Harvard has over $50 Billion in its endowment. If it wanted to expand its exceptional educational access across America, it very well could.<p>Harvard is primarily a brand for wealthy people, and they need the non-wealthy cohort to justify the legitimacy of their degree. Harvard does have world class institutions, but that’s primarily to reinforce the brand they’re selling to wealthy alumni and donors who wants their kids to enter the exclusive club.
I've long believed that universities' non-profit status should depend on admissions not considering legacy or donor status.<p>If Harvard wants to preference legacy students, that's their right. But they (and their endowment) shouldn't get a tax break for it.
I’m glad affirmative action was shot down. I hope legacy goes away too.<p>While legacy admissions might not be a judicial issue, what about legislation that says no federal funding will be provided to institutions who use special standards for legacy applicants?<p>If you are a private institution and want these programs, that is your legal right (since it likely does not cross legal lines around protected classes), but the taxpayer shouldn’t subsidize it.
Something of a hot take, but I'd contend the Legacy admissions are there to the benefit of the people who earned their place!<p>As someone who got into an "elite" university despite not coming from an "elite" background - the Legacy admissions are the reason people like me got the opportunity to integrate with people who otherwise wouldn't have given me a second glance. Being in a study group with a prince, going to a club with an heiress, or sculling with a billionaires' kid is not an opportunity most parents can give their children outside of sending them to a place like Harvard.<p>It's horrible that the world is so fixated on status, but you don't get to choose what game you play always - just how you play it. Ingratiating yourself with a Fortune 100 CEO's son can reap many orders of magnitude more benefit than being surrounded by randos who are better than him at calculus.<p>The value prop of a place like Harvard isn't that they're particularly good at teaching, it's the idea that, as a sufficiently smart and lucky regular person, you might have a shot at getting into an otherwise exclusive circle. No guarantees, and may people can't crack it (or choose not to, because it feels so slimy) even when given the opportunity - but Legacies are part of Harvard's value proposition.
For institutions that try to paint themselves as the epitome of equity, the fact they maintain legacy is a glaring point that shows they really don't care about equity, they care about money and donations.
This always barks up the wrong tree: why, as Peter Thiel asked, haven't colleges with decades or centuries long track records of successful graduates been interested in expanding their student body 2,3 or even 10x over a phase in period to scale up the gifts its institution brings to the world?<p>For most people, outside of technical training, scarcity of "high quality" education is either artificial, or education is more about signaling competitive success by mere admission to these "elite" institutions rather than anything actually learned.
While this issue this is clearly beyond the scope of the 14th ammendment, I suspect most Americans would strongly support legislation to ban the use of family relations in university admission decisions where public funds are in play.
Aren't the legacy students the real benefit of going to Harvard? AFAICT the social network you get from Harvard is the real benefit.<p>It's not really the education there that makes the name stand out: <a href="https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/harvard-university-2155/overall-rankings" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/harvard-university-2155...</a> doesn't show any trends of it being particularly good at any subjects. Maybe CS theory, but that's not exactly a competitive area for universities.
legacy student preference is obviously an issue, but my question is why haven't any billionaires started their own universities to compete with the established Ivy league schools that are rejecting talent?<p>Almost all of these elite private universities were started by random rich people and gained prestige over time. Modern rich people seem unambitious compared to people in the past. People forget that Harvard and Stanford are named after people, they weren't always these giant institutions
It's sad that the entire discussion around college admission policies starts and ends at Harvard. Harvard (and the rest of the ivies in general) are a special case in the education system. It is private, has possibly the strongest brand in the world and a $50B+ war chest. It also graduates a few thousand students every year. It is a university by the rich and for the rich. Harvard is really not what we should be using as the barometer for education for the masses.<p>The conversation should instead be focused on admissions and funding for the hundreds of public universities in the country. It's the responsibility of your state's university system to educate you, not Harvard. If you have a problem, knock on the doors of your state legislature instead. Why exactly does a university fully funded by taxpayer dollars have a system of legacy admissions?
"[...] recruited athletes, legacies, those on the dean’s interest list, and children of faculty and staff (ALDCs). Among white admits, over 43% are ALDC."<p>Nearly half of white students get (got) a VIP lane into Harvard.
These discussions have never been about fairness, it’s about special interest groups getting what they want.<p>Believe it or not, but American universities have never been about simply taking the highest scorers. They want their graduates to be among the elite in all areas, which inherently requires representation from all relevant backgrounds.<p>If you want elite artists it doesn’t serve that interest <i>necessarily</i> to pick a mediocre artist with a perfect SAT vs award winning high school artist with mediocre grades.
Don’t miss that the effect on athletes is quite a bit larger than the effect on legacies! See page 4.<p>Legacy admissions are indefensible, but athletic admissions are even less so. (Less than 0, I guess?)<p>No one outside of Harvard cares how their fencing team does and (I presume) 99% of current Harvard students don’t either.<p>If you want to find the group that is most unjustly benefitted by a dumb feature of the admissions process it’s in my view athletes.
75% of all students would be rejected if you took away one selling point.<p>- Johnny got in b/c he was all-state lacrosse. Probably would not have got in if just all-county.<p>- Sally got in because she was an underreprestent minority--probably would not have gotten in if she were Asian.<p>- Jean-Luc got in b/c something thinks he's the next Jonathan Safran Foer. His math scores indicate he'd be a good candiate for Lehigh, though.
To me, a more interesting question is how the students do after four years. Are the legacy students clustered toward the bottom 20% of the class? Are they evenly distributed in a way that suggests that legacy status didn't matter? Or did they do better, at least on average?<p>The admissions formula is so non-scientific that I don't think you can measure whether they would have gotten in or not.
The rhetorical pivot here is really stunning. Seemingly the same people who 24 hours ago held that Elite Universities are Drowning Themselves in a Toxic Woke Culture...<p>... are now, without irony or introspection, arguing that, no, Elite Universities are Cloistered Hives of In-Group Kleptocracy.<p>Which is it?
The Ivies are about reproducing their own power and influence, not about "merit". Merit plays a role in that, but accepting rich kids with influential parents, even if the kid is a dumbass, still advances their goals by creating network effects with the parent.<p>This is why they do bullshit like reject Chelsea Manning for a fellowship and accept Sean Spicer instead. They are laser focused on being a hub of establishment influence, not about being "right".<p>This is why Brown just appointed Ashish Jha as their Dean of Public Health when he has demonstrably contributed to the deaths of many many people without resolving the pandemic. Why would you appoint a loser? Because he has an in with establishment power and did what they wanted.
I have HTTPS-everywhere and the HTTPS version of this page has an SSL certificate that expired 2 years ago. Maybe with a smaller legacy student fraction they could keep their SSL up to date!
Not raised in US, but live in US now (with my European master education).<p>Took me a while to read it "Harvard Legacy" and not "Hogwarts Legacy".
What would Harvard look like without the contributions from the people who make these students legacies? Serious question.<p>Seems like it's just part of the cost of accepting the money from donors.<p>Everyone wants the brand of Harvard without donating a couple million. There is your avenue to compete for admission. It's their place, why do people feel entitled to make their own rules to get in?<p>Seriously, just go somewhere else. Harvard is status without necessarily having substance. Clamoring to get in only lends to the status.
People complaining about the fairness about legacies and donor children miss the point that these people are half the reasons people care about these top private schools.<p>If you want a meritocratic institution that is actually reasonably priced and provide great educations, then that's what a state school is for. Or like the few private institutions that are actually meritocratic (MIT, caltech)<p>Elite schools are for the children of elites who will inherit some amount of that power (political, wealth, ect) and for a small cream of normal people who have the iq, eq and luck to be chosen. The goal is to let these people mix. That way in 20 years after graduation when a brilliant mathematician has discovers a powerful algorithm that he has an inkling that it could apply to the stock market, he can phone up a college roommate that had an extremely wealthy dad in finance. The rich heir roommate can join and fund the venture that might billions on the stock market. Or the fact that an official in the state department went to college with the then daughter of South Africa's president, chances are that daughter still is influential. They can talk and maybe broker some aspect of foreign policy. They are finishing schools for the elite. Whether we like it or not, society's next generation of elite includes the most capable children of the current elite. Evn if those children are less capable than the most capable of the general populace, they stand to inherit quite a bit and they will have an outsized impact on the country and world. Their parent's and ancestors influence is important in their acceptance process because it's important in real life.<p>There is no real solution to this. There's a reason that despite America growing in pop insanely, foreign applications increasing exponentially, billions being donated to them and everyone going to college, these elite institutions have barely changed class sizes.<p>The exclusivity and mixing of the different types of people is a feature of these places. If you somehow get these top institutions to be more meritocraric like MIT or Caltech or increase overall student body size like ASU all that will happen is that individuals with power, wealth and influence will simply slowly coordinate to send their kids to different schools and soon enough those schools will face this scrutiny again.<p>Now I can understand that it is extremely unfair that when all our Supreme Court justices, significant numbers of national politicians, power brokers and many individuals with outsized influence come from a few institutions. If you are one of the many intelligent, hardworking and capable individuals who don't get in when others who are probably just as good as you might, it is extremely annoying. Their entire trajectory of life is changed because of luck that you didn't get. But sometime life is like that. College does not exist in a vacuum and just like most things in life, influence and wealth are powerful.<p>Those with power tend to want their descendants to have some of that at least and they will do what they can to perpetute that.<p>I want to say I'm not saying that this is perfect or even great. I'm just saying the way humans work and the way incentive structures are setup, this is how it is. To not mention this is to be ignorant. If you want to improve the status quo you need to acknowledge the reality of the situation and plan around this.<p>I did not attend one of these institutions for the record.
Interesting! And if they only based admission on the actual skills [test scores] of the students, it would likely look more like Stuyvesant.<p>- ~75% Asians<p>- ~20 White<p>- ~2% Hispanic<p>- ~1% Black<p>- ~2% Unknown/other<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_High_School#Demographics_and_SHSAT_controversy" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_High_School#Demogra...</a>
Private education is a failure. It should be a public good. Admissions processes shouldn't need to turn away applicants who otherwise meet some minimum requirement (e.g. completed highschool). If they are, its a sign that demand exceeds supply and more schools should be built and/or existing ones should be expanded.
I didn’t go to Harvard but lived in Cambridge and had a bunch of friends there. Everyone I met was pretty fucking smart, but I guess that could be selection bias.