California has become the fourth state to ban legacy admissions in the college application process, a practice that has long been criticized as favoring white or wealthy students based on their familial alumni connections.
“In California, everyone should be able to get ahead through merit, skill, and hard work,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a Monday statement. “The California Dream shouldn’t be accessible to just a lucky few, which is why we’re opening the door to higher education wide enough for everyone, fairly.”
The decision affects private and nonprofit universities. The University of California system eliminated legacy admission preferences in 1998, according to Newsom’s office.
I’m sure the Right that pushed so hard to get rid of affirmative action will also be behind this as they are very against discrimination. /s
Good on California though, if the Supreme Court doesn’t want to help minorities, then we shouldn’t be giving white/rich students a stacking advantage either.
(For some reason I thought of it as a game with buff stacking)
CA banned race base admission in the '90s in favor of a system that guaranteed admissions to top percentile students.
Post Students for Fair Admissions, schools can’t use race alone as a plus or minus nation wide. Like California has been doing it for the past 3 decades.
Universities’ recent experiences confirm the efficacy of a colorblind rule. To start, universities prohibited from engaging in racial discrimination by state law continue to enroll racially diverse classes by race-neutral means. For example, the University of California purportedly recently admitted its “most diverse undergraduate class ever,” despite California’s ban on racial preferences.
(THOMAS, J., concurring) (arguing universities can consider “[r]ace-neutral policies” similar to those adopted in States such as California and Michigan, and that universities can consider “status as a first-generation college applicant,” “financial means,” and “generational inheritance or otherwise”)
Thomas goes on and calls out the issue legacy admissions in his lengthy concurrence.
Worse, the classifications that JUSTICE JACKSON draws are themselves race-based stereotypes. She focuses on two hypothetical applicants, John and James, competing for admission to UNC. John is a white, seventh-generation legacy at the school, while James is black and would be the first in his family to attend UNC. Post, at 3. JUSTICE JACKSON argues that race-conscious admission programs are necessary to adequately compare the two applicants. As an initial matter, it is not clear why James’s race is the only factor that could encourage UNC to admit him; his status as a first-generation college applicant seems to contextualize his application. But, setting that aside, why is it that John should be judged based on the actions of his great-great-great-grandparents?
The ban on legacy admissions will ultimately change very little in my opinion as the the majority of legacy candidates come from wealthy families with ties to the university. They’ll just call a legacy candidate something else because we all know this won’t really be enforced.
You really want to make higher education fair you have to take money out of it and force institutions to take in candidates fairly.
This should be done everywhere. No students who would have otherwise made the cut should be bumped off the list just because other students have connections. The application process should be blind and fair.
inb4 conservatives whine about how this is somehow “white culture erosion” or similar horseshit
Illinois, Maryland, Colorado, and Virginia are the other 4. No idea why this article says “fourth”, California is the fifth.
Didn’t even know ‘legacy admissions’ were a thing.
Higher education is truly a scam.
Oh yeah, it’s how you get entire families who went to Harvard, even the obviously unintelligent ones.
I have some friends who are professors at Ivy League universities, who also teach in American medium-security prisons on their own time, and they have repeatedly told me that the prisoners are better students.
I’m not saying that’s because of legacy admissions, but it’s also not not because of legacy admissions.
