This year’s Supreme Court ruling ridding the country of race-based Affirmative Action may have hurt Black and Brown high school graduates nationwide. However, legacy admittance is still as common as ever. Data presented by Students For Fair Admissions found that legacy applicants were accepted at a rate of nearly 34 percent from 2009 to 2015 which was more than five times higher than rates for non-legacies over the same six-year period.
That may change recently as the Education Department is investigating Harvard University’s use of legacy admissions. The investigation comes after advocacy groups alleged that legacy admissions violate federal civil rights law. Filed by the Greater Boston Latino Network and other advocacy groups, the 31-page complaint argues the need to end the practice of giving preferential treatment to children or other relatives of alumni in college or university admissions.
Interestingly enough, a 2019 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that 43 percent of white students admitted to Harvard University were athletes, legacy students, children of faculty and staff and applicants whose parents or relatives have donated to the university. The same report found that 70 percent of all legacy applicants were white compared to 40 percent of all applicants who didn’t fall under those categories. Meanwhile, Black, Latino and Asian American only made up 16 percent of applicants coming from those categories.
Elite universities like Harvard have become a gateway into elite society. A quarter of U.S. Senators, three-fourths of Supreme Court justices appointed in the last half-century and 10 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs have attended these institutions of higher education. Maybe that’s why it’s important to keep Black and Brown out of them.
Source: NBC News
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