While most of the debate around college admissions centers on affirmative action for racial minorities, not enough attention has been paid to the unfair and illogical advantages granted to privileged whites. A Duke University study published in September discovered that 43 percent of white students at Harvard were athletes, legacies, or children of donors and faculty. For other races, the figure was 16 percent. The research concluded that only a quarter of these students would have passed through the front gates of this elite university without these factors.
Another study found that having parents who once attended top universities “equated to a 160-point increase in an SAT score when being considered for admission” at those colleges. Research on 30 of those institutions shows that legacy students have a 45 percent higher admissions rate than non-legacy applicants. The legacy preference in admissions is the antithesis of the “merit-based system” that affirmative action opponents so ardently advocate for: Students are evaluated based on the accomplishments of their parents instead of their own skills and achievements. If those who fight against affirmative action do so because they believe in assessing students based on their individual “merit,” then they should oppose legacy preferences just as passionately.
As studious and hardworking students sacrifice for the chance to gain quality education, wealthy lacrosse players are placed in top universities for few reasons other than their parents donating millions of dollars to those very institutions (cough, cough, Jared Kushner). Dubbed the “Glass Floor” by author and researcher Richard Reeves, the widespread phenomenon perpetuated by colleges’ corrupt admissions standards is one in which unqualified elites are unlikely to lose any of their wealth and power because of guaranteed name-brand education and connections that land them at top jobs in large corporations. It’s ridiculous that progressive institutions of higher learning that claim to care about combatting income and racial inequities in their admissions processes continue to promote an informal American aristocracy by keeping the country’s upper class ahead of everyone else. College admissions offices are accomplices to other powerful sociopolitical factors that ensure the rich stay at the top—no matter what.
It’s time colleges stop rewarding the wealthy for reaching into their wallets. It’s time we stop pretending that underprivileged minorities are the reason our education system is broken. And it’s time we realize that positive change in our colleges and our country is only possible if we give everyone a chance to succeed. Affirmative action is one of the best ways to do just that.
*For the sake of brevity, we refer to non-Hispanic white Americans merely as “white.”
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