Opinion: The one group with a huge advantage in college admissions
Harvard University’s admissions policies are once again being challenged . A group called Lawyers for Civil Rights filed a complaint with the US Department of Education last week alleging that the children of wealthy donors and alumni, who it says are overwhelmingly White, receive an unfair “legacy preference” in admissions.
The complaint came just days after the US Supreme Court ruled against Harvard in a landmark case ending decades of affirmative action at American colleges and universities. And it ensures that the contentious debate over who gets admitted to the nation’s most elite schools will continue to roil institutions of higher learning in the United States.
LINK TO ORIGINAL ARTICLE: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/opinion-the-one-group-with-a-huge-advantage-in-college-admissions/ar-AA1dDJOK?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=6e94aba7439e449ab68ea8fe721d6b77&ei=33
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I suspect that this will end up before SCOTUS.
That would be the whole point of the lawsuit. I think there is too much emphasis on HS and Collage sports anyway. They should all be downgraded to "club" status with coaching/staff as non-paying voluntary positions. Schools are for learning - all the same lessons of team building can be learned as club and not multi-million dollar industries.
The major sports bring in a lot of money to the universities including TV rights. It's the minor league for the NFL/NBA etc. On the other hand, paying coaches millions of dollars a year plus all their staff is, IMO a waste of money if education is really the mission of the universities.
Yes, it's all about the benjamins, unfortunately.
make legacy admissions pay 4 years up front and if they don't maintain a yearly grade point average in the upper 30 percentile toss them out and award the remaining prepaid tuition to students that want to go to college. or as an alternative, make colleges match free tuition to a qualifying student for every legacy student.
I like that one.
add honorably discharged or disabled veterans to the free tuition list for any college they qualify to attend too...
I guess we don't know the difference between Government Mandate (Affirmative Action) and the Operations Policies of a business.
Of course, this lawsuit and its final outcome will pertain to many more schools than Harvard.
Per Justice Gorsuch as shown in the article:
I do like what UNC-Chapel Hill did in response to the SCOTUS AA decision.
MN is paying tuition to state schools -
Because of this ND says they will have problems...
Perhaps if ND worried more about their schools than banning abortion they wouldn't be so damn worried.
Good for MN.
Are legacy admissions a problem at public universities and colleges? This seems like another legalese Trojan horse to expand Federal education authority over private education.
The linked article attempts to conflate legacy preferences with athletic preferences in admissions (which is an issue at both private and public universities and colleges). IMO the two aren't similar enough to make a convincing argument. But the point of comparing legacy and athletic preferences may have been to introduce a red herring anyway.
IMO what is driving this as an issue is that elite private universities are elite because they can be more selective in admissions. Public universities are not allowed to be as selective in admissions so cannot compete. The motivation for these types of lawsuits appear to arise from class distinctions (and to a great extent by class envy). Maybe the bourgeois rich are envious of old money; simply being obscenely wealthy is not elite enough.
UNC-Chapel Hill is not an elite private univerity and they were the other school in the lawsuit.
It also seems that Justice Gorsuch has a much different opinion than yours.
Odd that John MacIntosh (and CNN?) omitted UNC Chapel Hill as a problem; especially since UNC was listed in the lawsuit (or was it?). The issue highlights legacy admissions as a problem but that does not suggest that all legacy admissions are a problem. Remember this is a more liberal issue and liberals do tend to be selective in identifying problems. Would legacy admissions for black graduates be a problem? Especially if affirmative action provided the opportunity for the legacy admission?
How so? Gorsuch pointed out that affirmative action was not the sole means of achieving diversity. But that does not indicate whether or not governmental requirements for diversity are applicable to private universities. Does the government have authority to impose such requirements on private institutions?
The issue being raised as a problem is preferential treatment in private university admissions. Affirmative action was government imposed preferential treatment based primarily upon race. Weren't there legacy admissions before affirmative action was removed from the admissions process? Does removing that affirmative action requirement preclude preferential treatment based on factors other than race?
It's especially big in the CA univ system, with USC lead the pack.
USC is a private institution.
My bad, thanks Kavika.
I don’t think this is a problem for the courts to solve. We’re not talking about protected classifications (e.g., race) here. There’s no law that says colleges have to admit the smartest people, and if government created one, it would probably be unconstitutional for multiple reasons.
State legislatures or Congress could address the issue by tying it to the spending power. Virtually all schools - even private ones - get some government money. Additionally, the federal government guarantees student loans. Future legislation could attach conditions to these funds. For example, the school only sees funding if it does away with legacy admissions.
Like most people, I think legacy admissions are generally bullshit. However, if your Daddy’s name is on the gym because he paid for it, I won’t object to you being admitted. Seems fair.
Agree.
Didn't the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and Brown v. Board of Education, hold that the right to public education must be made available to all on equal terms and that the time for making distinctions based on race had passed.
The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 and although it was absolutely the right thing to do it did not in practice provide equal protection nor did Brown v Board of Education provide equal education. It took years and a lot of strife to have it fully implemented.
Not exactly. That would be too sweeping and general to enforce. It was focused on race. The Court held that separate educational facilities based on race were inherently unequal. I know I’m cutting you off mid-sentence here, but I think this part of what you’re saying is maybe what’s behind the concern for legacy admissions.
A lot of people think there should be some pure objective set of standards that treats everyone totally equal, but I don’t think that’s ever going to happen.
In a perfect world... The reality is that the mantra "it's not what you know but who you know" rules the day when talking about the "elite" universities across the country. People will always be bitching about admissions to these institutions because having that name on the diploma and access to other people in highly connected places by virtue of attendance is the benefit of attendance.
The inequalities that occur in education from grade school up to college, the disparate outcomes arising from where a school is located, and how those schools are funded need to be addressed first or at least concurrently because the people have to get to graduation from high school before they can think about applying to college because with unequal investment we get unequal results. A great teacher is the first place to look, and we are chasing away great teachers because they don't want to deal with all the political bullshit that only increased during the pandemic.