Removing Legacy Admissions Will Be More Beneficial Than Removing Affirmative Action

And Here’s Why

Photo by Charles DeLoye on Unsplash

What exactly is affirmative action and how did it start?

Affirmative action started as an effort to improve the discrimination against monitories and women in employment, government contacts, other social benefits, and eventually higher education. As part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the federal government began to implement affirmative action policies. Prior to this, businesses that received federal funds would use aptitude tests to discriminate against African Americans.

As a result of an Executive Order signed in 1965 by President Johnson, colleges and professional schools started to admit minority students. Universities created admission policies in which race was considered. As a result, admission for Hispanics and African Americans increased at predominately white schools.

The most recent ruling on Affirmative Action

On June 29th the Supreme Court ruled that the use of affirmative action in college admission violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause — in the cases Students for Fair Admissions Inc v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina. But this isn’t the first time that the Supreme Court has decided on affirmative action.

The first case that questioned affirmative action policies in higher education was Regents of University of California v. Bakke (1978). In this case, Allan Bakke stated that his admission was wrongfully denied to the medical school at the University of California for less qualified minority students. Although, the Supreme Court did rule that the use of racial quotas to determine admission does indeed violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, higher education schools can still consider race in the admission process.

And then there was the case Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) in which the court ruled that the University of Michigan Law School could use race merit to help diversity the school.

Since the first case against affirmative action was brought to the Supreme Court there have been plenty of debates and opinions over how effective affirmative action is — the main argument against it is “reverse discrimination.” Arguing that standards for higher education are lowered to accept unqualified minority students. However, there are no solid data to support this argument.

There is data that shows the decline in minority admissions at Universities after affirmative action was removed in the following nine states: Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and Washington.

What will actually help even the playing field in higher education?

I spoke with Dr. William T. Lewis — a former Chief Diversity Officer for Indiana University, Bridgewater State University, and then Virginia Tech University. He is the founder of Will House Global where he provides diversity, equity, and inclusion consulting for businesses. And he’s the author of Sweet Potato or Pumpkin Pie — Conversation with My White Friends about Race.

We spoke about the implications of affirmative action that he’s seen from working in higher education and he explained to me that when it comes to the admissions process race is mostly considered at the Ivy League schools because those are the most selective schools.

He said, “That’s where you really see if there is a benefit — however the benefits of affirmative action at the Ivy Leagues fail in comparison to the benefits of legacy admissions. If you look at Ivy League colleges, you’re going to see more legacy admissions than race-based admits and that’s more problematic.”

Legacy admissions or legacy preference or alumni connections is the practice of providing admissions preference to relatives of alumni, usually, the applicant’s relatives are parents or grandparents. Although people can say that it doesn’t automatically mean the applicant will be accepted it does give them an extra boost.

By removing legacy admissions in higher education, will help provide an equal opportunity for all students more than affirmative action will. So, there is still work to be done to create equal opportunities in higher education.

What are your thoughts?

Heidy De La Cruz writes the weekly personal development Substack newsletter — “Into My Thoughts.” She is the podcast host of The American Dream in The Eyes of Immigrants and a podcast coach.

You can find Heidy De La Cruz on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.