Michael S. Roth is open about why his institution recently ended legacy admissions: It got him in the news.
“I got to talk with many people about the work we’re doing to recruit veterans or work we’re doing in Title I high schools,” said Roth, president of Wesleyan University, in Connecticut, of the dozens of media interviews he did in the 24 hours since the university announced its decision. “Or work we’re doing in Africa now to create a cohort of African students on full scholarship every year.”
It’s also a way, Roth said, to communicate to high-school students from backgrounds that are underrepresented at selective colleges — Black and Latina/o students, first-generation students — that Wesleyan might accept them.
“We want a diverse campus,” he said. “Please apply.”
The timing is no accident. Wesleyan’s announcement comes just three weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to nearly end the practice of considering race in college admissions. Higher-education officials and scholars fear that the ruling will lower enrollment of students whose races are underrepresented at selective colleges throughout the country. At Harvard College for example, a lawyer told the Supreme Court during oral arguments that Black enrollment was projected to drop to 10 percent from 14 percent if admissions officials could not consider race when making decisions.
The Supreme Court’s ruling has made the practice of giving preferences to children of alumni and donors look worse than ever. As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson put it in her dissent, now the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill cannot consider the background of a Black applicant whose ancestors were barred from attending the flagship, but it can still consider that of a white one who would be a seventh-generation student. As a result, public pressure to end legacy preferences has grown. That pressure, plus a general desire to do the right thing, was another reason Wesleyan dropped the practice, Roth said.
“It’s good to remove hypocrisy whenever you can,” he said. “Should we have done it sooner? Yeah.”
There is also growing legal pressure for colleges to make the change. This month a coalition of advocacy groups filed a complaint with the U. S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights challenging Harvard’s practice of considering whether applicants were related to alumni or donors.
Still, since the Supreme Court decision, only a handful of colleges have said they will stop considering whether an applicant had family members who attended the college. The University of Minnesota-Twin Cities was one, according to the Star Tribune. A spokesperson said in an email that collecting the information “was not adding any additional insights” to applications, so as part of a review of admissions practices, the university dropped it. Carnegie Mellon University said it was no longer considering legacy status, though in a statement the institution said that policy was not new.
It’s good to remove hypocrisy whenever you can. Should we have done it sooner? Yeah.
The Johns Hopkins University stopped giving legacy and donor preferences several years ago. In 2020, Ronald J. Daniels, the president, told The Chronicle that as the university phased the practice out, it increased its portion of Pell Grant-eligible students from 9 percent to 19 percent. Adding more funds to financial-aid programs and changing how and whom they market to drove the increase, Daniels said. Ending legacy preferences gave them more space to do those other things.
Since the Supreme Court ruling, many colleges that considered race in admissions will now be looking for race-neutral ways to ensure that a diverse group of students apply. Roth said Wesleyan will be doing more outreach in high schools where his college is not well-known and working with community organizations that serve high-school students.
Wesleyan did not heavily favor legacy applicants to begin with. Roth said about 5 percent of the roughly 2,000 to 2,500 admitted freshmen were typically the children of alumni. About half of that small share ended up attending Wesleyan. He was not sure how many actually got a boost from being the children of alumni, but estimated that it could have been under 10 per year. He did not expect the demographic makeup of the class to change much as a result of dropping the practice.
Some at Wesleyan did question whether it was the right move, Roth said. They worried the college would see fewer donations.
“My job is to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Roth said, adding that he hoped it would actually help with fund raising. “I spend a lot of time raising money, and I think people from whom I get donations will find that this is the right decision.”’
If he’s wrong, Roth said, “you’ll probably be speaking to a different president of Wesleyan in a couple of years.”
James Murphy, deputy director of higher-education policy at Education Reform Now, said that even if the effect of Wesleyan’s decision is small, it’s a good thing. Murphy released a report critical of legacy preferences in 2022 and has written an opinion piece on the topic for The Review.
“Nobody who actually works in college access thinks getting rid of legacy is going to make admissions fair,” he said. But that’s not a reason to keep the practice. “Not doing a good thing because there’s other good things to do seems to be silly.”
Murphy expects that other colleges will drop the practice in the near future.
