With all the controversy surrounding the recent Supreme Court decision to end race-based affirmative action in college admissions, attention has been drawn to another form of bias rampant in admissions. Legacy admissions, also known as affirmative action for wealthy and connected students, is an unfair practice that should be banned from the college admission process. Similar to the race-based affirmative action that was recently banned, this practice gives a significant advantage in admissions to students based merely on who the applicants’ family is, which is a type of nepotism.
There are arguments on both sides of this issue. The colleges that support legacy admissions seem to do it primarily based on monetary interests. Many schools admit that legacies often end up donating the most money to the school when compared with their
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Thus it could be claimed that there is nothing unfair about legacy admissions if they meet the same general criteria as non-legacy admissions. However, if that is the case, then why consider their status as a legacy at all? If they would be accepted purely on the merit of their achievements anyways, then should not their legacy status be irrelevant? As it is, even among highly qualified applicants, legacies are preferred; those that come from rich, well-connected families, whose parents and relatives attended the school in generations past. For each legacy accepted, it means one less seat for someone equally (or perhaps more) deserving but coming from a less privileged background. It is ultimately a way to discriminate against students based not on their intelligence, achievements, or skills, but based merely on the family they were born into. This is a most unfair practice and one that should be seriously examined for its effect on higher
In “Net (Race) Neutral: An Essay on How GPA + (reweighted) SAT - Race = Diversity,” Christine Goodman illustrates the opposing viewpoints in regards to the racial discriminatory efforts by the college institutions to help diversify the incoming freshman class. With this, Goodman provides statistics and opinions of experts on the matter, which includes comparison of such discriminatory acts against other institutions. To begin, she brings up an enlightening, yet controversial court case decision: Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin (2013). This court case demonstrates significance to this topic because it counteracts a previous court case, Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), which, “upheld diversity as a compelling interest that would justify narrowly
Though in Grutter v. Bollinger we deal with the 14th amendment of the Equal Protection Clause and racial classifications too, the way race is used is slightly differs. In this particular case, the court had to decide whether the use of race at the Univeristy of Michigan Law School during the admissions process violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment. Barbara Grutter, a Caucasian applicant, applied to the University of Michigan in 1996 with a 3.8 GPA and a score of 161 on her LSAT. Grutter was placed on the waitlist, but was subsequently denied admission to the school. Grutter claims that she was only denied because of her race, as the University uses race as a factor in the admission process.
After carefully reviewing the oral argument and brief of case 14-191, Abigail Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, I was impressed how well the plaintiff attorney argued her defense during the trail. The litigations were as stated, in 2008, the UT Austin enrollment department wrongfully denied admission based upon the school considered race discrimination in its admission process because Fisher was a white female student, and because of her inadequate academic achievements. Fisher lawyer focus adequately on the highlight of the case by persuading the court that she would have gotten accepted into the university if she wasn’t stereotyped on such matters: race, top 10 percent student, grades, test scores which she refer to as personal achievement index. UT at Austin attorneys really didn’t have much leading factories to propose a concrete objective. In the argument Fisher attorney used the Justice Powell‘s example on Bakke system to support is statement.
He was denied then and again in 1974. This second rejection lead him to file a suit against the school for discrimination and violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Under the special admissions program, candidates who applied to UC Davis Medical School had the opportunity to select if they considered themselves members of a “minority group,” which included American Indians, African Americans, Asians, and Chicanos, or “economically and/or educationally disadvantaged,” according to Cornell Law. Candidates who fell under this “special admissions” title did not have to meet certain typical admissions requirements, namely a grade point average above a 2.5 and a comparison against general applicants (Cornell Law). General admissions requirements gave applicants a scored based on a compilation of GPA, science GPA, MCAT score, admission interview, letter of recommendation, and extracurricular activities, and although Bakke had a score of 468 out of 500 during his first application and a 549 out of 600 during the second, he was denied
In the case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, Allan Bakke a white male was rejected from regular admissions into California University. He was rejected twice; meanwhile, minority students with lower grade point averages were being admitted into the same school under a special admissions program. After his second rejection, Allan Bakke was very upset, so he filed a law suit to the Superior Court of Yolo County, California. He wanted the chance to be admitted into medical school through the special admissions program. The University said that their admissions program was important and it ought to be kept in the University.
In the autobiography Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez the author employs the theme of higher education to defend his views on affirmative action. He shares his views and experiences on the issue as a minority alienated in a majority white American society in the 1960’s-70’s. Although he was a well–educated Mexican American, his ethnicity classified him as a minority. In college, despite being anti-affirmative action, Rodriguez still reaped the benefits of affirmative action. He believed that affirmative action should not be not be determined by race, but student’s intellectual ability to complete college.
A valid reason why legacies are often times more favored, is since the parents who are alumni could afford to attend that university when they were students and now their children are eligible to be accepted; chances are they are more likely to pay out of pocket since they are wealthy enough to afford it, and financial aid is of no concern to them. But for Asian-Americans, who are already less likely to be legacies, means that they could possibly come from middle income families meaning that they do need financial aid to help them afford attending certain Ivy League schools. At the end of the day, admission processes could be more bias towards legacies since they are wealthy enough to pay for their children’s schooling as opposed to most Asian-Americans who rely on the federal government to help fund their schooling. From what we can glean from this information, admissions appear to favor legacies due to the fact that they are able to pay out of pocket, which helps to directly support the school in various ways and keep its status as a top ranking private research institution reaffirming the belief that money is indeed
Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are institutions of higher education in the United States founded primarily for the education of African Americans. Prior to the mid-1960s, HBCUs were virtually the only institutions open to African Americans due to the vast majority of predominantly white institutions prohibiting qualified African Americans from acceptance during the time of segregation. As such, they are institutional products of an era of discrimination and socially constructed racism against African Americans (Joseph, 2013). Successfully, millions of students have been educated in spite of limited resources, public contempt, accreditation violations, and legislative issues. The purpose of this research paper is to discuss
The civil rights area of the 1960s is over. Affirmative action policies based on racial quotas or preferences have been struck down by the Supreme Court, yet states have an interest in college admission that are diverse and reflect their general population. The University of Texas finds itself defending policies intended to conform to recent court rulings yet merely mentioning race as a factor in a holistic review has drawn a challenge. The University of Texas process of admissions aligns with Gutter V Bollinger. The facts of this case are in keeping with previous court precedents.
Sure it creates diversity, but a student who is more deserving to go to a prestigious school shouldn’t be denied a spot because he isn’t a minority. Bakke won the case and a spot in the university, and the Supreme Court invalidated the school’s special admissions program. Now all students are equally likely to be accepted into a state
Public colleges and universities in the United States use a variety of factors to determine which students will be accepted. Universities often want a student body with diverse academic interests, talents, and backgrounds. They consider factors such as applicants’ grades, standardized test scores, community service, athletic or musical ability, and geographic location. Sometimes, universities also consider an applicant’s race or ethnicity. This case is about whether the University of Texas-Austin’s admissions policies violate the Fourteenth Amendment and its guarantee of equal protection.
This college deferment favored the wealthy people causing the minorities and
Many things are built on the idea of an inner circle, which you can see in private schools and colleges, country clubs, and VIPs in clubs and concerts. The more exclusive that the place is, the tighter those networks are, and if American universities were interested in merit and efficiency, places could get bigger and, in some ways, they have an economic incentive to expand and collect more tuition, but their social standing rests on the ability to exclude people. (Kingkade 3). Ivy league schools are prideful of their low acceptance rate because it gives them elitism. The more selective an institution is, the more people want to attend.
Race preferences in college admissions are mandated by the government. Certain race quotes must be met, or federal funding is reduced. The trend of government mandated quotas does not end there. We now are starting to see forced diversity quota hires/admissions with LGBT persons. In Canada compelled speech is forcibly enforced, so that one must call people by their preferred pronouns, even if they are biologically incorrect.
However, there’s a certain perversion to admission policies like this, policies like UT’s “top 10” program. These policies leverage their racial diversity via neighborhood, and thus public high school, segregation. As Jamelle Bouie write in a Slate article on the