Because my family had no money Harvard gave me a $1200 scholarship out of a tuition bill of $1250. Sorry but I have nothing but affection and admiration for the College.
59
Sorry, Mr. Kristof, but this was an easy subject to tackle (even though not addressed as often as it should be). Affirmative action is far and away a more difficult one, there being excellent arguments on both sides of that issue. My own (partial) solution, especially in view of the much-discussed- and prohibitively expensive- idea that state universities should offer free tuition to all comers: our government should make that same offer to the top 10 or 15% of every graduating class of every public high school in America. Except that such admissions should be granted not only at state colleges but at for-profit universities, as well (with a certain number of open seats reserved for them each and every year- at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and even Wharton!). Let high school students in the public education system compete for high grades (following the Chinese example) knowing full well the kinds of rewards that are involved here. Never mind their income or their parents' income and never mind their race, religion, gender and ethnicity. Obviously, there lies a potential for graft and favoritism on the part of teachers and principals, and so such a system would need to be scrupulously monitored. Even so, it's a better solution than anything we've got at the present time.
3
What Mr. Kristof leaves out about legacy admissions students is that they almost invariably pay full freight. The “sticker” price is usually about 25% higher than the average cost incurred by colleges per student. That means that 4 legacy students essentially pay the tuition fees of one scholarship/need-based student. Reduce the amount of legacy students and fewer scholarships can be awarded. Private colleges are businesses, despite the non-profit status most of them elect. They need the revenue to stay open.
112
@Shiv: So? Most of those legacy students can afford to pay "full freight." Anyway, their parents can.
16
@Shiv - Citation? That might be true, but I couldn't find a single thing supporting this in a google search. Given how rich people are gaming the system and paying zero taxes, not going to believe this unless I see proof. A real estate developer writing off losses so he doesn't pay taxes may very well be submitting for financial aid. If you think otherwise, you are naive.
18
@Lauren Financial aid isn't based just on income; student and parental assets are considered as well.
2
This is a real problem, but it's silly to blame it on "liberalism." The "legacy" system has been around since long before universities became bastions of "liberalism." And by the way, that "liberalism" may infest the English and Gender Studies departments, but the pressures to maintain the legacy system are all about catering to the plutocracy that runs American life now, which wants to protect and perpetuate itself, regardless of how it feels about gay marriage. Its survival as a fossil of the old conservative domination of elite universities is a symptom of the corporatization of the universities and of American life in general -- the very opposite of "liberalism."
159
I went to Dartmouth, non-legacy. When I applied for my dorm room, all the close in rooms were taken, because legacy acceptees (if that is a proper expression) had their room preferences made AT THE TIME OF THEIR BIRTH by their father. I didn't get a decent room until I was a junior, and by then, I was practically living in the chemistry library. I came from a center city high school, so I didn't take a lot of advanced courses (this was before AP). The first year was really tough, but at least I exempted out of mandatory PE, unlike a lot of my classmates. :)
43
Wealthy businessmen will pass their wealth and business assets to their children. The legacy admission policies make sure that these future leaders and employers will have the best education money can buy. They will also socialise and breed with others of their social class. Harvard, and the other Ivy League Schools, have long understood the value of including money in the mix.
14
Even if you get into Harvard or Yale or insert undergraduate college here, if you (family) don’t have the money for the silk roped eating clubs, the secret societies, the spring break trip, the summer trip, the Greek dues, etc... you won’t have full access to the true social capital of the non-academic undergraduate privileged country clubs.
164
So what?!? And before you trot out the line about being born on third base, realize that at some point, SOMEONE got there through a triple or several singles or a steal. For instance, who has more right to the benefits of Sam Walton’s business acumen, his heirs or the guy collecting shopping carts in the parking lot?
3
@Bob
Doesn't really matter. One you're in those schools, you're in -- you'll find a plenitude of opportunities. I, and most of the kids I went to school with, didn't give a fig about Greeks and secret societies -- and honestly, neither did the Bonesman I know, who would have become an architect Skull and Bones or not, because that is what he wanted to do.
Maybe you won't be grandfathered into the presidency like George W. Bush, but for most kids at an Ivy, that is hardly a pressing issue.
5
@Bob
" .. you won’t have full access to the true social capital of the non-academic undergraduate privileged country clubs .."
Oh, really? Ever read about the $$$ summer internships at GOOG or APPL?
Then, again, if one is in low-demand academic major -- that's on them, and no one else.
3
Although many decry legacy admissions, similar to how conservatives decry affirmative action, the real problem is admissions for athletes. Legacies and affirmative action students receive a 17% 'leg up' in admissions, but athletes enjoy a boost of three (3) times that, 51%. Athletes are often much less qualified in terms of scores and grades, underperform relative to equally busy peers, and contribute little to the university or its life. In contrast, the largest donors to universities are high academic performers, alumni and their children, and the very successful, none of which are more often athletes.
Minor note: Removing athletes from the mix would not change the percentage of minorities at the school. It is not a race issue.
218
@James Igoe
Great point. College sports and sports in general carry way too much weight in our culture, and too much time and money is wasted on them. Students are better off in technical fields.
114
@James Igoe
That is true in just about any Division I school.
I'm always impressed when a Division I college team for a men's major league sport actually has more than 50% of its future pro athletes actually graduate. As a contrast, women's Division I college team for their major league sports graduate at least 80% of their students who go onto pro careers. And Division I college teams for Olympic sports (like gymnastics, swimming, and track & field) have similar graduation rates to the rest of the school.
To heck with the school--for men's Major League sports, college is a cheap farm team and graduation is seen as irrelevant.
(not letting the Ivies off the hook but the problem is endemic)
15
@James Igoe
You and Nick need to grip the real-politik in legacies and college sports. It is akin the very large numbers of students from Beijing, Shanghai, etc., in mega-universities.
And why? Money, of course. The student from Beijing is paying <150% more than the in-state student, thus subsidizing the in-state student. (Plus, they are more often in the library, which is another matter).
And legacies? They donate more.
And college sports? Reality, Nick -- those are fund-raising events, college branding events. Why did the Ivys join college cable sports networks? It was the $$$$. Really. Seriously.
And to the point: football funds most of the women's and minor men's varsity sports. Look up the numbers, you'll find them stone-cold helpful.
Easy to sit at a PC and pontificate about noble goals. Try to replace the funds that would be lost. Lot of brutally-hard work would be required to replace those funds. Any volunteers?
13
I figure the best thing you can do to increase your chances - outside of being the child of the President, Chief Justice, or some other world leader - is to be basically qualified, and willing to pay the full shot. You apply early decision and supply no FAFSA information. The early decision pool has a higher acceptance rate, and you accept what you are offered. Schools use early decision to find a way to advertise themselves as needs-based, but pull in a whole lot of people who will pay the full shot.
That is the process the legacies and wealthier kids use. They basically guarantee that they will pay whatever it takes. No small portion of the early decision pool are the legacies that we look at as white affirmative action.
The early decision pool is the group a school can use to manage how much aid they give out, and attract those who require no aid. Look at it less as "white affirmative action" and more as money management.You get better donations AND full tuition paid.
The schools are non-profits but they are still businesses. You just have to follow the money and influence.
33
they are often also nifty tax dodges if you play your cards right.
besides, who cares if you have a guaranteed percentage of obnoxious, drunken idiots unintereted in lernin for its own sake, as long a they pay full tuition and encourage their moneybags relatives to build new labs and dorms?