Tangle - The legacy admissions debate.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

Starting point is 00:01:00 From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about legacy admissions, which are now very much at the forefront of some debate after the Supreme Court's ruling on affirmative action last month. Actually, I guess it was at the end of June now. We're going to talk about exactly what this debate is, what's going on, some of the latest news around it. Before we jump in, first a heads up and a reminder that we are having our event, which

Starting point is 00:01:50 is now tomorrow night. I'm getting nervous, getting excited, very pumped to bring the Tango Experience live to the stage in Philadelphia. Also a special shout out to Axios Philadelphia, who covered tomorrow's live event with a feature piece. There is a link to that in today's episode description. A quick note, if you are coming to the event tomorrow night and you bought VIP tickets, the door is open at 6 p.m. Eastern for you for a meet and greet and pre-show hangout. If you bought general admissions tickets, the door

Starting point is 00:02:19 is open at 7. We encourage people to get there. When doors open, the show starts at 8. There'll be drinks and food floating around, so it's a good time to get there early and hang out for a bit. Don't forget, General Admissions tickets are still on sale. They're just $25. There's a link to those tickets in today's episode description. All right, with that out of the way, we're going to kick things off, as always, with our quick hits. with our quick hits. First up, former President Donald Trump was criminally indicted by a federal grand jury for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He is facing three conspiracy charges, one to defraud the United States, one to obstruct an official government proceeding, and one to deprive the people of a civil right. This is

Starting point is 00:03:05 the second case brought by special counsel Jack Smith and separate from a grand jury investigation in Fulton County, Georgia. Number two, Fitch Ratings downgraded the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+, citing a growing debt burden, erosion of governance, and an unexpected fiscal deterioration. debt burden, erosion of governance, and an unexpected fiscal deterioration. Number three, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, says it is introducing AI-powered chatbots with individual personas on its platforms as early as September. Number four, the Department of Energy launched a new rule requiring light bulbs to have a minimum brightness of 45 lumens, effectively banning incandescent lights. Number five, the York Fire wildfire in California has become the largest of the year, burning over 80,000 acres.

Starting point is 00:04:03 Higher education in focus big time after the Supreme Court's decision on affirmative action last month. The discussion around fair admissions far from over, though. A federal probe launched into Harvard's admission preference for so-called legacy admissions. At the same time, more and more schools announcing they are ending the practice altogether. Harvard University is facing yet another challenge to its admissions process, this time by a famed civil rights group. It alleges the university's legacy admissions policy favors the children of its mostly white alumni. This comes after the Supreme Court ruled last week that colleges must ignore applicants' race

Starting point is 00:04:39 when making admissions decisions. One month after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in colleges across the country, advocacy groups are putting a spotlight on legacy admissions, claiming that they violate civil rights laws. Groups like the Greater Boston Latino Network are taking action, filing a 31-page complaint against Harvard University this week, alleging that legacy admissions, quote, systematically disadvantaged students of color, including Black, Latinx, and Asian Americans. This week, the United States Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, suggested that the Supreme Court's decisions to strike down affirmative action could open the door to axing legacy admissions, the practice of giving priority

Starting point is 00:05:24 to the children of alumni. Separately, a civil rights group called Lawyers for Civil Rights is challenging legacy admissions at Harvard University, saying the practice discriminates against individual students of color by giving an unfair advantage to mostly white alumni. The NAACP joined the civil rights complaint, asking 1,500 colleges and universities to end legacy admissions. The threat to affirmative action comes just weeks after the court determined that race-based admissions were unconstitutional. Civil rights groups and politicians have been echoing the dissent of Justice Katonji Brown Jackson, who suggested in her writing on the affirmative action case that giving legacy preference constituted a form of race-based discrimination

Starting point is 00:06:03 because colleges that used the practice were segregated for so long. Opponents say without affirmative action, legacy admissions is no longer defensible. In the civil rights complaint, which was submitted to the Education Department's Civil Rights Division, lawyers for civil rights pointed to Harvard's own data, which shows 70% of donor-related and legacy applicants are white, and being a legacy student makes an applicant six times more likely to be admitted. Some schools have already abandoned legacy admissions, including Johns Hopkins, Amherst, Carnegie Mellon, the University of Minnesota, and Virginia Tech, among others. Today, we're going to break down the debate over legacy admissions with some views from the left and the right, and then as always, my take. Today's podcast is sponsored by Arnold Ventures, a philanthropy dedicated to improving the lives of Americans through evidence-based policy solutions. As part of their efforts, they also support journalism throughout the United States, including outlets

Starting point is 00:07:08 like the Texas Tribune, ProPublica, and the Institute for Nonprofit News, among others. To learn more about their work, go to ArnoldVentures.org. That's ArnoldVentures.org. First up, we're going to start with what the left is saying. Many on the left oppose legacy admissions, saying they shouldn't exist without affirmative action. Some argue legacy admissions are affirmative action for white college students. Others argue legacy preferences benefit the underprivileged in underappreciated ways. In Vox, Fabiola Sineas said affirmative action for white college applicants is still here. The court's decision to end affirmative action left other kinds of admission preferences in place, ones that often benefit white students, Sineas said. Harvard's final stage of deciding to admit or reject students is a step called the lop, in which four factors

Starting point is 00:08:02 are evaluated. Whether an applicant is a legacy, meaning an immediate family member went to Harvard, whether they were recruited as an athlete, whether they are eligible for financial aid, and their race. Race is now unconstitutional to consider, but other preferences remain. One study found that these preferences give an edge to white applicants. Among white students admitted to Harvard, 43% received a preference for athletics, legacy status, being on the dean's interest list, or for being the child of a faculty or staff member, and without those advantages, three-quarters would have been rejected, she noted. Some colleges use legacy admissions to boost yield rates or the rate with which accepted

Starting point is 00:08:40 students enroll. A bigger reason, though, is alumni engagement and funding. Legacy students are more likely to stay connected to the college over generations and then are hence more likely to donate to the institution later on. The New York Daily News editorial board said colleges have to end unfair legacy admissions. In the wake of the high court's decision banning race-based affirmative action, as those very voices demand schools use income and class-based preferences to build diverse student bodies, they ought to be just as offended by the persistence of legacy-based admissions, which amount to affirmative action for the already privileged, the board said. To start, that means cheering rather than scoffing at the federal civil rights

Starting point is 00:09:19 investigation into those preferences by Joe Biden's education department, a probe that we hope will uncover the extent of the pernicious practice at a higher education institution many middle class and poor kids would kill to get into. Harvard puts a thumb on the scale not only for legacies, but also for recruited athletes, relatives of donors, and children of faculty and staff. All told, they are less than 5% of applicants, but around 30% of those admitted each year, the board wrote. The not-so-secret shame of elite institutions of higher education is that they've increasingly become finishing schools for the well-off rather than engines of economic and social mobility. As of 2017, at 38 top colleges, including five in the Ivy League, more students came from the 1% of the income scale than from the bottom 60%.

Starting point is 00:10:05 In the New York Times, Seamus Kahn said legacy admissions don't work the way you think they do. There is considerable evidence that going to an elite school made no difference in earnings for legacy students who are already on the path to success. One group, however, got a big economic boost from going to elite schools, poor students, students of color, and students whose parents didn't have a college degree. And that's because elite colleges connected them to students born into privilege, the very kind of student that legacy preferences admit in such large numbers, Kahn said. We might assume that legacy admissions help privileged students at the expense of underprivileged ones, but I would wager that legacy students, if eliminated, are far more likely to be replaced by other kinds of privileged students at the expense of underprivileged ones. But I would wager that legacy students, if eliminated, are far more likely to be replaced by other kinds of privileged

Starting point is 00:10:49 students than by underprivileged ones, Kahn said. For underprivileged students, the benefits of going to school with legacy students are huge. It affiliates you with an illustrious organization, offers you connections to people with friends in high places, and acculturates you in the conventions and etiquette of high-status settings. Colleges don't set up legacy admissions for these reasons, but with the end of affirmative action, the peculiar upside of legacy admissions fades away and the policy becomes impossible to justify. Still, I don't imagine getting rid of them would do much to balance the scale in favor of those from historically marginalized and excluded backgrounds. All right, that is it for the leftist saying, which brings us to what the right is saying.

Starting point is 00:11:41 The right is divided on this issue, with some defending legacy admissions and others arguing it is worth getting rid of. Some suggest that legacy admissions help benefit colleges and are the best ways to raise money. Others argue that colleges should focus on how to get more low-income students into college. In National Review, Dan McLaughlin said Democrats are going after legacy admissions for bad reasons with dubious law. As a matter of policy, the case against legacy admissions is well-known and persuasive. College admissions are a zero-sum competition, and their importance as a getaway or barrier to opportunity and a shaper of social class has grown enormously in recent decades, McLaughlin wrote. Americans rightly feel that colleges should dispense these opportunities fairly on the basis of some form of merit.

Starting point is 00:12:21 Though legacy admissions benefit schools and not students, there are four basic arguments in favor of legacy admissions. First, alumni are likelier to donate money to their alma mater if they feel that it is a place that will look with favor on their children. Second, families sending multiple generations to school builds a sense of community more generally among alumni. Third, legacy applicants are more predictably likely to attend if admitted, which makes it easier for administrators to construct the student body. Fourth,

Starting point is 00:12:54 legacy admitted students are less likely to struggle to fit in on a campus. But if Democrats in a vindictive mood with racial preferences gone are looking for a fight from Republicans, they may be surprised. The mood on the right is quite hostile these days to the administrations of elite colleges. to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in

Starting point is 00:13:55 your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca. In the Wall Street Journal, James Hankins wrote about the case for legacy admissions. Since the Supreme Court's decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the usual zealots on the left have been newly enraged about legacies, Hankins said. The left must have a cause as a dog must have fleas. And now that the court has forced the universities to acknowledge that admissions are a zero-sum game, preferences for some means discrimination against others, legacies are the new cause du jour. However, there is a great deal to be said in favor of legacy admissions, other things being equal like test scores and grades. The wealthiest

Starting point is 00:14:40 private universities can't begin to maintain their operations on tuition alone. At Harvard, tuition revenue pays only 21% of operating costs. Rather, endowments built from the generosity of alumni over many generations allow them to function. The question is where that money will come from, Jenkins suggested. Foreign donors and corporations, some of them silent partners of foreign governments, who are going to try to buy access to research and exercise political influence, or wealthy alumni, legacies themselves and the hopeful parents of legacies who know and love the institution and want to show their loyalty. Loyalty should run both ways. As long as the children of alumni meet the standards of admission, it's unclear why they shouldn't be admitted preferentially. In City Journal, Robert Verbruggen wrote about his

Starting point is 00:15:26 opposition to legacy admissions, but why ending them won't help. The huge admissions bonus for the ultra-wealthy would disappear if elite schools wanted it to. How much would it help everyone if colleges started making changes to practices like legacy admissions? Significantly, but not as much as one might think, Verbruggen said. The bottom line is that for any number of reasons, richer kids tend to have higher test scores and stronger grades by the time they apply to college, and any system designed to select students with the best academics will reflect those inequalities. At Ivy Plus schools, about 42% of students come from parents in the top 5% of the income distribution. And researchers estimate that eliminating legacy preferences, killing the admissions advantage arising from the higher non-academic ratings obtained by students from high-income families, and ending the over-representation of students

Starting point is 00:16:16 from high-income families in athletic recruitment, would bring that number down only to 33%, he wrote. Instead of, or in addition to, eliminating preferences that benefit the wealthy, colleges might give a bigger boost to poorer applicants. Almost anything is possible with this approach. Just keep making the preference bigger until you get the numbers you want. All right, that is it for what the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So I've already expressed my opposition to legacy admissions, and there isn't really any big secret about my position here. During oral arguments around affirmative action, I found Justice Jackson's arguments on this issue quite persuasive. It really is not that complicated. If a university is giving preference to the children of alumni and they previously had

Starting point is 00:17:10 policies that did not allow non-white students into their schools, then the children of alumni who benefit are going to be predominantly white and wealthy. But the argument that gave me the most pause was the one from James Hankins under what the right is saying about the ways schools might try to replace money they currently get from legacy family donations. As he noted, that money has to come from somewhere, and if legacy students provide a huge source of funding for schools, removing legacy admissions might reduce that endowment money. Then what? Perhaps schools turn to corporations or foreign countries who want to donate for the same reasons these families do, for access to research institutions. Hankins poses this question, who would you rather have

Starting point is 00:17:50 funding these elite institutions? Loyal, wealthy, individual people whose families have histories at the schools or corporations and foreign governments? In this framing, I think he's right. I'd pick the wealthy, loyal individuals. But there's less evidence than Hankins lets on that this is a worthwhile concern. In fact, we have some research showing legacy admissions don't even increase alumni giving. And even if they did, there's no reason to think schools would turn to foreign governments or corporations for endowments rather than just ramp up focus on fundraising from individual alumni just with a lesser focus on legacy families. In the end, as even those open-minded about the benefits of legacy admissions noted, they become indefensible when you throw out race-based admissions. All things being equal, students shouldn't get into an elite school

Starting point is 00:18:35 simply because their parents went. The argument about building loyalty and school pride and history is all well and good, but there's just as strong of an argument that introducing new families and new students and fresh blood on the campus is beneficial for students and the institution as a whole. Simply put, legacy admissions don't just overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy and the white. They help recycle the same kinds of students from the same families through the same schools in perpetuity. Universities would be better off broadening their lens and focusing on ways to diversify the economic class of their campuses rather than finding shortcuts to keep the endowment money flowing. While it's true that the NAACP is challenging 1,500 schools to back off

Starting point is 00:19:15 legacy admissions, a policy change that would be more far-reaching than affirmative action, the conversation here is typical in that the focus on elite universities ignores the schools the vast majority of students will attend. And in this case, it's also true that getting rid of legacy admissions will do little to stop wealthier kids from getting into elite colleges through other back doors, like non-scholarship athletic preference for sports with predominant participation by the wealthy. Still, the end of legacy admissions can and should happen. It is probably best if it happens slowly to give applicants and universities time to adjust. But a few years from now, our elite colleges and the students attending them

Starting point is 00:19:53 would be better off if they phased legacy admissions out for good. All right, that is it for my take today, which brings us to our reader question. This one's from Lynn Ann in Colorado. Lynn Ann said, will you sum up the debate around the Space Force? What are the arguments for keeping it in Colorado versus Alabama? Why has the move or lack thereof been such a dragged out issue? Okay, so just a little context here for those unaware. When the United States Space Force was established by Donald Trump as a branch of the armed services in 2019, its initial headquarters were at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colorado. What's followed since then has been straightforward and mindlessly petty. The decision to locate the Space Force command in Colorado Springs made sense

Starting point is 00:20:41 as the Air Force Academy, which graduates Space Force Guardians, is located there. However, it wasn't necessarily permanent. The Air Force was tasked with determining where the permanent headquarters would be, and in 2020, it chose the Redstone Arsenal at Huntsville, Alabama. This decision is also perfectly sensible, as the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville is home to the largest NASA center and has been a rocket design hub since the 1960s. However, that decision sparked pushback from Democratic Colorado lawmakers who accused Trump of partisan politics after he said he single-handedly sent the headquarters to Alabama. The Government Accountability Office criticized the credibility and bias of the Air Force's

Starting point is 00:21:21 decision, saying the selection process had been proceeding normally until March of 2020. The Associated Press also reported that the Space Force commander, James Dickinson, is staunchly in favor of staying in Colorado. Then, earlier this week, Biden reversed the decision, saying the command will likely stay in Colorado. This was also met with pushback as Republican Alabamian lawmakers accused Biden of partisan politics, calling the decision retribution for Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville's recent stand to block military appointments in Congress, which we covered. The AP has also reported that, according to Tuberville, Commander Dickinson favors the location in Alabama. It's all a bit exasperating. First of all, Trump's initial decision was obviously politically motivated, as the GAO highlighted and as Trump himself all but boasted. But it doesn't mean Huntsville was

Starting point is 00:22:09 a bad choice. And while Biden has denied that his decision was retributional, it almost certainly was as well. He had initially stated he would not challenge the decision to move the command center to Alabama and then made this decision after Tuberville, an Alabama senator, began his protest against the military's abortion policies. The timing here is suspicious, to say the least, but that also doesn't mean that Colorado Springs is a bad choice. The truth is, Huntsville and Colorado Springs are both good options, and there are good reasons to support either location. And both decisions reek of petty partisan politics. All right, that is it for your questions answered, which brings us to our under the radar section.

Starting point is 00:22:58 After the Biden administration's student debt cancellation plan was thrown out by the Supreme Court, the administration launched the saving on a valuable education repayment plan, also called SAVE. The plan is designed as an income-driven repayment plan that would cut many borrowers' previous monthly payments in half, leaving some borrowers with no monthly bill at all. Previously, borrowers with undergraduate student debt were required to pay 10% of their discretionary income a month toward the revised pay-as-you-earn repayment plan. Now,, under save, the required percentage is just 5%. Those who make less than $15 an hour won't need to make any payments under the new plan. MSNBC has a story and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers

Starting point is 00:23:41 section. The admissions rate for legacy applicants at Harvard between 2009 and 2014 was 33.6%. The admission rate for non-legacy applicants at Harvard in that time period was 5.9%. The admission rate for recruited athletes at Harvard between 2009 and 2014 was 86%. The increased likelihood of admission to Ivy Plus schools for legacy students from families in the top 1% of the income distribution compared to an applicant with comparable test scores, demographic characteristics, and admissions office ratings was 5x. The percentage of Americans who say they do not support the use of legacy preferences is 75% according to a 2022 survey. The percentage of college admissions directors who do not support the use of legacy preferences is 89% according to the same survey. The percentage of colleges

Starting point is 00:24:31 and universities that provide a legacy preference and admit 25% or less of applicants is 80%. All right, that is it for our numbers section. And last but not least, our have a nice day story. All right, that is it for our numbers section. And last but not least, our have a nice day story. A new class of immunizations could become a powerful weapon in the fight against Lyme disease. Rather than targeting the pathogen itself, the vaccine targets the microbes in the gut of disease vectors like ticks and mosquitoes that the pathogen requires to survive. And a new study investigating a vaccine that did just that demonstrated it was remarkably successful in mice. This immunization is part of an emerging class of drugs called antimicrobiota vaccines, and

Starting point is 00:25:12 the same concept is being applied to malaria. Early last year, scientists demonstrated that a similar vaccine was effective in turning the gut microbiome of southern house mosquitoes hostile to a specific strain of the malaria pathogen. This approach could be used to target a wide range of diseases, whether caused by viruses, parasites, or bacteria, said Dr. Alejandro Cabasas Cruz, an infectious disease researcher. Good News Network has the story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, please go to readtangle.com forward slash membership. Also, don't forget,

Starting point is 00:25:51 once again, we have our Tangle live event coming to the stage tomorrow night in Philadelphia, Thursday, August 3rd. Tickets are still on sale. There are still a few left. Please come buy a ticket. Come hang out. We want to see you guys in person and kick off the Tangle Tour with a bang. We hope to see you there. Have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by John Law. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady.

Starting point is 00:26:22 The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bukova, who's also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more on Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. We'll see you next time. procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 flu vaccine.

Tangle - The legacy admissions debate.

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