Sigh. I read the whole opinion piece as it wouldn’t have been right to comment otherwise, but what a waste. It was laughably bad. It was such a transparent shilling for his company and signaling to the kind of clients he hopes to cater to. But it never made a coherent argument or provided any data to back it up. Which is egregious given the author credits legacy admissions for making the US colleges “top” in a laundry list of seemingly dubiously related things such as “diversity, funding, academic publication rates, student outcomes.” You don’t get a free pass to make those claims then never demonstrate them.
It’s only tangible example is that if Legacy Admissions is ended that the Ken Griffin’s of the world will have no reason to give hundreds-of-millions to universities. Sure they would. Massive donations like that are about the giver’s legacies, not their kids, with their names on buildings, etc. More importantly, it has nothing to do with legacy admissions. I guarantee you if someone who didn’t go to Harvard donates $500M to them with the potential for more, their kid is getting in, no legacy status required. So the example makes no sense.
There is nothing to stop private colleges from continuing to trade admission for massive donations, with or without legacy. Meanwhile, most alumni don’t donate nearly enough to their former colleges to buy admission.
If I was in the market for a college consultant and read this article, I would be crossing that company off the list. Our kids can right better than that.