Should elite schools give preference to legacies?

From the Wall St Journal today. My take, unlike affirmative action, legacy admissions is simply a way for a private institution to make money. If you're going to wipe out this practice then how about demanding these schools charge everyone the same tuition. Should kids without economic means get a break? Does your local Toyota dealership work that way?

I refuse to give poor people free access to the Report. They pay like everybody else!

BTW...the chart below at no additional charge to you. You're welcome.

"The conservative advocate who dismantled affirmative action is joining forces with a center-left Democrat and a Duke University economist to challenge another sacred cow in elite college admissions: preferential treatment for the offspring of alumni.

“Legacy applicants have done nothing meritorious to earn this advantage,” wrote Edward Blum, education analyst Richard Kahlenberg and economist Peter Arcidiacono, a political independent, to the Education Department recently, urging officials to track legacy in admissions and analyze the impact. Blum, a conservative, spearheaded the lawsuit against Harvard College that helped lead the Supreme Court to strike down affirmative action in 2023, while the other two men testified against the practice.

Their efforts add to an accelerating bipartisan push to ban legacy preferences in admissions as America focuses more on who gets into college and why. The scrutiny on a hereditary leg up has intensified since the 2023 Supreme Court ruling, which ended most race-based admission preferences and prompted new questions about other nonmerit-based special treatment.

Now, the debate around legacy preferences—and in some cases, advantages for children of donors—is heating up further given that President Trump has placed meritocratic admissions at the center of his higher-education agenda.

‘Tie-breaker’

Schools that still use legacy preferences are concentrated among private universities, including all eight schools in the Ivy League. That is despite the sharp decline in the practice overall, with about 25% of schools now giving such preferences, down from half in 2015, according to a study by Education Reform Now, which advocates expanding access for underrepresented students on college campuses. Since the 2023 Supreme Court ruling, the number of schools using legacy preferences is down 18%."