After Affirmative Action Ruling, Legacy Admissions Take Center Stage

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Wesleyan University, a liberal arts college in Connecticut, announced two weeks ago that it was ending legacy admissions. Other schools, including Amherst, Johns Hopkins and Carnegie Mellon, have also dropped programs that favor alumni. However, many have not — at least not yet. Many elite schools say legacy admissions are important for maintaining relationships with alumni, which can help universities raise money that is then available for financial aid to needy students. In a June 2018 legal filing in the case that led to the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision, Harvard argued that “there would be substantial costs” to ending legacy admissions. But how substantial? The answer is about more than fund-raising. Legacy students may donate more. In a study published last year in the American Sociological Review, researchers looked at 16 years of admissions data from a school described as “representative of elite U.S. institutions.” They found that legacy students were more likely to have wealthy parents and come from families flagged as big donors. Such students also tended to donate more after graduating than other students, even though both groups earned similar incomes. But less than a quarter of donations come directly from alumni, according to an estimate by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. “No fund-raising shop is going to have to make up half of their gift revenue if there’s a change in the admission office about legacy admissions,” said Mickey Munley, a fund-raising consultant for schools and a former vice president of alumni relations at a private liberal arts college in Iowa. “It’s overplayed.” In addition, donations account for a small portion of revenue at extremely selective schools. At Wesleyan, donations make up just 3 percent of operating revenue. Legacy status may also work as a proxy for financial need. In the American Sociological Review study, legacy students were about half as likely to apply for financial aid as admitted students who weren’t related to alumni. In other words, these students are more likely to be able to pay full tuition without help from the university. “It’s a way to circumvent need-blind policies,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg, an education expert and a nonresident scholar at Georgetown University. “You can be fairly confident in many cases that those students will be able to pay the full tuition and not require financial aid.”