I kind of enjoy the irony of this policy being supported by virtually everyone, other than the ostensibly-progressive Harvard admissions committee.
Someone here has already made the argument that the entire affirmative action set up at Harvard was just a way to hide the rich and well-connected from any meritocratic scrutiny.
Relatedly, if Harvard isn’t a good place for smart and not rich kids to socialize with rich kids, why would people want to go there? The point of Harvard is that you can become pals with a senator’s son. There are other schools if pure academic achievement is your primary interest. I don’t think some of the students discussing this topic realize why they want to go to Harvard, which is partly because of the legacies. Of course, this is a pretty cynical take, but I didn’t really understand the schools I was applying for at all when I was at that age.
You can do this at relatively less selective Public Schools as well. One of my friends who attended UIUC was roommates with the son of the CEO of a Fortune 100 Tech Company, and close friends with the son of the CTO of another unrelated Tech Fortune 100.
Another one of my buddies at UCSF ended up rooming with the daughter of owner of one of the major DNC SuperPACs.
Public schools absolutely have strong alumni networks as well despite not necessarily having legacy admissions.
Also, I went to an Ivy-or-Ivy Adjacent program and my roommate also vomited on my bed after getting plastered during rush week (I accidently returned the favor a weeks after during my rush).
> Pretty high if you went to a flagship or top tier public university (eg. UCLA, Cal, Big 10, UDub, etc).
I went to a Big 10 university.
"Some 843 UW–Madison alumni serve as CEOs, and nearly 16,000 hold an executive management position. Additionally, as of November 2018, the current CEOs of 14 Fortune 500 companies have attended UW–Madison, the most of any university in the United States." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Wisconsin%E2%80%...
That sounds like a lot, but in any given semester, UW enrollment is 40-50K, and it awards 10K degrees every year.
You might have attended in a different era as well.
I attended a very affluent Bay Area HS (there kind where the VPs and C-Suites of tech and biotech companies sent their kids) and they overwhelmingly sent their kids to top public schools (they were targeting top STEM programs, which by default skewed public excluding Stanford/MIT/CMU/Cornell). A couple of their kids attended CS@UW Madison and most of us applied there as a backup in case we didn't get into one of the T10 CS programs.
This was the early-mid 2010s.
The key thing is going to an elite program. Doing CS at a school like UDub or UIUC means you open the door to VCs, IBs, and Founders who all also attended that elite program (as well as their equally elite parents). You might not get that network majoring in English or Horticulture at either college, but you definetly will if you're in a top program.
In addition, Asian (India, China, SK) Elites target colleges based on how the specific major they are targeting ranks. As this overwhelmingly skews STEM and Business, you end up getting a massive cohort of foreign elites at Public schools.
A lot of this is also because of targeted branding by public unis and regional private schools to undercut the more established private unis like Harvard.
For example, within India Harvard has a weaker pop culture branding and alumni network than a top CS program like Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, UIUC, or UC Berkeley.
Harvard without Legacy Admissions will still retain the Harvard brand.
For example, UCs don't offer a legacy bump, yet Berkeley and UCLA still retain a major brand presence in the Tech and Finance industry both within North America and Asia.
In fields such as Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Law, and Business Harvard does hire very strong faculty AND gives them a significant amount of funding and autonomy to continue their own research pursuits.
Also, in my own friend group and as someone who attended one of these Ivies+Ivy Adjacent Programs, just getting into either a T20 school overall or a T10 school in your field is more than enough to gain the prestige cachet needed for your field.
The alumni networks in these 20-30 public and private universities are strong enough that you'd be able to do well globally. While legacy does play a role in the undergrad experience, it's not like CMU, UT Austin, UVA, UW, or UCLA don't have students from elite backgrounds even though they might not have the street cred of "HAVHAD".
I am affirmative action-curious, in that I do not necessarily have the knee-jerk "this shouldn't have ever been allowed" reaction that many on HN do. I think the case for affirmative action is stronger than many would allow. That said, I am willing to take the SCOTUS decision for what it is, because AA was an extremely unpopular policy with admittedly terrible echoes of past injustices built into it.
Legacy admissions, on the other hand, are pure trash, and I think absolutely everyone except the beneficiaries of those policies ought to agree on that. I truly can't think of a good argument in favor of them other than "universities like money."
What’s fascinating about how this all unfolded is that Yale made a different argument in court when their legacy admissions process was under scrutiny, where they defended the practice saying it was part of upholding “its educational goals through diversity, community, and tradition”.
Testimony[1] is linked below from the NYT article[2] on the same topic.
I found the NYT article a bit persuasive in that, very few people end up going to elite institutions anyways. Regardless of race, it's a very small pool. You could allocate 100% of admission slots to one race (not a policy suggestion, but a mathematical exercise), and it wouldn't move the needle much because it's so few slots. We'd be better off trying to solve injustices in ways that broadly apply to everyone. Of course there are second-order effects of the top slots, so AA (or lack thereof) will have some impact. Like you, I think it's well-intentioned but practically there are better policy options for effectively addressing inequalities in a more direct, first-order way.
But the schools have huge impact beyond what their numbers suggest: for instance, it seems a Harvard or Yale education is a current prerequisite to sit on the US Supreme Court.
Chief Justice John Roberts: Harvard Law School (1979)
Justice Alito: Yale Law School (1975)
Justice Sotomayor Yale Law School (1979)
Justice Kegan: Harvard Law School (1986)
Justice Gorsuch: Harvard Law School (1991)
Justice Kavanaugh: Yale Law School (1990)
Justice Barrett: Notre Dame Law School (1997)
Justice Jackson: Harvard Law School (1996)
So it's 7/9 at this point. Not a pure prerequisite, but quite close. I tend to not read too much into the whole Harvard/Yale thing though, because this is largely a function of networks and sorting mechanisms. It's not like a lawyer from Yale is THAT much better than a lawyer from the University of Michigan. Maybe that's your point.
There's a law against universities discriminating on the basis of race, title VI, here's how it goes:
"No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."
That's the law. Is it legal to discriminate on the grounds of race under programs that receive Federal financial assistance?
I think it's pretty clear that it is not, not sure why the Supreme Court had to get involved in that.
What's the law for legacy admissions? They're free to do that as far as I know, what's the law that says otherwise?
There's a difference between those two things, you must agree.
The current SCOTUS says admissions is a zero-sum game. If legacy or ALDC 'quotas' somehow results in racial discrimination indirectly, yes, there is a case. We will know it through the discovery, as these schools don’t reveal these details unless courts force them to share.
A question and point on resolving racism without giving up on meritocracy:
- I tend to think scotus believes racism is/was real but the best way to fix it is for congress to vote into law an actual remedy. Instead congress whines then fund raises off it. That control vacuum does not mean scotus has to fill the void. I'm pretty sure this what Roberts thinks anyway.
- on remedy: based on a young adult's background mainly by looking at parent's income and their educational attainment, and school quality k-12, under served kids that appear to have potential could be subsized to take a kind of finishing school with the idea of getting them backfilled education wise so they could take and pass MIT like AP exams in math, science, English. It'd be like a really high end HS to get them current. Kids who don't follow through are evicted, and are required to payback costs. This way they can compete reasonably well for open seats and colleges of their choice.
We might call this the National High School Program perhaps mainly online. Congress can create and fund this. Seats are filled in time order of approved applicant only.
- remedy includes reducing or eliminating grants to private universities sitting on tons of money or have too many administrative costs. US education is too damn expensive. There has to be a way for the system to penalize stupid cost. If you've done hiring, ivy league credentials doesn't guarantee much. There are some darn good kids from state schools too
- a federal run super high school gives parents and kids a choice: state education or fed. Or state then fed later to fix shortcomings. This would also eliminate the fed/state/local control quagmire since US education is locally controlled. The fed could instead focus solely on its own school system letting parents/kids choose.
- in summary: congress has to get off their butts. Scotus would have to uphold congress' law. And if the national HS was demanding, nobody would be focused on race, which is the way we want it. It puts the focus on good kids who did good work which is also the way we want it.
I mean every democrat whined about the SCOTUS blocking the student loan decision and how it's another example of this "extremist" court blocking the will of the people. They didn't mention that decision was unanimous, which is actually really unheard of with the division on the court.
Lets just face it though...it's easier to hope SCOTUS interprets a law or order a certain way than actually have congress do their job and pass a clear law.
I agree all day long. A lot of the American malaise has its roots in congressional institutionalized incompetence (perpetual grandstanding and fund raising with no end goal beyond that) that gets fixed in courts or through executive orders.
Congress is far and away the worst of the three federal branches.
My mistake...it was not unanimous, but 6-3 like most decisions lately. However I will add comments by congress are just pushing my point further.
"They are expanding their role into acting as though they are Congress itself and that, I believe, is an expansion of power that we really must be focusing on," Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, said.
SCOTUS is not expanding their role...they are restricting executive powers and making congress do their job.
> SCOTUS is not expanding their role...they are restricting executive powers and making congress do their job
False. Congress delegated their powers to parts of the executive branch. If they feel the executive is abusing that delegation, congress can take it away at any time. It is not the job of the SCOTUS to pretend they're congress and take action on behalf of congress as they have been doing lately. All of this is blatantly partisan.
Congress created the CFPB for example, delegated some authority to the executive branch and insulated the CFPB head from presidential authority (so they could not be fired at will). The Supreme Court decided to insert their own opinion that the president has absolute authority over it, despite congress being the one creating it.
In this case they are reviewing the funding mechanism of the CFPB and because it has no funding reviewed by congress that it might be part of the executive
branch oversight and therefore the CFPB head is able to be fired by the president. All they do is review lower court decisions, which in this case have already ruled that the president has authority...so if they did nothing it would be exactly as you don't think it should be. Again SCOTUS doesn't just decided at will what to review...again like AOC thinks they should have vacated legacy admissions...as if they could just decide to do that.
Despite congress being full of lawyers, they often miss critical things when they come up with ideas like the CFPB.
There were actually 2 different cases: Biden v. Nebraska and Department of Education v. Brown. The Department of Education "won" the latter case, because it was vacated for lack of standing. Biden lost the former case, which was decided 6-3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biden_v._Nebraska
Recruiting students that have a high likelihood of below average academic performance and then requiring them to payback costs if they can't pass "MIT AP exams" is a recipe for failure. Ironically these families would have less wealth than before because now they're in debt for what could have been free public education.
If Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford remove quotas for ALDC (Athletes, Legacies, wealthy Donors, Children of staff and faculty), these universities cease being elite. That's good for America. However, it is bad for the administrators of these schools, uber wealthy, the elite servant class of this uber wealthy. What happens, if McKinsey, Bain, and BCG recruits more from UC Berkeley, Rutgers University, Vanderbilt? What happens if more of future judges and justices are graduates of LSU Law, UTAustin Law, McGeorge School of Law? Basically, the elites can't congregate around three or four schools. The power gets distributed, as the kids of the elite attend many schools across the country.
> McKinsey, Bain, and BCG recruits more from UC Berkeley, Rutgers University, Vanderbilt
Cal and Vandy are already top target schools for MBB and have been for decades.
Around 15 of my 60 HS acquaintances who ended up doing Cal Undergrad ended up directly at MBB. Another 10 ended up in top PE and VC firms. They did a mix of EECS, L&S CS, Econ, Applied Math, and Haas
It might not have East Coast street cred, but in the West it's the primary undergrad business program other than UCLA Anderson, USC Marshall, and CMC, so it inevitably becomes the primary target for West Coast (aka Tech, Biotech, decent amount of Finance) PE, IB, VC, MC, and PM. Same reason I never heard of Darden or Wake Forest until I went to college out East.
Also, McKinsey has had a dedicated recruiting team solely for Haas (both undergrad and MBA) for ages -
Legacy admissions are the point of going to private school. If you want fair, there's plenty of public universities in the country, where meritocracy rules and all that. Private universities, on the other hand, have a different value proposition: If you are rich and well connected, you can go to an extremely good school, where you can meet other rich and well-connected people and the high achieving lower class people. Likewise, for the lower class people, if you can meet their high achievement bar, you can network with other high achieving people and the well-connected, and have your education subsidized by the high costs the school is extracting from the rich students.
This is a win-win for everyone involved. Hell, it's a win for everyone else, too, because these conditions are breeding grounds for extremely high-impact individuals.
In other words, it’s a tool for the rich ruling elite to preserve its hegemony regardless of merit. The rich win, all others lose. This is in my view an absolute disgrace and is the opposite of what America should be even if it sadly is exactly what America often is.
Personally I'd love to see no more legacy admissions, but realistically there's no legal basis to change that. There's nothing the Supreme Court can do, Congress would have to pass an explicit law against legacy admissions.
The reason affirmative action was struck down is because the are certain federally protected classes of people protected from discrimination -- race, religion, sex, etc. And affirmative action is discriminatory along the race dimension.
But a private university is allowed to discriminate along anything else they want as long as it's a not a protected class. They can discriminate on grades (as they do), SAT score, essays, extracurriculars, athletics, geography, and yes -- legacy.
It's true that legacies are usually whiter relative to the general population, but a lot of factors skew towards racial proportions that are different from the general population (e.g. good grades skew Asian). But as long as the purpose of the discrimination doesn't have racial intent (or intent along another protected class), then no law is being broken. And if the intent of legacies is raising money, then there's no winnable case here. Alas.
It is the same reason that they give special consideration to the children of large donors. (The main reason universities objected to recent admissions bribery schemes is that they sidestepped the official system and the money did not go directly into the university's coffers.)
And it's why they engage in price discrimination based on "ability to pay."
As has been noted elsewhere, universities - especially elite universities - are ruthless capitalists.
You're ignoring the concept of disparate impact. A facially neutral criteria can still be illegal discrimination if it has a disproportionate adverse effect on a protected class. Lack of intent is not a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Grades might fall into that category except that they have a demonstrable connection to the student's academic abilities. It would be much harder to prove a connection for who the student happens to be related to.
Putting all their dirty laundry out there should be useful towards tarnishing the reputations of the Ivies. If it can be spun that they’re white supremacist institutions, well, good luck to them.
The supreme court could do something, in fact it can do anything it wants without any accountability at all. That's the system.
For example, it could say that because the constitution didn't explicitly state that Hazard could allow legacy admissions, then it isn't constitutional. If you think that's a stretch, read up about how the supreme court defines how 'qualified immunity' works.
53 comments
[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 117 ms ] threadSomeone here has already made the argument that the entire affirmative action set up at Harvard was just a way to hide the rich and well-connected from any meritocratic scrutiny.
That's half the point. The other half is to say that you went to Harvard.
Another one of my buddies at UCSF ended up rooming with the daughter of owner of one of the major DNC SuperPACs.
Public schools absolutely have strong alumni networks as well despite not necessarily having legacy admissions.
I went to a state university, and I didn't meet anyone rich or famous.
My roommate peed on our carpet.
They still peed on the carpet.
This dataset from the economic mobility lab at UCR is great to find which schools have an elite student body - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobilit...
Also, I went to an Ivy-or-Ivy Adjacent program and my roommate also vomited on my bed after getting plastered during rush week (I accidently returned the favor a weeks after during my rush).
I went to a Big 10 university.
"Some 843 UW–Madison alumni serve as CEOs, and nearly 16,000 hold an executive management position. Additionally, as of November 2018, the current CEOs of 14 Fortune 500 companies have attended UW–Madison, the most of any university in the United States." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Wisconsin%E2%80%...
That sounds like a lot, but in any given semester, UW enrollment is 40-50K, and it awards 10K degrees every year.
I attended a very affluent Bay Area HS (there kind where the VPs and C-Suites of tech and biotech companies sent their kids) and they overwhelmingly sent their kids to top public schools (they were targeting top STEM programs, which by default skewed public excluding Stanford/MIT/CMU/Cornell). A couple of their kids attended CS@UW Madison and most of us applied there as a backup in case we didn't get into one of the T10 CS programs.
This was the early-mid 2010s.
The key thing is going to an elite program. Doing CS at a school like UDub or UIUC means you open the door to VCs, IBs, and Founders who all also attended that elite program (as well as their equally elite parents). You might not get that network majoring in English or Horticulture at either college, but you definetly will if you're in a top program.
In addition, Asian (India, China, SK) Elites target colleges based on how the specific major they are targeting ranks. As this overwhelmingly skews STEM and Business, you end up getting a massive cohort of foreign elites at Public schools.
A lot of this is also because of targeted branding by public unis and regional private schools to undercut the more established private unis like Harvard.
For example, within India Harvard has a weaker pop culture branding and alumni network than a top CS program like Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, UIUC, or UC Berkeley.
For example, UCs don't offer a legacy bump, yet Berkeley and UCLA still retain a major brand presence in the Tech and Finance industry both within North America and Asia.
In fields such as Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Law, and Business Harvard does hire very strong faculty AND gives them a significant amount of funding and autonomy to continue their own research pursuits.
Also, in my own friend group and as someone who attended one of these Ivies+Ivy Adjacent Programs, just getting into either a T20 school overall or a T10 school in your field is more than enough to gain the prestige cachet needed for your field.
The alumni networks in these 20-30 public and private universities are strong enough that you'd be able to do well globally. While legacy does play a role in the undergrad experience, it's not like CMU, UT Austin, UVA, UW, or UCLA don't have students from elite backgrounds even though they might not have the street cred of "HAVHAD".
I am affirmative action-curious, in that I do not necessarily have the knee-jerk "this shouldn't have ever been allowed" reaction that many on HN do. I think the case for affirmative action is stronger than many would allow. That said, I am willing to take the SCOTUS decision for what it is, because AA was an extremely unpopular policy with admittedly terrible echoes of past injustices built into it.
Legacy admissions, on the other hand, are pure trash, and I think absolutely everyone except the beneficiaries of those policies ought to agree on that. I truly can't think of a good argument in favor of them other than "universities like money."
Testimony[1] is linked below from the NYT article[2] on the same topic.
[1] https://www.cga.ct.gov/2022/HEDdata/Tmy/2022HB-05034-R000217...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/03/us/harvard-alumni-childre...
Justice Thomas: Yale Law School (1971)
Chief Justice John Roberts: Harvard Law School (1979)
Justice Alito: Yale Law School (1975)
Justice Sotomayor Yale Law School (1979)
Justice Kegan: Harvard Law School (1986)
Justice Gorsuch: Harvard Law School (1991)
Justice Kavanaugh: Yale Law School (1990)
Justice Barrett: Notre Dame Law School (1997)
Justice Jackson: Harvard Law School (1996)
So it's 7/9 at this point. Not a pure prerequisite, but quite close. I tend to not read too much into the whole Harvard/Yale thing though, because this is largely a function of networks and sorting mechanisms. It's not like a lawyer from Yale is THAT much better than a lawyer from the University of Michigan. Maybe that's your point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_justices_of_the_Suprem...
"No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."
That's the law. Is it legal to discriminate on the grounds of race under programs that receive Federal financial assistance?
I think it's pretty clear that it is not, not sure why the Supreme Court had to get involved in that.
What's the law for legacy admissions? They're free to do that as far as I know, what's the law that says otherwise?
There's a difference between those two things, you must agree.
- I tend to think scotus believes racism is/was real but the best way to fix it is for congress to vote into law an actual remedy. Instead congress whines then fund raises off it. That control vacuum does not mean scotus has to fill the void. I'm pretty sure this what Roberts thinks anyway.
- on remedy: based on a young adult's background mainly by looking at parent's income and their educational attainment, and school quality k-12, under served kids that appear to have potential could be subsized to take a kind of finishing school with the idea of getting them backfilled education wise so they could take and pass MIT like AP exams in math, science, English. It'd be like a really high end HS to get them current. Kids who don't follow through are evicted, and are required to payback costs. This way they can compete reasonably well for open seats and colleges of their choice. We might call this the National High School Program perhaps mainly online. Congress can create and fund this. Seats are filled in time order of approved applicant only.
- remedy includes reducing or eliminating grants to private universities sitting on tons of money or have too many administrative costs. US education is too damn expensive. There has to be a way for the system to penalize stupid cost. If you've done hiring, ivy league credentials doesn't guarantee much. There are some darn good kids from state schools too
- a federal run super high school gives parents and kids a choice: state education or fed. Or state then fed later to fix shortcomings. This would also eliminate the fed/state/local control quagmire since US education is locally controlled. The fed could instead focus solely on its own school system letting parents/kids choose.
- in summary: congress has to get off their butts. Scotus would have to uphold congress' law. And if the national HS was demanding, nobody would be focused on race, which is the way we want it. It puts the focus on good kids who did good work which is also the way we want it.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-535_i3kn.pdf (page 4)
Lets just face it though...it's easier to hope SCOTUS interprets a law or order a certain way than actually have congress do their job and pass a clear law.
Congress is far and away the worst of the three federal branches.
"They are expanding their role into acting as though they are Congress itself and that, I believe, is an expansion of power that we really must be focusing on," Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, said.
SCOTUS is not expanding their role...they are restricting executive powers and making congress do their job.
False. Congress delegated their powers to parts of the executive branch. If they feel the executive is abusing that delegation, congress can take it away at any time. It is not the job of the SCOTUS to pretend they're congress and take action on behalf of congress as they have been doing lately. All of this is blatantly partisan.
Congress created the CFPB for example, delegated some authority to the executive branch and insulated the CFPB head from presidential authority (so they could not be fired at will). The Supreme Court decided to insert their own opinion that the president has absolute authority over it, despite congress being the one creating it.
Despite congress being full of lawyers, they often miss critical things when they come up with ideas like the CFPB.
Cal and Vandy are already top target schools for MBB and have been for decades.
Around 15 of my 60 HS acquaintances who ended up doing Cal Undergrad ended up directly at MBB. Another 10 ended up in top PE and VC firms. They did a mix of EECS, L&S CS, Econ, Applied Math, and Haas
Also, McKinsey has had a dedicated recruiting team solely for Haas (both undergrad and MBA) for ages -
Undergrad - https://www.mckinsey.com/careers/students/undergraduate-degr...
MBA - https://uat.mckinsey.com/Careers/Students/MBA-Candidates/UC-...
This is a win-win for everyone involved. Hell, it's a win for everyone else, too, because these conditions are breeding grounds for extremely high-impact individuals.
What do you mean exactly by "high-impact"? And is that good impact or bad impact?
The rich are getting richer, and everyone else is treading water at best. I'm not sure how that's a win for everyone?
Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg both dropped out of Harvard; whether their impact is good or bad is left as an exercise for the reader.
Bad.
The reason affirmative action was struck down is because the are certain federally protected classes of people protected from discrimination -- race, religion, sex, etc. And affirmative action is discriminatory along the race dimension.
But a private university is allowed to discriminate along anything else they want as long as it's a not a protected class. They can discriminate on grades (as they do), SAT score, essays, extracurriculars, athletics, geography, and yes -- legacy.
It's true that legacies are usually whiter relative to the general population, but a lot of factors skew towards racial proportions that are different from the general population (e.g. good grades skew Asian). But as long as the purpose of the discrimination doesn't have racial intent (or intent along another protected class), then no law is being broken. And if the intent of legacies is raising money, then there's no winnable case here. Alas.
Precisely.
It is the same reason that they give special consideration to the children of large donors. (The main reason universities objected to recent admissions bribery schemes is that they sidestepped the official system and the money did not go directly into the university's coffers.)
And it's why they engage in price discrimination based on "ability to pay."
As has been noted elsewhere, universities - especially elite universities - are ruthless capitalists.
Grades might fall into that category except that they have a demonstrable connection to the student's academic abilities. It would be much harder to prove a connection for who the student happens to be related to.
Maybe that will start changing now as/if graduation demographics change.
For example, it could say that because the constitution didn't explicitly state that Hazard could allow legacy admissions, then it isn't constitutional. If you think that's a stretch, read up about how the supreme court defines how 'qualified immunity' works.