Let me try to make a defense of Legacy Admissions (highly unpopular I know). I come from a country with a purely meritocratic examination based college admissions system. I even cracked the hard examination and attended a top college. But the fact is the exam world is the exam world and the real world is the real world. The real world doesn’t run on examinations and IQ tests. Real impact means connections, wealth, and then maybe intelligence if considering technology. If you remove the people born into privilege, from attending your college, all you succeed is in making your college irrelevant, not those people irrelevant. It’s better if rather than being a fully closed circle, they also interact with the smartest, most charismatic, most talented people in a country etc. Of course it would be ideal if those born into privilege also could clear the SAT etc, but then it would also be great if we were ruled by a benevolent philosopher king, that’s not the real world, in the real world concessions have to be made.

> If you remove the people born into privilege, from attending your college, all you succeed is in making your college irrelevant,

I don't think that the Cal Grants program was ever designed to remove those people from the program. It was designed to make sure they didn't get an advantage. In other words, it was prevent universities from letting people who otherwise would not have made the grade in just because their parents made the grade.

Giving alumni's children an advantage isn't giving an advantage to "the smartest, most charismatic, most talented people" -- it's giving an advantage to the luckiest (the ones who happened to be born into it).

And the phrase "it would be ideal if those born into privilege could also clear the SAT" is such a strange one. OF COURSE rich people can "clear the SAT;" in fact, they get the advantage of MUCH better preparation, etc. So this is absolutely about giving an advantage to kids who could not qualify on their own.

To be clear: I don't think Stanford is doing this to keep poor people out (their scholarships have always been very generous). But I do think the administration probably done some basic calculation: they get more in donations from alumni who want legacy admissions for their progeny than they get from Cal Grants.

And Stanford has decided that accepting some kids who just don't make the grade is worth that economic advantage.

Let me refute that defense. I went to the kinds of schools we're talking about and I had a lab at them for over a decade.

If you went to an elite school and your kid can't get in by competing fairly with other kids, they're subpar and shouldn't get in. Kids of legacies have a massive advantage even if their legacy status is totally ignored.

For example, I'm certain that I can get my kids into MIT (they're a bit young right now). I know exactly what they need to do, how they need to present themselves, what classes to take, courses, extracurriculars, how to stand out, who to ask for letters, who to ask for opportunities like time in a research lab, etc. I've even helped other kids make plans and then get in. Same for my wife for the Ivy League school she attended. Those connections, peers, knowledge, resources, etc. are hard to match. If the kids decide they want to do that.

There's no reason to give these kids (my own included!) any other advantage. They're born with such a massive head start that it's hard to lose, if they put in the work. If they don't, then they shouldn't go to these places.

The only thing legacy admissions do is take away opportunities from students that deserve to be there. Stanford/Harvard/etc. shouldn't get a dime of state or federal funding as long as they continue to do this.

> If you remove the people born into privilege, from attending your college, all you succeed is in making your college irrelevant, not those people irrelevant.

Calling 99% of the world's universities irrelevant is certainly a take. And not a very intelligent one.

To whatever extent this is true (I'm not convinced it is, schools that aren't prestige aren't "irrelevant"), it is an indictment on the schools. This argument is a capitulation to the signaling hypothesis of higher ed. I believe at the least a weak version of the hypothesis, but I absolutely do not believe we should just roll over and say "well, that's the way it is". It may be the way things work, but this is a very important is/ought distinction. I think we should be fighting _very_ hard for the "ought" version.

This is a good defence of a programme I've generally found abhorrent.

What about this: public funding (and tax exemption) is reduced in proportion with the number of legacy students a university accepts? The idea being the university should be able to monetise these slots to more than compensate for the decline in public funding. And said slots do not serve a public purpose, but one more particular to the graduates of the university.

> If you remove the people born into privilege, from attending your college, all you succeed is in making your college irrelevant, not those people irrelevant.

You're not removing the people, you're removing the privilege. Those same people can still apply on the same terms as everyone else.

> Of course it would be ideal if those born into privilege also could clear the SAT.

They often do. Or at least are very close.

I got into an elite engineering school (off the waitlist at the last minute, no donation/legacy), and the admission folks basically told me "we accept the top X, but if we just ignored the top X and took the next (X+1)-2X (or three), the result would be the same."

Basically, these schools are so competitive that if you wiggle things a tiny bit, on the margin, you're not really sacrificing much. However, if they wiggle too much, that would obviously degrade pretty quickly. But from my experience, that hasn't been the case.

So a school like Stanford is probably thinking, within the margin of noise, if we let in folks because their parents did well here as students/faculty/etc, that's probably net positive.

The donor one is a bit different, but again, on the margin, and with some math around donations vs Cal Grant, they probably see it nets out better for them.

Wow. Your underlying thesis is that the schools value and relevancy is only tied to the connections you can make. Which maybe in effect, in a broken system, is true. Just a class divider to try and get to the elite connections and climb status (from what I read about Ivy leagues) but education should not be that. It should about education and forming professionals not perpetuating inequality through unfair pay to win strategies.

You pretend we need the established world order because this is how the world works but the actual world works in certain ways due to policy. The same policies that allow the rich to pay no taxes while the mid and poor do.

I understand your attempt at a pessimistic yet pragmatic view but I think There is an alternative that still works and doesn't actually make universities "irrelevant".

The wealthy unqualified can always be VCs/funders.

Stanford effin’ University is not going to become irrelevant just because they stop admitting children of alums who otherwise wouldn’t qualify.

In this vein, think of the Stanford brand. You can not only ensure your own success, but you are buying a leg up for future generations of your family… even at full price, it’s a bargain.

Not /s but not /100% serious either.

Countries that have military conscription do something similar: you mingle with everyone from the poorest to the very rich. Almost nothing comes out of it. Intentional networking can happen anywhere in life.

Yep. The big companies set the real qualifications when they hire. Schools are just preparing them for that, pretending otherwise with made up standards/exams is a misstep—the big companies prize connections.

Reasonable argument, but preference for students whose parents went to the exact same school seems like a very inefficient way to insert more wealth and power into the student body.

Those diplomas are super important to those connected and wealthy people, arguably moreso because it’s a form of reputation laundering - “I’m not just billionaire X’s child, I also got into to Stanford a university for smart people”.

People forget that while having a meritocracy is best for society, society doesn't make decisions, individuals do. And those individuals make decisions for their own benefit, not that of society. Colleges strike a balance by having some fraction be meritocracy, but going all in would be fatal.

Networks of wealth and power will start to congregate elsewhere and if necessary sabotage the place which now hostile to their interests (which includes that of their offspring).

IIT?

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> If you remove the people born into privilege, from attending your college, all you succeed is in making your college irrelevant, not those people irrelevant.

This is an argument for stricter regulation, not more lenient. It means that schools that give such advantages to the already-privileged should not be able to even exist, nor should businesses that give such advantages in hiring, nor should any entity that gives such advantages. In other words, if this rule didn't succeed at making those people (or rather, their advantages) irrelevant, then we need an even harsher rule.