Good for Wesleyan. I guess Lin-Manuel Miranda‘s kids will not get a special advantage at the Connecticut liberal arts college. (But something tells me that they will probably won’t need such an advantage!). Here is Vimal Patel at The New York Times:
Wesleyan University, a liberal arts college in Connecticut, is ending legacy admissions, which give a leg up to the children of alumni, just weeks after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action.
After the Supreme Court decision, legacy admissions came under heavy attack because the practice tends to favor white, wealthy applicants over Black, Hispanic, Asian American and Native American students.
President Joe Biden; Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York; and Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, have all spoken out against the practice.
Polls also show that the public does not support legacy admissions. A Pew Research Center survey last year found that 75 percent of those surveyed believed legacy status should not be a factor in college admissions.
Some highly selective universities and colleges have dropped legacy admissions, including Amherst, Johns Hopkins and Carnegie Mellon.
But most have been reluctant to give up the practice, arguing that it helps build a strong intergenerational community and encourages donations, which can be used for financial aid.
The decision by Wesleyan, which has about 3,200 undergraduates, could be easier than for other colleges, like Harvard or Yale, which have a higher share of legacy admits.
Legacy status played a “negligible role” in admissions, Michael S. Roth, Wesleyan’s president, said in an interview. But, he added, the practice was becoming a distraction and “a sign of unfairness to the outside world.”
Mr. Roth said he did not know precisely how many past Wesleyan students were helped by legacy status. An applicant’s family ties could, for example, be used as a tiebreaker or to help whittle down a pool. They won’t any longer.
He said he wanted to focus the conversation on improving diversity, including recruiting more veterans and students from rural areas, and to avoid discussion of “the embarrassing fact, actually, that you got a leg up because of your parent or grandparent.”
Read the rest here. Will the Ivies be next?