Legacy Admissions and the Value of an Ivy League Degree

The fairness of limiting nonracial preferences in college admissions strikes a responsive chord in my own heart (“End College Legacy Preferences” by William Galston, Politics & Ideas, July 5). But this will be a hard change to drive through the courts. A voluntary abandonment or moderation of these preferences would be wonderful, if the uberliberal mandarins of academia can be convinced to put some skin in the game with the potential loss of donor money. Financial self-interest being the powerful motivator that it is, I look forward to their principled response.

Otherwise, legislation tying the receipt of public funding to admissions reforms of this type might work. This wouldn’t prevent colleges from skewing their admissions to favor legacy applicants or children of donors, but it would stop the use of taxpayer funds to support schools that did so.

John Ninomiya

Sedona, Ariz.

Two of the many obvious differences between discrimination based on race and discrimination based on legacy status is that discriminating by race is much wickeder and prohibited by the Constitution. A university should favor its own, especially in a society overrun with colleges and universities, many of which provide perfectly sufficient educations for their students.

To tell Harvard that it can’t consider a son, daughter, grandson or granddaughter of alumni because that family member might take the spot of an otherwise worthy candidate for admission presupposes that the denied candidate won’t obtain the same (or higher) level of success if he graduates from a different university. This is a most revolting kind of elitism: one that suggests Harvard, and few other schools, are almost entirely responsible for the success of their graduates. Do we really believe this to be true?

Zack W. Royle

Kansas City, Mo.

Rather than trying to once again manipulate university admissions preferences to achieve desired outcomes, it might be more useful to cast a skeptical eye on the value of an elite university degree.

If a student is following a STEM major, then it shouldn’t matter where the student goes. The local evening commuter school will expose students to the same content as a prestigious university at much lower cost. This leaves the humanities where, it is safe to say, our premier universities have been leading the charge toward academically negligible postmodern nonsense.

No matter where they go, students should know that they most likely won’t be taught by superstar professors, who are busy securing grants and doing research. They will be taught by the overworked and underpaid grad-student teaching assistants.

Tom Paronis

Brooklyn, N.Y.