Legacy Admission Debate
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Legacy Admission Debate
There will never be a day that the world is fair. Discrimination is illegal now, but accepting people based on legacy remains legal. This adds more obstacles for minorities and gives people less of a chance of getting into a college, if they do not come from a college educated family. Universities may need the money they get from legacies to keep tuition affordable, and it might be impossible to function without it, but that does not change the fact that it is unfair and keeps everyone from having an equal opportunity.
Legacy admissions should be banned because they allow students with average credentials to be accepted over students with far more impressive ones. People should be accepted for merit, rather than who their parents are, or how much money they have.
Brown Alumni Magazine reported that legacy applicants are twice as likely as regular applicants to gain admission to Brown University, an Ivy League school. An investigation by the U.S. Office…
One of the most controversial topics swarming universities is the idea of legacy admissions. Legacy admissions being the reason to accept less qualified students because their parents are highly valued alumni. Opinions on both sides are very strong in their argument to either prove or disprove the consequences of these so called legacy admissions. Over the years Universities have found ways to keep students either in or out, and legacy admissions have helped them control this. Universities think that if the alumni help support them financially with donations that then their children should have higher consideration to go there. This illuminates many controversial topics within legacy admissions. Articles over the years have discussed many similar topics that legacy admissions create such as discrimination, wrongful advantages, and lack of a merit system.
It has been stated that legacy admissions discriminate against minorities and race other than white. According to Robert DeKoven in his article “Time to Bury the Legacy” from the The San Diego Union-Tribune, most of the students who attend these elite institutions are there because of their parents and not their own personal achievement. He also suggests that most schools consider most children of alumni to have an extra plus factor than those of minorities. He even goes on to say there have been laws against discriminating against race but there are no laws that ban legacy admissions, which in turn do put down minorities. Mark Megalli also suggests in his article “So Your Dad went to Harvard” from The Journal of Black in Higher Education, that over six hundred universities use the legacy system and it is not just Ivy League Schools. He states that over the years it is no surprise that legacy admissions have greatly benefited white students and that this means that these universities are discriminating against minorities