Wesleyan Won’t Be Last University to Ban Legacy Admissions
Yet even as we argue over who most deserves to go to college, the colleges themselves are struggling to prove their relevance.
Woof.
Photographer: Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images North AmericaWesleyan University announced this week an end to its legacy preference in admissions, and given the multiple lawsuits and general furor over the widespread practice, it won’t be the last. (It’s also not the first.) That’s a shame. I support a limited priority for alumni kids; but then I also support affirmative action. With both seemingly on the way out, now’s a good moment to ask ourselves whether we’re fighting yesterday’s war.
On the surface, it’s obvious why the fights are so intense. The selective schools, in the words of the journalist Daniel Golden, “serve as the gateway to affluence and influence in America.” Get into a top college — what one critic has called the “bulwarks of American status-lust” — and career success is all but assured.