Ending an unfair admissions policy

Last week, Texas A’M University President Robert M. Gates announced that the school would no… Last week, Texas A’M University President Robert M. Gates announced that the school would no longer take into account the “legacy” status of prospective students.

Since 1989, would-be Aggies who’ve had a sibling, parent or grandparent attend the school got four extra points out of a possible 100 on an admissions scale. The practice has drawn criticism in the past, particularly in light of Texas A’M’s decision last month to discontinue affirmative action practices in admissions.

For any institution to discontinue affirmative action because it takes factors other than academic merit into account and then continue to grant preferential treatment to legacies – who, after all, are only the beneficiaries of an accident of birth – is the height of hypocrisy. Eliminating preference for legacies is an idea that’s time has come.

It’s no secret that, in the past, more whites than blacks were admitted to most colleges. The idea behind granting preferential treatment to legacies is to create a sense of community, a shared sense of pride and roots at a school, which is a lovely notion. The reality of it, though, is not so rosy.

Each year at Texas A’M, legacy status had been the deciding factor for admitting more than 300 white students while only a very few black students got in based on legacy status, according to the Houston Chronicle. Clearly, preference for legacies perpetuated the sins of the past.

Admitting a student who may not have otherwise gotten in to a school presents a challenge to professors. If George W. Aggie was admitted with shaky grades and a family of Texas A’M students, it seems like a necessity that he passes his classes, regardless of his performance, to redeem the decision the school made in admitting him.

Universities are businesses, in addition to temples of learning. If Mr. Aggie gets in, poor SAT scores and all, and then fails out, it’s likely his family will stop donating those important private dollars to Texas A’M. If the school doesn’t accept him in the first place, they can kiss his tuition dollars and his potential alumni donations goodbye.

Acceptance to college based on any factors other than academic and personal merits and potential is a dicey proposal, at best. When one of those factors happens to be coming from a family privileged enough to have gone to college in generations past, the only result can be elitism and a sense of entitlement among an already entitled class of people.