A Legacy to Remember

Adam Lu • January 15, 2025

Many students at Peninsula work tirelessly on building a golden portfolio for when college applications roll around. When rumors spread that someone who may not have worked as hard is accepted into a prestigious private university, many of those same students are understandably furious. On Sept. 30, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a new bill (Assembly Bill 1780) into law, banning private, non-profit universities from considering legacy and donor status in the admissions process (ca.gov), to go into effect the next admissions cycle for the class of ‘26. The bill promises to provide everyone with a fair shot at getting into their favorite elite private Californian college. In reality, this new bill does nothing good except to act as a formality while potentially damaging the finances of these private, non-profit universities, and is an example of state overreach.

After signing the bill, Newsom released the following statement: “in California, everyone should be able to get ahead through merit, skill and hard work” (AP News). This is incredibly ironic coming from the same man who condemned the removal of affirmative action by the Supreme Court. Like affirmative action, it is true that legacy admission is unfair and contrary to our meritocratic ideals. But true meritocracies are impossible pieces of utopian thinking – humans will always show preference based on things other than merit. This holds true for people from all walks of life, from the nepotism of a parent who hires their child as an employee, to the rich kid who stands to inherit a fortune – indeed, there has never been a society where the background of a man played no part in determining his success. Furthermore, the removal of affirmative action did not have quite as many damning implications as this new bill does. Private universities rely heavily on donations, most of which comes from their alumni. Legacy preferences keep alumni engaged and donating to the college for their child’s future attendance, and legacy graduates are far more likely to donate large sums of money to their college when compared to non-legacy graduates (Forbes).

Private universities do not receive the same funding from the government that public universities do, which is one of the main reasons private universities have kept the practice around – it is simply a great source of income, with USC reporting that up to 38% of its donations come from alumni. These donations help private schools to pay their staff, improve conditions, provide more specialized instruction to their students and grant more generous scholarships and fund research. It is pragmatic for these institutions to give preference to people who are able to throw money at them, especially when that money ends up benefiting everyone else.

Of course, there is the idea that legacy admits “take up spots” from, supposedly, more qualified, non-legacy admits. It is not as severe as one might think, however; only around 15% of admits to schools like USC had legacy (The New York Times). Whether that 15% of “unfairness” justifies removing a significant part of private universities’ funding remains in question.

“Knowing they have a higher chance of admittance will reduce the amount of work [richer students] put into achieving acceptance,” senior Nicholas Stavrakis said. “It’s not fair to those who would work hard for any [small] chance to get [accepted] without having any sort of priority acceptance.”

Stavrakis is right that people should not get preferential treatment from the accomplishments of one of their parents. But the “fairness” and “merit” angle proponents of the bill so heavily rely on is a myth. The “preferential treatment” is not as extreme as many think. Studies have shown that legacy admits are just as, if not more, qualified compared to non-legacy admits (Los Angeles Times). They found that even when their legacy status was taken out of the equation, legacy admits, based on their other qualifications, were still 33% more likely than their counterparts with the same test scores to be admitted. This makes sense, because for a student to have legacy status, one of their relatives must have gone to that same prestigious school. It may also explain the common conception that legacy admits all come from rich backgrounds — their parents or relatives went to the prestigious school and probably excelled in their careers like they did academically. It is reasonable to assume that, like their alumni relatives, the student grew up in an environment conducive to academic success. What this means is that the new bill solves an imaginary problem while creating a host of new ones for private, non-profit universities to fix.

“States should absolutely be allowed to regulate private institutions like this,” junior Sterling Utovac said. “The government in general needs to be able to regulate private institutions. Not just colleges and universities, but industry broadly, for the well-being of society.”

Then there is the issue of government overreach, or how much influence the government should be allowed to have over the operations of private organizations, given those operations are lawful, of course. The role of the government in society is to ensure that private actors do not violate the rights of others; anything more is a slippery slope into totalitarianism. Unless serious logical hurdles can be jumped proving that private universities not giving everyone equal access to protect its own interests violates individuals’ rights, then this bill is an example of the government overstepping its bounds. The fact that Governor Newsom would support affirmative action shows that he sees merit as a secondary value, worthy of being sacrificed for other ideals, political ones included.

“As a rule, the government should not have that much influence over the educational curriculum of private universities,” senior Kris Deng said. “But in this one instance, it is probably a good idea.”

If legislators in Sacramento are going to talk about “fairness,” they must also consider the “fairness” that private, non-profit universities have to deal with budget cuts and scrape around for money, shoving the brunt of the problem to their student body, who now have to pay extra money for housing and services while public universities roll around in their government grants. If the school isn’t owned by the state, then the state shouldn’t have a say in how they manage their finances.