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.
Using a bad faith argument from Thomas undercuts your position. The way the Right frames Affirmative Action as “reverse racism” and part of their over arching attack on DEI is all done in bad faith. They know removing a policy like Affirmative Action allows them to filter out those they see as “less than” under the cover of equality, when white people have been operating from a position of great advantage, while continuing to chip away at any gains by people of color.
The US has used things like Jim Crow, Redlining, White Flight, and on and on in order to keep an equality divide. Meanwhile white people could always buy homes/land and pass on generational wealth, putting white kids ahead of kids of color from day one, and compounding generation after generation. And that lack of generational wealth plays into a divide in the quality of education as well. And the strawman of “but there are poor white people” is also often trotted out to defend “race-neutral policies” like “admissions to top percentile students”. But having poor white people doesn’t somehow erase generations of oppression against minorities. And people creating a “top percentile student” policy know that statistically they still end up with a more white population as a result.
So a policy like Affirmative Action shouldn’t be framed as giving a minority advantage, it’s more like trying to level the field (for at least a percentage of students) that is titled in one direction.
/rant
I would recommend you read his concurrence before you make comments as to the nature of his argument. I get it’s a lengthy one at 58 pages but as you seem to suggest in your comment strawmanning people in not a good practice.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf
But if that’s too long I’ll try and summarize with a few lines from it.
“The Constitution abhors classifications based on race, not only because those classifications can harm favored races or are based on illegitimate motives, but also because every time the government places citizens on racial registers and makes race relevant to the provision of burdens or benefits, it demeans us all.”
“enunciated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States: that all men are created equal, are equal citizens, and must be treated equally before the law.”
““[o]ur Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537, 559 (1896) (Harlan, J., dissenting).”
And here’s the reading of a portion:
https://apps.oyez.org/player/#/roberts13/opinion_announcement_audio/25581
Just as it is wrong for white people to benefit from preferential treatment over black people who were detrimented (such as under slavery or Jim Crow). It is wrong for black people to benefit from preferential treatment over asian people who were detrimented (such as under Japanese interment or the Chinese exclusion act).
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.
