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Education

California Bans Legacy Admissions At Private, Nonprofit Universities (politico.com) 137

Posted by BeauHD from the fair-and-equitable dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: It will soon be illegal for public and private universities in California to consider an applicant's relationship to alumni or donors when deciding whether to admit them. Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday signed a ban on the practice known as legacy admissions, a change that will affect prestigious institutions including Stanford University and the University of Southern California. California's law, which will take effect Sept. 1, 2025, is the nation's fifth legacy admissions ban, but only the second that will apply to private colleges. "In California, everyone should be able to get ahead through merit, skill, and hard work," Newsom said in a statement. "The California Dream shouldn't be accessible to just a lucky few, which is why we're opening the door to higher education wide enough for everyone, fairly."

Like other states, California won't financially penalize violators, but it will post the names of violators on the state Department of Justice's website. California will also add to data reporting requirements that it implemented in 2022, when private colleges had to start sharing the percentage of admitted students who were related to donors and alumni. Schools that run afoul of the new law will also have to report more granular demographic information about their incoming classes to the state, including the race and income of enrolled students as well as their participation in athletics. [...] Public universities in California won't be affected by the change. California State University does not consider legacy or donor ties, and the University of California system stopped doing so in 1998, two years after California voters banned race-conscious admissions through a statewide ballot measure.
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California Bans Legacy Admissions At Private, Nonprofit Universities More

California Bans Legacy Admissions At Private, Nonprofit Universities

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  • "everyone should be able to get ahead..." (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MpVpRb ( 1423381 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @04:28PM (#64829501)

    "...through merit, skill, and hard work"
    Excellent idea in theory!
    In practice, however, there is no perfect way to accurately measure "merit, skill, and hard work". It's all still subjective with lots of room for incompetence, favoritism and corruption

    • Cue the NAACP lawsuit. (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Since admitting based on merit runs counter to their affirmative action mindset, expect Gavin to be served.

    • And if I have a table saw, a power drill, and a nail gun, and all you have are some scissors and a plastic Playskool hammer...even if you work 5x's as hard as me, I'll produce more feet of cedar fencing in a day than you will.

      I've long believed the "elite" institutions should set a minimum bar for entry and then have a lottery where everyone who meets that minimum gets their name in the drawing and the institution chooses until their class is full.

    • "merit, skill, and hard work" aren't meant to be an objective measure. They are academia dog whistles meant to evoke Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "The American Scholar". Seen in this light, it looks like "merit" will be the replacement for legacy admissions going forward, allowing some students get to the front of the line by virtue alone.

  • "wide enough for everyone, fairly" (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...except, of course, for those who don't fall into a DEI category of some sort.

  • I think you forgot something, Gov. Newsom (Score:3)

    by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @04:42PM (#64829549) Homepage

    "In California, everyone should be able to get ahead through merit, skill, and hard work," Newsom said in a statement

    What about crippling student loan debt? I suppose that falls under that whole "hard work" umbrella...

    • If you want to solve that problem, you're going to have to limit the availability of student loans. Among other things, put tighter controls on how much is given for cost of living expenses (today's loans allow students to spend like drunken sailors, and that's exactly what many do and then complain about having to pay it all back) and limit the tuition rates for schools that want eligibility for any federal aid at all (loans, FAFSA, etc.)

      Watch how fast academia goes back to being academia again.

      • Re: I think you forgot something, Gov. Newsom (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @05:04PM (#64829617)

        Oh, and for that same eligibility, forbid the practice of requiring textbooks with one-time-use codes or any other non-consumable materials that are designed to not be re-sold on the open market. That's a racket that should have stopped a long time ago.

        • And while we're at it, let's ban instructors from requiring textbooks that they either wrote or helped write. If nothing else, it's a clear conflict of interest.
          • Except when your professor wrote the only text book on the topic... In this case (late 90's semiconductor topic), he let the university print, spiral bind, and sell it for the printing cost to the students.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by lsllll ( 830002 )

        I can speak anecdotally as I don't know how much "in-pocket" expenses the loans give each student, but my daughter is going to graduate medical school with about a $370K debt (all from medical school). Of that, 20K/year was for living expenses. That's not much. Certainly barely enough to pay for an apartment, maintaining a car, food expenses, and miscellaneous.

      • put tighter controls on how much is given for cost of living expenses

        The current system actually puts a feedback loop in place for that, and it usually runs in the wrong direction:

        * Loan availability is based on cost of attending the school in question
        * Service providers near schools see that students have loan money to spend, so they raise housing costs and move local eateries upscale
        * Which raises cost of attending the school in question...

  • That's great. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Seven Spirals ( 4924941 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @04:47PM (#64829579)
    Legacy admissions are pretty foul, but they probably provide the school with a lot of donations from rich parents who were former alumni. I'd be okay to placing some limits on them, but an outright ban seems like it might have unintended consequences.

    The real access/"equity" problem with college nowadays is the cost. College costs rise at the same rate as government subsidies [visualcapitalist.com] and other loan and student aid programs increase. The cost of college in the 1950's was negligible and people regularly worked their way through school with no debt at all. It was government loans and subsidies that drove the costs sky high. The greedy colleges just increased their tuition by whatever rate people could get loans to attend.

    • Yeah, they arguably pay for more than their share on the tuition front when you add donations.
      Another argument I've seen is that the colleges, at least Yale, Harvard, and such, are actually social networking institutions almost more than education.
      Basically, talented merit accepted students social network with the rich legacies for jobs after graduation.

      • Basically, talented merit accepted students social network with the rich legacies for jobs after graduation.

        And vice versa. Rich legacies' social networks include a lot of talented people. The result is a world run by people that are part of the same Harvard and Yale social network. You don't go to those schools to get an education. You go to a small private college or public university where the professors actually teach students. You go to Yale or Harvard because your life is defined by ambition. No matter what your ambitions, there will people at Harvard and Yale that can help you achieve them.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cstacy ( 534252 )

          You don't go to those schools to get an education. You go to a small private college or public university where the professors actually teach students.

          Your thesis is that the quality of education at Harvard and Yale is so poor that you would get a better education elsewhere -- the professors don't "actually teach students".

          Something tells me you didn't go to college at all, but you seriously resent those who did.

          • Indeed. I said "almost more than education" because they're still very good schools, but other accredited schools are pretty much as good, sometimes better, sometimes worse, but the variation of the average student is about the same.
            But the stupidly high standards of those institutions, outside of legacies, helps craft a narrative that helps said students succeed more easily, even without the social networking.

            • Oops, editing problem left something unclear: I was trying to say that the variations between students makes more of a difference in the educational outcome than the differences in instruction and such at places like Harvard and Yale.

      • Well yeah, that's the whole point. To put it in blunt terms: legacy admissions are a means of maintaining the aristocracy.
    • It was government loans and subsidies that drove the costs sky high

      Labor productivity has increased by a factor of 5 in that time frame. Do you think "small section" classes now have 75 students in them?

    • Re:That's great. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by colonslash ( 544210 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @05:52PM (#64829745)
      Exactly, like Kamala Harris' $25K for first time homebuyers will raise home prices. Politicians like to buy votes with other people's money, and they don't care about the actual real world effects. Or maybe they do, maybe they try to make things too expensive, it gives them more opportunities to "help".
      • Would you prefer your tax money to be used to benefit other people, which in turn actually improves the economy, or do you want it to be used to bomb some other country, in order to make money for the politicians, CEOs and shareholders of the companies that are given the contracts? One benefits the population of our country as a whole, while the other just benefits a few already rich people (and gets people (mostly working class) killed or maimed).
        • This tax spending isn't improving the economy. This is increasing demand, without addressing supply, so it just raises prices for everyone.

          I'm against any US money being spent on the endless wars.

          What would help people is if less of their money was taken in taxes; people can allocate their own money on what benefits them much better than the government can.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hodr ( 219920 )

      So the people who provide the most direct benefit to the school, who grow its faculty and facility, and fund its research are foul? If we make the assumption (and granted, it may be a bad assumption) that tuition is roughly in-line with the cost to provide an education, then most students who do not rely on scholarship are basically net neutral. Legacies on the other hand, primaries those who get their slots through donations to the school, are a major net positive. They provide the funds that allow the s

    • but an outright ban seems like it might have unintended consequences.

      Yeah, I mean heaven forbid people like George Bush get into Yale. But I mean, he was a competent president, right?

      Your idea seems to be that if they get rid of legacy admissions, they will not get as much money. Extrapolate that into the worst case and these colleges go out of business. Then we'd need to have public colleges. We might have to find plans for system like that in California, nothing existing like that already.

    • Legacy admissions are pretty foul, but they probably provide the school with a lot of donations from rich parents who were former alumni. I'd be okay to placing some limits on them, but an outright ban seems like it might have unintended consequences.

      Why would they care? That's a problem for politicians of the future to bear. This is all about helping the political profile of current politicians. Besides, Newsom and others can always claim that they "evolved" on the issue if they retract support when the donor pain starts.

  • Merit, skill and hard work? (Score:3)

    by RossCWilliams ( 5513152 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @04:54PM (#64829593)
    You mean they can't admit people based on who can and can't afford the tuition? You will notice they didn't pass a law that ONLY considers merit, skill and hard work. You can still admit people based on their family's prominence or recommendations or ...

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      You mean they can't admit people based on who can and can't afford the tuition? You will notice they didn't pass a law that ONLY considers merit, skill and hard work. You can still admit people based on their family's prominence or recommendations or ...

      What this really means is that the trust fund and nepo babies will now have to do some actual work to:

      1. Get into the university; and.
      2. Stay there long enough to get their degree in media studies.

      It's not going to change much else, it just means that a donation is no longer an automatic ticket to a placement (unless the nepo-kid is a spectacular idiot, which many are, it's not really going to affect them).

      I've nothing against Gov. Newsom, I think he's a decent governor, but he does seem to be doi

  • A giant step sideways for meritocracy (Score:3)

    by RightwingNutjob ( 1302813 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @05:03PM (#64829615)

    Big name schools grease the skids for athletes and donors. Middle class middlebrow Joe Blow's kid isn't getting any special preferences if he went there unless Joe manages to cough up a six figure donation, with promises of more to come.

    • That's essentially how our society reimplemented feudalism running in emulation under capitalism. Of course, the major difference is that if someone from outside the nobility class is particularly "gifted" (are we still allowed to say that?) in athletics or scholastic aptitude, we'll sometimes give them a free ride so they can join the nobility class.

      At the end of the day though, we've just changed the criteria for what constitutes a noble birthright. If you're not particularly good at school or sports, w

    • Big name schools grease the skids for athletes and donors.

      What a shame it would be if that stopped happening. /s

  • Bullshit (Score:2, Insightful)

    by PeeAitchPee ( 712652 )
    Newsome never gave a shit about merit, skill, or hard work until the Supreme Court made it illegal for leftist universities to discriminate against Asians. Now we're supposed to believe he's the Champion of the Level Playing Field?!?
    • Prop 209 outlawed race- based affirmative action for California public universities in 1996. Just FYI.

      • Prop 209 outlawed race- based affirmative action for California public universities in 1996. Just FYI.

        And there are dozens of ways to get around that, which Cal institutions know and use. Just like the tax codes.

  • Gonna monitor it? College admissions involve a half dozen people inside the university, in a locked room, with a spreadsheet that has 5000 rows and columns of metrics that run from A to Z and keeps going up to around AK. if that group quietly wants to skew the results towards legacy admissions, there would probably be no way of telling.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Hodr ( 219920 )

      This just in, Harvard to drastically expand the number of regatta, dressage, fencing, and croquet teams.

  • I don't have a strong opinion either way on this issue but I do find it both disgusting and hilarious that Newsome uses that same mouth to promote DEI biases and also say "...through merit, skill, and hard work".

    • DEI is a mechanism for selecting the best candidate from a pool of potential applicants where 'merit' is subject to statistical confounding factors.

      A candidate that showed a 3 place increase in grade scores studying at a school in a poor area is likely a better hire than someone who achieved a higher grade but didn't exceed expectations at a school in an affluent area. it isn't perfect, but at least it's honestly addressing reality.

      If you've been told it's something else, you might want to ponder why it's i

      • DEI is a mechanism for selecting the best candidate from a pool of potential applicants where 'merit' is subject to statistical confounding factors.

        DEI is just the latest way to implement a quota. You can spin it however you like.

      • A candidate that showed a 3 place increase in grade scores studying at a school in a poor area is likely a better hire than someone who achieved a higher grade but didn't exceed expectations at a school in an affluent area.

        Link to any study proving this? Yeah, I didn't think so.

        Just because people want to redefine "merit" to some arbitrary meaning that supports their fringe worldview doesn't make it so.

  • I don't see how California has any jurisdiction on private school admissions.

    On top of that, aren't legacy admissions really just focusing on your genealogy...much like where you came from, not only who your daddy is, but what heritage you have? Yet, legacy admissions mean the schools continue to benefit from happy donors. Isn't this really attempting to cutting off the individual funding for schools so the state can swoop in and take over? Seems like a really bad idea.

    • Really? You just don't see? Can I suggest some remedial high school civics before you enroll?

      The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        Really? You just don't see? Can I suggest some remedial high school civics before you enroll? The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

        I mean, ostensibly the government can pass any laws it wants to, but at some point, it starts to run afoul of free speech rights and the right for a private business to do business or refuse to do business with whomever it chooses (within the limits of not discriminating against protected classes, of course). A private college is, after all, a business, albeit ostensibly a charitable one, and nothing prevents them from having a policy of flat out auctioning off positions in the incoming class to the highes

        • ... free speech ... protected classes ...

          Only if you believe in incorporation, which is certainly not explicit in the Constitution. And create an implicit definition of "due process of law" for the measure to fail.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rta ( 559125 )

          Put another way, if you're judging people based on what school they attended, you're already doing something bad, ...

          The main value to industry of schools with selective admissions is the selection part. The private sector in the US is not allowed to give IQ tests or any g-loaded tests that have "disparate impact on protected classes", but colleges can in the form of SATs / LSATs / GMATs etc. So as an employer can ride on those coattails. The fact that a student body of smart and prepared people can

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            Put another way, if you're judging people based on what school they attended, you're already doing something bad, ...

            The main value to industry of schools with selective admissions is the selection part. The private sector in the US is not allowed to give IQ tests or any g-loaded tests that have "disparate impact on protected classes", but colleges can in the form of SATs / LSATs / GMATs etc. So as an employer can ride on those coattails. The fact that a student body of smart and prepared people can learn faster (and thus classes of the same title can generally can be harder than similar classes at a less selective school) is there too but arguably secondary.

            The problem is that even if you ignored that concern, it would still be a fundamentally flawed strategy, because most people won't bother to apply, not because they wouldn't be able to get in (some would), but because they either A. don't want to spend ridiculous amounts of money on an education that might not be all that much better, B. don't have adequate self esteem to believe that they're good enough, C. don't have any interest in going so far away from home, D. have family responsibilities, E. have a j

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by quall ( 1441799 )

      Plus more students will be taking out loans. You're replacing a rich donor child with someone else who will need to take out a loan. I mean, assuming that the donar children weren't able to get in on merit alone.

      I think California specifically wants everyone to have to rely on the government.

    • I'm guessing it is because state of CA provides money of some kind to private schools and therefore have a say in how the school operates. For example a school does not have to follow Title IX regarding women's sports if the school does not receive any federal money. A few smaller schools have gone this route to maintain complete independence. Therefore, I assume the CA private schools could go this route if they wanted, could challenge the law as overstepping on a private institution, or could basically ig

  • Yale *could* use an international airport Mr Burns

  • As a Brit, I find the idea appalling. We have no expectation of a parent's going to a university having any influence in getting the child in. To be fair we have only recently started to target graduates for donations actively, though I remember when I was at Oxford over 40 years ago a donation linked to a child being subsequently admitted did get publicity - as something very new. If I remember correctly the donation was in the hundreds of thousands. That's a serious sum of money... but just for your paren

    • Then why do all the fancy British people all seem to go to the same schools?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pjt33 ( 739471 )

      I seem to recall the Cambridge application form just over 25 years ago asking about relatives who had attended, but I can't remember now whether they only asked about relatives who had attended the same college [1] as the one I was applying to, nor precisely which relatives they were interested in. And I think it was only for statistical purposes: at most, I think it would have been a tie-breaker in case they were unable to separate two candidates.

      [1] For people unfamiliar with Oxbridge, "college" here does

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

      As a Brit, I find the idea appalling. We have no expectation of a parent's going to a university having any influence in getting the child in.

      ...your country still has a titular monarchy and hereditary nobility, but admission into a university based on who your parents are is "appalling?"

      • The royalty keep Americans coming to gawp, so must be a good thing. A small proportion of the hereditary nobility form part of the second chamber and ensure that there is a significantly different perspective apart from the political hacks and ex-senior civil servants is heard. Sadly the new government seems to wanting to reduce the effectiveness of the accountability achieved in parliament by removing them.

        But no - other than that birth won't get you any favours; indeed most hereditary peers don't use thei

  • How exactly can one measure this in a person that is 17-18 years old?

    • Let me guess, you haven't actually had a 17- or 18-year-old child. At that age, it is very possible to measure things like merit, skill, and hard work. By this time, that young person already has established a reputation, a level of character, a work ethic (or not). An 18-year-old is far from a malleable, innocent little child.

      • That measurement may however be a statistically poor predictor of ability at age 25. While excellent candidates at age 18 are likely to remain good (if they don't burn out or crash because their attainment was externally forced), mediocre candidates at age 18 can be excellent by age 25 as they gain experience or escape their upbringing.

        • Yes, it's true! Teenagers are not known for their brilliance, and many learn hard lessons and profit from them. So that's a positive thing, I think. Still, the statistical correlation isn't that far off. The stoner at 17 isn't likely to have a dramatic turnaround at 25. The "average" folks, much more likely.

  • ... that through hard honest work you could achieve fame, fortune and the ability to buy anything you want, and that presumably includes a university degree.

  • I find the idea of legacy admissions great to finance universities.

    But I am from a country where the relationship with the alma mater is over once you leave university.

  • Many of those legacies pay full price, as well as donate. Have fun making up for the lost money.

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