Editor’s Note: Evan Mandery is a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and an expert on the death penalty. He is the author of three novels and three works of non-fiction including, “A Wild Justice: The Death and Resurrection of Capital Punishment in America.” The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own; view more opinion at CNN.
Shortly before my 25th reunion at Harvard University, I wrote op-eds opposing legacy preferences, the troubling practice of colleges and universities giving a leg up in admissions to their own alumni. I knew from experience to expect blowback, but I was shocked by the intensity of my classmates’ reaction. Many called me a traitor.
I relate this experience as context for explaining one of the most puzzling paradoxes of our time. Students, faculty and alumni of elite universities are among the most liberal people in American society and yet, many of my classmates continue to stand behind indefensible admissions practices.
For let’s be clear: the college admissions process is a moral outrage. The colleges implicated in the Varsity Blues scandal have tried to dismiss the defendants as corrupt outliers. In truth, the college admissions scam is a public manifestation of a deeper, structural flaw – the surface lesions that betray an underlying cancer.
The fraud is a foreseeable consequence of a system that invites the infection of money. What stands out most about Felicity Huffman and her co-defendants is their clumsiness. There are many legal pathways to buy your kids’ way into college or to at least give them a substantial edge.
The influence of money is sanitized in the admissions process through the concept of legacy – a massive racket carried out in plain sight. At Harvard in particular, the picture is getting worse, not better. Among members of the Class of 2018, 26.9% had a relative who’d attended Harvard. For the Class of 2022, that statistic increased to 36.8%, according to the Harvard Crimson’s survey of college freshmen.
The direct consequence of legacy is to compromise the admissions process by admitting less qualified students. The indirect consequences are more profound and pernicious. Legacy admissions aren’t in tension with the principles of the university; they are antithetical to it. Its taint is so corrosive and pervasive that it obscures the many virtuous things that universities do.
For example, legacy undermines universities’ defense of affirmative action. In the pending lawsuit brought by a group of unsuccessful Asian-American applicants, Harvard has claimed that departing from meritocratic principles is necessary to promote diversity. This is superficially reasonable, as many ethical positions on affirmative action are. But no one could defend departing from merit to give an additional advantage to the children of alumni, who are disproportionately rich and white.
Legacy similarly undermines universities’ position on big-time sports. Colleges exploit basketball and football players, disproportionately men of color who are effectively unpaid professionals, to generate millions of dollars. It would be one thing if these profits were used to fund an engine of social mobility. It’s quite another if they perpetuate a system that reinforces inequality.
Legacy is the argument of an ethical dinosaur. Moreover, it’s the simplest thing in the world to stop: Build a metaphorical wall between admissions and fundraising. My classmates and alumni at other colleges know this is the answer to the problem. So what prevents change?
Well, for starters, reunions. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, most alumni are inclined to view their alma mater as an ethical actor.
The culprit is the “affect heuristic,” a mental shortcut that leads people to make quick judgments, without seeking information, based on their association with a stimulus. It’s why organizations – universities included – invest so heavily in marketing. Brand loyalty is a strong force, especially to colleges, and schools carefully exploit it in constructing their public narratives about admissions.
Case in point: When grilled at trial in the lawsuit over Asian-American admissions about the “Dean’s Interest List,” a confidential list of applicants with ties to big donors whose admission rate is higher even than legacy applicants, Harvard’s dean of admissions, William Fitzsimmons, called the list “important for the long-term strength of the institution.”
Earlier, during a deposition, he described legacy as “essential to Harvard’s well-being.”
But Fitzsimmons couldn’t point to a shred of data to support these claims. In any case, the colleges don’t need the money. The eight Ivy League schools have a combined endowment of more than $100 billion, which they retain from their wealthy alumni in part because of the massive tax break they receive as nonprofits, a status that seemingly only can be defended on the premise that they promote class mobility.
In fact, private colleges do precious little to combat inequality.
Since 1980, the CUNY system, in which I teach, has promoted six times as many poor students into the top three income quintiles as all the Ivy League schools combined. And since I wrote my first anti-legacy op-ed, Harvard has been losing ground. Over the past five years, the percentage of entering Harvard students who come from a family making over $500,000 per year has increased from 13.8 to 17, according to the Crimson survey of freshmen. Meanwhile, the share of students from families earning less than $40,000 per year is essentially unchanged.
To qualify for a federal Pell grant, a student needs to come from a family earning less than $50,000 annually. At Amherst, for example, 22% of undergraduates receive Pell grants. At my school, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the figure is 64%. Twenty-three percent of our students come from families making less than $20,000 annually.
For God’s sake, if you’re a billionaire contemplating a major gift to a private college, please give the money to a place like CUNY instead.
Alumni who accept private colleges’ defense of legacy and aggressive fundraising as necessary to the survival of a pro-social institution are being blindly loyal to a fight song and the colors of a uniform. That blind loyalty is the most formidable barrier to change. Universities won’t change their practices until alumni stop contributing money and, yes, stop attending reunions.
So I’m saying in the most public way possible that I’ll be boycotting my 30th reunion this weekend – not as an act of disloyalty, but rather as an expression of love for equality of access – the true, first principle of ethical higher education.