In her November 17 column, Erin Harkless calls for an end to scrutiny over legacy admissions, charging that such inquiries and their implicit motivation to end preferential treatment discriminate against students who happen to be children of alumni. I disagree. Rather than “legislating the college admissions process,” such a Congressional fact-finding mission can be expected to publicly illuminate the disparate treatment afforded to undeserving students.
There is no denying that being born into a family of financially able parents who place a premium on education is an enormous benefit to the future college applicant. The child of such parents may benefit from attending a nationally recognized public high school that relies on sky-high property taxes, or she may seriously benefit from attending a $30,000 a year private school that sends a greater percentage of students to Ivy League schools than otherwise. The student may find academic supports through private tutors and SAT preparation courses that less advantaged families cannot even consider. Finally and perhaps most egregiously, the student may benefit from notoriously expensive college admissions consulting services that don’t even bother to have offices in lower-income environments.
While each of these cases illustrates the misplaced priorities of our society, they fundamentally differ from the case of legacy admissions preferences. The student at the renowned high school must study enough and perform well enough to earn a competitive class rank and GPA. The student in the SAT prep course will not find his score improves through osmosis. The recipient of college counseling must have credentials to place into the application. The student who is a child of an alum must do absolutely nothing to warrant preferential treatment other than be born.
Affirmative action programs rightfully exist to provide opportunities for students who are born into historically disadvantaged groups. Legacy students, on the other hand, are born into quite the opposite. Having a great-great grandparent who attended Harvard University is a distinctly different situation than having a great-great grandparent who was forced into slavery in one of the worst chapters of American history. To even compare the two is to hold a fundamental misunderstanding of the value of social equality.
According to Harkless’s research, our admissions office denies that legacy students are given preference in admission and instead purports that our admissions process is “holistic.” Such a claim is patently absurd. Washington University-arguably more so than a great many of its counterparts-relies heavily on alumni giving to boost the University’s reputation. Our alumni giving rank of 9 in the infamous US News rankings far outweighs our academic peer assessment rank of 4.2. Alumni give more money when their children attend their alma mater. In turn, universities make more money when they admit legacies. Describing the admissions process as “holistic” is nothing more than the University’s way of relieving itself of the scrutiny faced by the University of Michigan earlier this year. Without a formula for admissions, the University may place whatever weight it pleases on whatever qualification it pleases-it just doesn’t have to make these preferences known to the public.
It is time to look beyond the na‹ve and idealistic conception of the University as an institution that exists solely to provide intellectual opportunities for deserving students. While it does this too, the private University is fundamentally a corporation that exists to make an enormous profit off its customers. There is no reason other than profit motive to grant a child of an alum even the “point of interest” Tarbouni claims.
What the Congressional fact-finding legislation should seek, then, is not interference with college admissions but a call for honesty in the admissions process. If the University wishes to grant legacy preference in order to potentially bring in more money for the University, it should say so openly. Disguising this motive by lumping it in with affirmation action programs serves only to threaten the existence of the latter, which is ultimately more damaging for the progress of our society.