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< Colleges are ending legacy admissions to diversify campuses post-affirmative action

Colleges are ending legacy admissions to diversify campuses post-affirmative action

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Let's hear now from Ivory Toldson, who is national director of education, innovation and research at the NAACP, the civil rights group which has called the practice of legacy admissions "inherently racist." That's a quote. Good morning.

IVORY TOLDSON: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

INSKEEP: Millions of people listen to this program. So surely there is somebody, maybe multiple people out there listening right now who is asking, why is it racist to send my kid to Harvard?

TOLDSON: It's not racist to send your kids to Harvard. But what we are saying is that in light of the Supreme Court decision, institutions have to look for creative ways in order to advance the type of diversity that they say is important. And when we look at the things that institutions do - and we have our diversity-no-matter-what pledge - one of the things that we observed is that legacy admissions compromise the institution's ability to create that diverse environment. When you have slots that are available to students whose parents donate a lot of money or who graduated from the institutions, that's overwhelmingly white. And so that's why we're saying that legacy admissions, donors' children, that needs to be examined, scrutinized and abolished.

INSKEEP: Are you essentially saying that now that the Supreme Court has done away with considering race as a factor in admissions, legacy also has to go? They effectively were a pairing?

TOLDSON: Yeah, because race-conscious admissions balanced that out a bit. The universities have their own arguments for having legacy admits, but they were able to balance that by using a variety of different factors to achieve the type of diversity that they say is important. And so now that race-conscious admissions has been outlawed by the Supreme Court, then you have to look at other ways in order to achieve that diversity. One of those things being eliminating the legacy admissions.

INSKEEP: I'm curious if legacy admissions were to stay around for another 20 years, if we'd have a different opinion of them, because some schools - I believe Harvard is one of them - have reached the point where the incoming student body tends to be majority minority, more people of color than other kinds of people. Would the legacy issue maybe look different for us a generation from now?

TOLDSON: Yeah. Well, across the board, the student body is becoming more and more diverse. Harvard still has an underrepresentation of Black and Hispanic students, and so they have a lot more Asian students than they had before. So legacy would look different, but it still would be a disadvantage to Black, Hispanic and Indigenous students.

INSKEEP: When we get down to it, is the real issue here money? Some people have more of it. Some people have a lot more of it. And whether they're a legacy admissions or not, wealthy families, according to study after study after study after study, have lots of different advantages in preparing their kids for getting into the schools that they want.

TOLDSON: No, because Black and Hispanic and Indigenous students who applied to Howard (ph) and who got in through race-conscious admissions policies were very well qualified. They had the qualifications that it took to get into Harvard. But the problem is that Harvard receives thousands of more applicants than they can accommodate, so they have to be able to make some strategic decisions on who they're going to accept when everybody is qualified.

INSKEEP: Oh, I see what you're saying. You're saying it's not that the wealthy kids were best prepared. They were just best prepared to get the slot, in other words.

TOLDSON: Yes. The wealthy kids are not better prepared than the students of color. The real issue is institutional racism. It's people who have had access to things that others didn't have access to when it was illegal.

INSKEEP: Ivory Toldson of the NAACP. Thanks so much.

TOLDSON: All right. Thank you so much for having me.

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